Is it time to introduce the 10 letter conundrums?

[Marc Meakin]

Might beef up the season finales.
Im all for gradual change
I think initially on for finals week and CoCs but why not?

[Callum Todd]

What and have to build a new conundrum board thingy? Not with Countdown's budget!

[Sam Cappleman-Lynes]

This is what the CG-ification of conundrums was heading for all along. 4D chess from CountdownTeam.

[Gavin Chipper]

Im all for gradual change

Maybe start with 9.1 and go from there then?

[Callum Todd]

Srsly tho yeah go for it. 10 letter conundrums would be a big first step in the route to the ideal 14 letter conundrums, which itself would be a great step on the way to axing countdown and rebooting Scrapheap Challenge in its stead.

[Gavin Chipper]

I don't like 10-letter conundrums even at CO-events. I see the "need"* for them as a few freaks spoiling the game for the rest of us.

*I dispute there is a need.

[Thomas Carey]

It's an interesting one, because yeah, at the top level, 9 letter conundrums are pretty unsuitable. It's fine for the odd game/final if you get a suitable WETHARDON esque one (see this amazing Graeme post, which should be required reading for anyone setting conundrums). But for an event where you need hundreds of the things it isn't that feasible, and so many games at the top end go to crucials (especially in 9 rounders which are used for most events) and are decided by something that both players see pretty much instantly by whoever has the faster reflexes or some non-countdown based skill. This is especially problematic on apterous where the conundrum can be pretty easy and it comes down to getting your finger on the button, which some do better than others.

One solution I've seen that I like, although it doesn't really work for lower levels, are supernundrums. Jack Hurst made a thing to automatically generate them, but basically it's nine conundrums and the answer is the 9 given by the first letters of all of them. When we used to do these Co-Vid tournaments on zoom over lockdown, we used these and they made all the games like Conor v Rob interesting because if there's fractions of a second between the players' normal conundrum solve speeds, multiplying this by ten gives a clear winner - you certainly don't have buzzer races. (of course, there's also the strategy of stuff like if you can only see 8 of them, maybe it's worth trying to goat it instead of wasting time on the last one etc). I see why 10 letter conundrums are better for the freaks than 9s that they've all practiced to death, but then the 10s favour hyper players, whereas supernundrums keep the skill to 'how fast can you do standard conundrums' but without making it instantaneous.

I don't think it's a particularly good idea at events, because you have people of all abilities and you don't want to scare them off. Perhaps in the final, but I don't think that would massively help since who gets to the final is usually determined by a load of buzzer race conundrums between all the top however many players throughout the day, and saying something like 'top n tables in rounds 2 and 3 get them' would have an arbitrary cutoff and still not feel quite right, so it is pretty difficult. You could lengthen the whole game and have people play mocktoruns, which are a lot less likely to be determined by one double slap conundrum, but that's boring and also not possible time wise at events. So yeah, supernundrums are good for high level tourneys (also you couldn't do them on TV got without scaring off the viewers) but wouldn't be good at events. I'm sure there must be a better way but I haven't found one and 10 letter conundrums is at least slightly better.

But as I say a lot, co events are 90% luck, and that's just a thing you need to accept. Go for the fun of the game and the social stuff, and anything you win is a bonus.

[Philip A]

I’m all for it TBH. Nothing wrong with trying.

[Adam Gillard]

Absolutely stupendous suggestion!

[Mark James]

If it annoys L'oisleatch, yes.

[Johnny Canuck]

Absolutely stupendous suggestion!

Definitely reprograms conundrums altogether.

[L'oisleatch McGraw]

This would annoy me somewhat.

[Marc Meakin]

Having given it some further fault you can't really have 10 letter Conundrums unless you use 10 letters in all letters rounds.
18 points for a 9 and 30 points for a 10 maybe

[Johnny Canuck]

Having given it some further fault you can't really have 10 letter Conundrums unless you use 10 letters in all letters rounds.
18 points for a 9 and 30 points for a 10 maybe

I thought co-events like MK still used 9 letters even if the conundrums were 10s. Although it is fairly incongruous, agreed.

For my 10-letter Mastergram challenges I’m going 9 points for a 9 in a letters game and 25 points for a 10. But the letters are magically managing to be super tough and this may have to be recalibrated. Maybe 12 (roughly half of 25) for a 9 if the show introduced them would be better.

[Gavin Chipper]

Having given it some further fault you can't really have 10 letter Conundrums unless you use 10 letters in all letters rounds.
18 points for a 9 and 30 points for a 10 maybe

30 points for a 10. Lucky you're not suggesting going to 11. You'd probably award them 190 points.

[Johnny Canuck]

On a related topic, am I the only one who thinks 24 points for a 12 in Hyper on apterous is grossly understating the difficulty of getting a 12? It should be something like 60 points plus a free bag of Haribos auto-mailed to your address.

[Marc Meakin]

Having given it some further fault you can't really have 10 letter Conundrums unless you use 10 letters in all letters rounds.
18 points for a 9 and 30 points for a 10 maybe

30 points for a 10. Lucky you're not suggesting going to 11. You'd probably award them 190 points.

No 40 points are sufficient

[L'oisleatch McGraw]

Having given it some further fault you can't really have 10 letter Conundrums unless you use 10 letters in all letters rounds.

Incorrect.
Conundrums are digital.
They can be 45 letters in length, should one desire.

[Marc Meakin]

Having given it some further fault you can't really have 10 letter Conundrums unless you use 10 letters in all letters rounds.

Incorrect.
Conundrums are digital.
They can be 45 letters in length, should one desire.

It was more for the synergy than anything else.
If you get to choose 10 letters per round than its logical for a 10 letter conundrum

[L'oisleatch McGraw]

Not really.
Numbers rounds contain 6 rather than 9 numbers.
Where's the 'synergy' in that?

[Marc Meakin]

Not really.
Numbers rounds contain 6 rather than 9 numbers.
Where's the 'synergy' in that?

If you pick 4 large you do get 10 digits .
Numbers and letters require different processes.
Letters and conundrums require the same processes, capiche

You could use the 10 letter options to speed up the game by asking for 6 consonants and 4 vowels or 5 and 5 rather than the boring, vowel, vowel, consonant format which takes too long.

While your at it, do away with the pen and paper and use a tablet.
You could incorporate the tablet in the declaration.
Probably best not to doodle a cock and balls though

[L'oisleatch McGraw]

Yeah you could do all that stuff.
You could also get contestants to make a working machine out of spare parts available in a wrecking yard, and get Robert Llewellyn to host.
So many exciting possibilities.

[Callum Todd]

You could also get contestants to make a working machine out of spare parts available in a wrecking yard, and get Robert Llewellyn to host.
So many exciting possibilities.

Sounds great.

[Paul Anderson]

10L Cons > Supernundrums (which is just more 9L cons)
It would remove the muscle memory aspect of the game and provide a real (and fair) challenge

[Sam Cappleman-Lynes]

10L Cons > Supernundrums (which is just more 9L cons)
It would remove the muscle memory aspect of the game and provide a real (and fair) challenge

Until the top players learn all the 10-letter conundrums.

[Paul Anderson]

Aye but it negates the past decade and a half surely

[Ian Fitzpatrick]

It would ruin the game for 90% of the viewing population I reckon

[Adam S Latchford]

Not for me. Maybe in specials but definitely not in a normal series / coc. 9 is fine