c4countdown

Philip A

This is the reason why:

Hi Philip,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us and noticing the change.

We are using contestants' first names as this is standard practice for most game shows / quiz shows on TV and is in line with our duty of care to contributors.

We hope you continue to enjoy ...

Philip A

Had an email - thanks Countdown Team:

Hi Philip,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us and noticing the change.

We are using contestants' first names as this is standard practice for most game shows / quiz shows on TV and is in line with our duty of care to contributors.

We hope you ...

Philip A

Martin Hurst wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2026 10:13 pm They gave the surname of the person who submitted the OOW email today on the show. Hope he is ok.

Hadn’t noticed that. I skip anecdotes when I catch up.

Philip A

The first name only policy for contestants takes effect today. This I believe is a permanent change.

Philip A

OK, that was a fun gimmick. Back to normal tomorrow?

Yeah not surprised it's happened on a Bank Holiday Monday for a number of reasons. Sadly this change IS permanent. Think the Married At First Sight scandal has proven too much and has necessitated this change. Sad for the community but ...

Philip A

You can tell repeats really put people off. 14th August was a repeat and it had 417,000 (it did clash with athletics but even so), a drop of almost 300k on previous week which was a new episode.

Philip A

Gevin Chapwell wrote: Sun Aug 16, 2026 5:59 pm
Philip A wrote: Sun Aug 16, 2026 5:35 pm Anyone else think the minimum age for applicants should be increased from 16 to 18?
Why is that something for us to worry about?

Just think it would be another sensible safeguarding protocol, that's all.

Philip A

Anyone else think the minimum age for applicants should be increased from 16 to 18?

Philip A

Looks like the latest series has stopped after just 2 episodes and has been swapped with repeats. Last series only got 3 episodes, and the series before had just 4. Clearly struggling to find its audience. I know they’re recording a few more but not sure this series has much of a future.

Philip A

I would assume they would just talk to John Bell and John Brown and one of them would agree to change their onscreen name (e.g to "JB" if "John" cannot be changed otherwise)?

Have we ever had a common firstname/initial in a series finals (or a CoC) before, or has there ever been an episode with ...

Philip A

Gevin Chapwell wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2026 10:35 am Regardless of anything else, nicknames wouldn't be a problem. They base nicknames on many things so they don't need to use the surname.

Agree. They do have nicknames on The Finish Line so no reason why it wouldn’t work for Countdown and it doesn’t have to be restricted to just Octochamps.

Philip A

I wonder how Colin’s nicknames for the octochamps will work this time round then. Because they are so often surname based, as mentioned above.

I don’t think this decision makes much sense to be honest. As said, if two contestants have the same name, it makes sense using the first initial, but ...

Philip A

Yeah I suspect with shared surnames they’ll either use initial letter od surnames or use alternatives such as John VS Jonathan. Anyway Colin Murray’s Instagram photo chekcs it out and it’s been done. They will all use first names only.

Philip A

It's true and I have been reliably informed so disseminating this here. Surnames have now been dropped and will take effect on screen later this series.

Philip A

Gevin Chapwell wrote: Mon Aug 10, 2026 5:10 pm I didn't even know this had started up again. Looks like there's been two episodes!

That’s why I’m not keen on new episodes in the summer. What surprises me more though is the last series was only 4 episodes.

Philip A

Series 30 Episode 1 amassed 699,000 viewers including 1-week of catch-up but still placed 6th in Channel 4's weekly top 10; daytime Countdown had 390,000 but audience share was an impressive 13.5%.

Philip A

Obscure 9 in MELIORIST to beat LIMITERS.

Philip A

Susie disallowed EXTOLER in yesterday's show saying it was the North American spelling. It's also not valid on Apterous etc. if that makes a difference. What does the dictionary actually say in its entry?

It says:

No exact match found for “extoler” in British & World English
Did you mean ...

Philip A

Here's a situation I thought of earlier. The letters are

RIGNEOLAS

P1 with an Anguished "I'll stick with an 8"
P2 declares 9

P1 regional
P2 regionals

It then transpires that P2's word was NWD, and they had only written down the 7LW legions. P1 is unhappy because he believes P2 has gambled that ...

