Validity of letters, their plurals, and Roman numerals

[Gavin Chipper]

I'm putting this in General rather than Apterous because it's a discussion about the validity of words in Countdown. Apterous is secondary to this, although I might make a ticket on there depending on how this discussion goes.

Single letters aren't generally valid on Apterous. A is, but it's the only one. However, they all have their own entry in the dictionary, in lower case. To give an example:

Q2
(also q)

NOUN (qs, q's)
1 The seventeenth letter of the alphabet.

It's just listed as a noun with a plural. And they're all like that. So as far as I'm concerned, all letters and all letters + s are valid on Countdown. So as, bs, cs, ds etc.

Then there's Roman numerals. If you look up the entry for e.g. "one", it says:

(also i, I)

i is valid anyway (see above), but being an alternative to one makes it doubly so. But anyway, the following are all explicitly listed under the entry for the appropriate number as alternatives in lower case, so should be valid: ii, iii, (weirdly not iv as far as I can see), v, vi, vii, viii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, xxx, xl, l, lx, lxx, lxxx, xc, c, m. So basically integers up to 20 (except 4), then 10s up to 100, and also 1000.

This is all from the free version of course, and the paid version might be different of course (though I'm guessing not).

Discuss.

[Fiona T]

Premium says:

one
Top 1000 frequently used words
Pronunciation: /wʌn/
CARDINAL NUMBER
1
The lowest cardinal number; half of two; 1:
there's only room for one person
two could live as cheaply as one
one hundred miles
a one-bedroom flat
(Roman numeral: i, I)

so yeah it's a bit different

[Gavin Chipper]

Premium says:

one
Top 1000 frequently used words
Pronunciation: /wʌn/
CARDINAL NUMBER
1
The lowest cardinal number; half of two; 1:
there's only room for one person
two could live as cheaply as one
one hundred miles
a one-bedroom flat
(Roman numeral: i, I)

so yeah it's a bit different

OK, thanks for that. It seems that Roman numerals don't have quite the validity claim that the free version suggests. What about individual letters (and their plurals)?

[Fiona T]

Yep Q (also q) has the same definition 'noun' - so yeah I'd agree that, with my limited understanding of the rules, it should be valid

[Graeme Cole]

It's very unlikely that a contestant would offer a 1-letter word, and even unlikelier still that it would be a winning word. It would be tempting, therefore, to assume that the possibility just never occurred to anyone in charge of the rules. However, at least one person considered it as early as 1965 - in the very first episode of Le Mot Le Plus Long (the show which in 1972 became Des Chiffres et des Lettres, on which Countdown was based), they specifically excluded, among other things, "les mots d'une lettre".

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2UVm1Dcms8#t=4m24s

[Graeme Cole]

It's very unlikely that a contestant would offer a 1-letter word, and even unlikelier still that it would be a winning word. It would be tempting, therefore, to assume that the possibility just never occurred to anyone in charge of the rules. However, at least one person considered it as early as 1965 - in the very first episode of Le Mot Le Plus Long (the show which in 1972 became Des Chiffres et des Lettres, on which Countdown was based), they specifically excluded, among other things, "les mots d'une lettre".

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2UVm1Dcms8#t=4m24s

Continuing this aimless amble through French TV archives, I've also found the last episode of Le Mot Le Plus Long, from 1970. By this point they'd got rid of the racetrack thing on the wall and made it closer to the letters game we know today. In the video they appear to clatter through 15 45-second letters rounds in an impressive half an hour, but it's edited. They've also given each team four digits for their score, which seems excessive.

Note "IRIS 50" appears in the end credits. This is the name of the computer they used to look up words, if the comments are to be believed - quite remarkable for 1970. (See: Plan Calcul, random site about the Iris 50)

[Gavin Chipper]

It's very unlikely that a contestant would offer a 1-letter word, and even unlikelier still that it would be a winning word. It would be tempting, therefore, to assume that the possibility just never occurred to anyone in charge of the rules. However, at least one person considered it as early as 1965 - in the very first episode of Le Mot Le Plus Long (the show which in 1972 became Des Chiffres et des Lettres, on which Countdown was based), they specifically excluded, among other things, "les mots d'une lettre".

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2UVm1Dcms8#t=4m24s

With plurals they become two letters though! Apterous allows A but not the other single letters. I think I'll probably make a ticket but not for Roman numerals based on what Fiona said.

[Gavin Chipper]

Ticket.

[Philip A]

Sorry to be negative, but this would be against the spirit of a word game.

As a side point, Apterous disallows words in ODO that are defined as a noun but its definition indicates it is an obvious abbreviation (e.g. PSIA). This is not an official Countdown rule, but I think these, as well as letters and plurals of letters, are better of excluded from the Apterous dictionary.

[Gavin Chipper]

What about SECCER/SECCEST and DRACCER/DRACCEST on the basis that SEC and DRAC are single-syllable adjectives? Apterous ticket. I'm surprised this type of example hasn't come up for discussion before actually (as far as I'm aware).

[Gavin Chipper]

Here is the text from the ticket in case any non-members can't read it:

I believe the following words should be added: SECCER, SECCEST, DRACCER, DRACCEST

SEC and DRAC are both listed as single-syllable adjectives (in the free version at least), so should have a comparative and superlative form. https://www.lexico.com/definition/sec#h70256907064580 https://www.lexico.com/definition/drack DRAC is listed as an alternative spelling to DRACK, and DRACKER and DRACKEST are both valid, but the DRAC spelling should still be considered on its own merits, and we still have the SEC case to deal with anyway.

Doubling up a hard C and following it by an E is a weird thing to do in the English language (as CE normally gives a "soft" C like an S), which is why we have words like PANICKED, but there doesn't seem to be any fundamental rule against it. TWOCCED (along with TWOCKED) is a valid past tense of TWOC, and we also have words like SOCCER, so CCE does not force an S sound out of the C. It's a very rare case, but I would still suggest that doubling up the final letter should be considered the default thing to do in this case. But regardless, there should still at least be a comparative and superlative of SEC, whether SECCER/SECCEST or SECKER/SECKEST (or even SECER/SECEST, but not that really).