These figures include all ordinary series, Championships of Champions, Supreme Championship, Junior Championship, Ladies' Championship, Countdown Masters and Specials. Excluded are unbroadcast episodes or episodes we don't have details for. Series 67 is included up to and including this episode from last week. Also excluded is this game - contestants changing mid-game, and Gyles buzzing twice on the conundrum (you can't do that!) leads me to believe this game was deliberately set up to annoy anyone trying to put all the Countdown games in a relational database 25 years later.
Where a contestant offered more than one word, which seems to have been quite common in the earlier years, I've only taken the first one. Incidentally, the contestant guidelines now specifically tell you not to offer more than one word. This is presumably because if you smugly offer three words and it turns out they're all the wrong length, you look a bit silly.
Comebacks
In a CoC IX last-16 match in 1997, Pete Cashmore won despite being 20 points behind with two rounds left. Perhaps surprisingly, this is the only time that's ever happened.
The largest deficit overturned in the last three rounds of any game is 21. Two people have managed it: Lee Graham in his "decider" special against Nicki Sellars last year, and Dan Webster against Tuck Broadbent in series 54.
The largest ever overturned deficit was 40, by Richard Pay in series 51.
Words
Most frequently offered words
TRAINED 118
RATION 118
TRAILED 99
RATIONS 97
ROASTED 91
PAINTED 87
POINTED 85
LOITERS 78
COATED 74
PANTIES 73
Most frequently offered words as maxes
RELATION 55
TRAINED 42
COASTED 38
TRAILED 37
DONATES 37
POINTED 37
FLOATER 35
PAINTED 34
STRAINED 34
SPRAINED 33
RATIONED 33
Most frequently disallowed words
This only counts words disallowed for being unacceptable words, not for any other reason. Note that BAITER, which used to be invalid, is now allowed.
entrail 15
gaited 13
staired 12
corgies 11
outlaid 11
baiter 10
casted 10
pattie 10
pilates 9
failers 9
moulter 9
Talking of disallowed words, here are the reasons words can be disallowed, and how many times it's happened:
Unacceptable word: 5683
Not in selection: 1217
Misdeclared: 292
Not written down: 6
"Misdeclared" includes when someone declares a length but then doesn't offer a word when asked, as well as offering a word that doesn't match the length declared.
Breakdown of misdeclarations
Misdeclared as 4: 6
Misdeclared as 5: 32
Misdeclared as 6: 85
Misdeclared as 7: 116
Misdeclared as 8: 50
Misdeclared as 9: 3
Most common words to be disallowed because they aren't in the selection
EXILED 7
ROUTER 3
GREATER 3
NEGATED 3
NATION 3
DUSTED 3
... and another 20 words with two occurrences.
I don't know what it is about EXILED, but in the last 30 years it's been offered 11 times, and on only four of those occasions has it actually been in the selection.
Numbers
CECIL's favourite number is 609 - it's come up 29 times in 14,123 numbers rounds for which we know the target. The least common is 100, which has only come up four times, but that's probably because CECIL used to be able to pick 100 but not any more. The next least common targets are 931, 929, 268 and 836, with 6 occurrences each.
Frequency of picks
6 small: 1164 (8.2%)
1 large: 10053 (71.2%)
2 large: 1996 (14.4%)
3 large: 378 (2.7%)
4 large: 528 (3.7%)
Percentages are rounded to 1 decimal place. The counts don't add up to 14,123 because there were three rounds where we know the target but not all the numbers.
Conundrums
Conundrum buzz time frequency.
Everyone who has Superstats on apterous has a graph that looks like this. But what if we split it into correct and incorrect buzzes?
Predictably enough, quite a few people buzz in with a wild guess near the end that turns out to be wrong. And no, I don't know what happens at 10 seconds that suddenly makes people think of the right answer. It's possibly a mistake somewhere, as the graphs on Superstats don't seem to show such a thing, but I can't see one.
The contestant subjected to the most crucial conundrum games was series 37 champion Ray McPhie. Of his 13 games, 10 were decided on the final conundrum.
Finally, tiebreaks: 69 games have ended in a tiebreak. Eight contestants have been subjected to two tiebreak games: Clive Freedman, Satbir Gupta, Dennis Fearon, Gerry Pearce, Phil Cooke, Michael Calder, David Hoskisson and Denise Smith. Of those, Freedman, Fearon, Calder and Hoskisson won them both.
