THE NUMBERS GAME SCORING

[DANNI WOODHOUSE]

I know im only 30 years late in asking this but anyway

Why is the numbers game scoring the way it is - 10 points if exact, 7 points if your so far out and whatever points if your whatever out

Its a bit complicated isn't it?

Would'nt it have been easier if the scoring was 10 points if exact then 1 point less for every 1 off you are - 1 off scores 9, 2 off scores 8, 3 off scores 7 etc

I know they wont change it now after 30 years, but what do other people think?

[Graeme Cole]

I agree. When I watched the show as a child I remember wondering how the numbers game scoring worked, and I think at one point I might have assumed you got (10 - distance from target) points, as you suggest. Scoring like that would be more logical if they were starting from scratch today.

I think the reason they don't do it like that is that in the first series in 1982, you didn't have to be within 10 of the target to get points. So you got 10 points for an exact solution, 7 points for being within 5, and 5 points for anything more than 5 away. So, for example, you could be 100 away from the target and still get 5 points, provided your opponent didn't beat you. (See Michael Wylie getting 5 points for being 12 away.) When they changed it to how it works now, presumably in series 2, all they did was restrict the five points only to solutions within ten of the target, leaving the rules otherwise unchanged.

[Gavin Chipper]

I think you need to get something sensible just for getting within 10. I think it would be unsatisfactory to have 1 point as a starting point, because you've made it across the scoring threshold. So 5 for 10 away seems fairly reasonable, as opposed to 1 for 9 away as the starting point.

Of course, you can argue it's fairly arbitrary the way it's done. 0 away gets 10, 1-5 away gets 7 and 6-10 away gets 5, and I'm not sure what I'd consider to be the "best" method.

[Graeme Cole]

Come to think of it, it makes sense to get significantly more points for an exact solution than for 1 away. With 1 away you've got two targets you can aim at, arguably making the task half as difficult.

[Mike Brown]

When they changed it to how it works now, presumably in series 2, all they did was restrict the five points only to solutions within ten of the target, leaving the rules otherwise unchanged.

The scoring was changed at the start of the qualifying prelims in Series 2, i.e. Game 66. This was also when 18 points started being awarded for a nine-letter word.