Philip A

Unpopular opinion: Rein Me In is an okay song.

Philip A

Excellent solve in Round 14 from the champion and I saw that method too. Not easy when you need to do division to make another number to multiply by a large one.

Philip A

Bonnie Tyler :_(

Philip A

Martin Hurst wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2026 9:10 am This rule will make Family Fortunes impossible!

And Ask The Family!

Philip A

Gevin Chapwell wrote: Wed Jul 08, 2026 1:55 pm Just the nameplates or their name as referred to on the show at all times?

It's both, I think. Times are a'changing.

Philip A

Is this correct?

For safeguarding purposes, Countdown will now only use the first names of the contestants on their nameplates - no more surnames.

Philip A

How has not one spoiler thread for the whole of May been started already?

It seems that the idea that the 4th may be with you was too well-known to merit a mention at the beginning. But how was the talk about female sitcom characters relevant to the day?

Now to the point ... Susie managed to ...

Philip A

Is this the first time that the first show of any series had a contestant declaring a 9 in the first letters game?

Philip A

Sausages?

It's listed as a (non-mass) noun first (1), then (1.1) as a mass noun. So sausages is fine.

noun
1 an item of food in the form of a cylindrical length of minced pork or other meat encased in a skin, typically sold raw to be grilled or fried before eating.
1.1[mass noun] minced ...

Philip A

Dame Penelope Keith dies aged 86.

Philip A

Gevin Chapwell wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2026 2:56 pm Where did this news come from btw? According to this Apterous ticket, there already wasn't a restaurant rule back in 2024.

Here it is.

Philip A

I think it was likely triggered by LAGERS being disallowed 4 times in under a year in 2001/2, whereas BRANDIES was allowed simply because it was an "irregular" plural and explicitly listed. Maybe the dictionary is better designed these days. Will LAGERS be allowed based on the dictionary entry of ...

Philip A

To be clear: this is a change made to Countdown and not a change made to Oxford Dictionaries Premium.

Would have been funnier if you'd said: "To be clear: this is a change made to Countdown and not a change made to restaurant menus"
Seriously though I think it's a good change.
The existence ...

Philip A

The new series and the last before the 2027 Champion of Champions begins with a change to the rules.

From now on, all plurals mass nouns will be disallowed on Countdown (and Apterous). The dictionary must either give the plural in bold, or have a [count noun] sentence on the page.

This means no ...

Philip A

I'm sorry for the runner-up, in one of these insane games I had a bad feeling that as soon as one player "slips" they can't come back.

But i was still pulling for him to make the conundrum.

I entirely agree. This felt like a Champion of Champions final in all but name. But I thought all the ...

Philip A

Gevin Chapwell wrote: Fri Jun 26, 2026 2:06 pm CoC confirmed for next year by Colin.

Will be interesting to see if next series’ Grand Finalists will be invited to that CoC or not.

Philip A

I didn’t know Patrick was good at snooker!

Some friendly selections, but you still have to solve them. It was undoubtedly a peak Grand Final, but Patrick’s peak edged Charlie’s. The conundrum was spot on too. Patrick’s tribute at the end summed up his win.

REDOUNDS in particular was excellent.

Philip A

Welcome to the climax of what has been a remarkable series. Patrick Thompson and Charlie Harrison enter this Grand Final with 10 solved conundrums out of 10 (for the first time ever) in Series 93 inclusive and they've each notched up over 1,200 points as well. Let battle commence.

Philip A

Second series ever to have 3 contestants with totals above 900. None of these last 7 games to be missed.

Good contest with Tom taking a round off Patrick; a very difficult 6 small but otherwise some friendly selections.

Conundrum was pitched right for a first quarter-final.

Philip A

Series 30 to be filmed this summer: https://www.tvzoneuk.com/post/catsdoesc ... n-summer26

Philip A

KATIPO, a venomous spider from New Zealand, an an alternative to OPTIMA.

ALIDADE in Round 10.

