"Between three and five vowels"

[Graeme Cole]

As you know, the rules for the letters game require the contestant to pick between three and five vowels. Presumably this is to prevent contestants who've built up a lead from unfairly protecting it by asking for something silly like nine vowels.

I'm curious about when this started. It's not a rule that's been in place since day one: on day one round 5 had six vowels in it, so it must have been introduced later. Was it that someone behind the scenes noticed the potential for exploiting the game and introduced the rule to pre-emptively thwart anyone thinking of doing it, or did somebody actually make ridiculous selections after building up a lead? If the latter, might we not have the recap of that game sitting on the wiki somewhere?

[Nick Deller]

I've still got scans of the Contestant Guidelines I got in Series 28 (Summer 1994), and at that stage we were told "You are requested to ask for at least three vowels" - so 'between 3 and 5 vowels' must have become a firm rule sometime after that.

[Thomas Carey]

Series 30 it got implemented, I tnink. Ask Mike.

[Clive Brooker]

Game 1651 (a semi-final of series 29) seems to have been the final straw. Prior to that 6 vowels had been chosen only 5 times - in fully documented regular games anyway.

A single vowel has been selected 4 times, twice in each of games 574 and 650. The 2-vowel selection was more frequent, with over 200 instances.

[Mike Brown]

Game 1651 (a semi-final of series 29) seems to have been the final straw.

You're spot on Clive - the rule was implemented at the start of Series 30 after Andy Cusworth used the tactic during the game as he felt he had to find some way of stifling Darren Shacklady's performance as he felt he was so much better than him - admittedly he did have the highest average since a certain Harvey Freeman, so he may have had a point!