The X Has Not Appeared Since 18th June 2024

[Philip A]

As of 12th July 2024, letter X has not been drawn from the CONSONANT pile on Countdown since 18th June 2024. Is this just coincidence or is this because the undrawn letters cards are not shuffled before the next episode of Countdown starts?

[Steve Hyde]

Channel 4 trying to avoid giving Elon Musk free advertising

[David Williams]

Didn't the letter J disappear for months once, till someone found it down the back of the sofa? Gevin will remember.

[Gavin Chipper]

The J did disappear. This was way back in 2002 or something.

[Fiona T]

[Adam S Latchford]

doesn't feel like it's that long if its 18th june, like not too abnormal

[Gavin Chipper]

Well it was episode 8297 that it last appeared on 18th June and the last episode was 8315. That's 18 episodes. How often does it appear normally? If it's 50/50 it seems quite unlikely. 2^18 is 262144 but obviously this doesn't take into account all the different letters it could have happened to and at all different times etc.

[Fiona T]

Well the distribution changes over time, but assuming there are approx 75 consonants - with an average pick of 5 per letters round, you'd expect it to appear around twice every 3 games.

[Gavin Chipper]

2 in 3 would make it unequivocal. 3^18 is 387,420,489. Cherry-picking statistics could not account for that.

[Adam Beach]

Weirdly, the X is missing from at least two of the card sets used at the co-events as well (said sets haven't been used since I discovered this). A glitch in the matrix?

[Adam Beach]

[Martin Hurst]

It's gone on a summer holiday.

X on the beach.

[Ben Wilson]

Elon Musk's copyright enforcement knows no bounds.

[Callum Todd]

if it's been removed from the pile then we may now have to consider it an ex-letter.

[Martin Hurst]

Thread title needs to be renamed to "Let's Talk About X"

[James Laverty]

The X is back

[Gavin Chipper]

I'd suggest it's because someone from the show reads this forum, but we all know shows are recorded about 20 years in advance.

[Philip A]

Just a thought

Why are there so many letters cards?

I have a Countdown Letters Cards game at home, which I think was released about 10 years ago by Rocket Games. It has 116 cards in all: 51 vowels and 65 consonants (J, K, Q, X and Z appear once only, like the show). So that means if 5 vowels are picked in all 10 letters rounds, only 1 would be undrawn. If 6 consonants are picked in each round, 5 would be undrawn. I even shuffle the cards face-down instead of face-up… and, it works. I still find everyday 6s, 7s and 8s, with tricky 5s and 6s available in a couple of rounds.

I could take this to Co:events and it would still produce some decent letters selections.

On TV, there are at least 30 undrawn cards left in each pile at the end of the game. Why are there so many still sitting there at the end?

[Gavin Chipper]

I think the X went missing at CO:LON yesterday. The software must be a month or so out of date.