Also, haven’t spotted this myself, but a few eagle-eyed fans have noticed that this conundrum and the one from Ian’s debut two days ago each had 6 letters already in the correct position.

Philip A

This very minor discrepancy I believe is a currently unknown rule on Countdown, but as this affects the Apterous dictionary I think it might be worth asking here.

US spellings such as color and signaled are not allowed on Countdown (but American words like diaper are valid)…

…but what about North ...

Philip A

Wiktionary gives only POSSETS, POSSETING and POSSETED as the inflected forms of POSSET.

Of the OneLook hits, only a few give verbal inflections for POSSET, and they all have them as POSSETING and POSSETED likewise. POSSETING itself has five hits, including the OED, and POSSETTING only one (TFD ...

Philip A

INSTAGRAM is a valid Scrabble word.

Philip A

The more videos I watch of Acer the more I’m convinced this is 100% genuine. Rachel even sent him his own numbers which can be seen in one of the short videos. https://youtube.com/@daddylmg?si=TEJR7gIABb0yiOVe

Philip A

And I did (7+5)*75-3*6 for 882.

Philip A

A nervy game there but just one of these shows.

R4: ALGINATE

No meteorics, alas.

R6 alt: 25*3*10+100+3+1 (750+the rest)

Philip A

I think the reason why ‘sonnies’ doesn’t direct to ‘sonny’ is because the plural wouldn’t be used very often, but I doubt it’s invalid.

Philip A

In Round 1, Susie’s offering of HEMATIC is invalid as it is an American spelling:

haematic
Pronunciation: /hiːˈmatɪk/
(US English hematic)
ADJECTIVE

DATED Medicine
Relating to or affecting the blood.

But THEMATIC was an excellent get. I had ANTHEMIC

In Round 14 I did ((5+4)*9+1)*4=328

Close ...

Philip A

Susie makes an error in this episode. She said CODING doesn’t take an S, but actually CODINGS is perfectly valid according to the dictionary:

[COUNT NOUN]
A code assigned to something for classification or identification purposes:
PAYE codings

Philip A

Round 2: ABELIAN

Round 6: 75 * 5 - 8 = 367 is doable but not obvious;

25 - 9 = 16 which is 8 doubled, so:

75 * 5 - ((25 - 9) / (100 / 50)) = 367

Philip A

Obscure 8 but Apterous favourite in Round 3: PTOMAINE

Philip A

Well that should double the viewing figures for this week of episodes, for its temporary 3:40 pm slot due Channel 4’s coverage of the Winter Paralympics. Normal time slot returns on 16th of March.

Philip A

The minuter / minutest thing came up again today, but it wasn't explicitly discussed. MINUTEST was given as a beater in one round, and then in the very next letters round minuter was offered by a contestant but rejected by Susie. It would have made sense for her to say at that point about the ...

Philip A

Yeah it’s dud.

Can’t wait for my Everything Counts Quarter-Final!

Philip A

Re conundrums, there’s a reason why even good players miss them. There is absolutely nothing to clue you to the answer.

Even if it’s an utterly ubiquitous word that everyone knows and uses in normal conversation and writing, it can be really difficult to break it down. It’s quite different to ...

Philip A

If this series gets 10 octochamps which would be a record…

…then the producers may need to re-think the 8-player knockout format, no?

Philip A

Philip A wrote: Wed Feb 25, 2026 5:09 pm Broken down again. It got laggier and now won’t load. Hopefully will be back but it might mean no chat for the 3rd time this year.

Turns out it fixed itself, good.

Philip A

Broken down again. It got laggier and now won’t load. Hopefully will be back but it might mean no chat for the 3rd time this year.

Philip A

When was Formula 1 on? I need to check the iPlayer for this.

Edit - oh sorry I see, not on Mastermind. On The Floor whatever that is!

it's a song by jennifer lopez

the floor is 81 specialist subjects no? or i guess 80. either way making all of them unusable would surely make people run out ...

Philip A

Goodbye crudities, Susie has discounted you. https://www.apterous.org/ticket_view.php?ticket=7390

Had OWLERIES to beat RECOILS.

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