c4countdown

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.

Philip A

How many times has a target of 100 appeared on the show?

Philip A

This “restaurant rule” is rubbish. Scrap it.

But I’m going to ticket QUINOAS anyway. https://www.apterous.org/ticket_view.php?ticket=7389

Philip A

The Floor recommissioned for Series 2 and we haven’t even reached the final of Series 1. No news yet on Time Is Money. I like both shows.

They were appealing for contestants at the end of the show yesterday - get that application form in Philip!

I’ll have to choose a subject that isn’t ...

Philip A

The Floor recommissioned for Series 2 and we haven’t even reached the final of Series 1. No news yet on Time Is Money. I like both shows.

Philip A

I got HATORADE - one of those extremely obscure words you wouldn’t find in any other dictionary.

Interesting bit of Countdown trivia: a target of 100, though has occasionally appeared recently includng today, appeared way back in 1994 [https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_1504] - but as the 100 card ...

Philip A

Axed.

Philip A

Hello Kitty is not a cat.

Philip A

Obscure 8 in ANAPSIDS to beat PAISANS.

A tense game for both players.

Philip A

Had an email reply and others have had exactly the same:

Hi Philip,

Thanks for your email.

As you may be aware, the Oxford Dictionaries Premium is constantly evolving to best reflect current English usage.

Both of the words highlighted - PILOTAGES and WOMBLED - were invalid entries at the time ...

Philip A

At least there is no content warning on streaming for this particular episode, unlike yesterday’s.

Philip A

10th February 2026 episode has brought a lot of online players to attention. Spoilers below:

Susie said PILOTAGE is a mass noun when it is not and saying WOMBLE is capitalised when it is not. She allowed PILOTAGES in 2014. Clearly something’s wrong with the illusion they give when ...

Philip A

Susie also defined PILOTAGE, which doesn’t actually have a definition in Oxford Dictionaries Premium. Are they using a different dictionary or other websites such as Google?

Also I think they need to scroll up and down the page when they search for inflections. Had Susie scrolled up she would have ...

Philip A

John Virgo :_(

Philip A

Susie twice alluded to the 2024 dictionary reset when 95,000+ entries were removed, though a few words do get removed anyway. Callum’s obviously watched past episodes to learn and practice. I think he’s registered the first conundrum solve in under a whole second for a long time so still coming up ...

Philip A

Martin Hurst wrote: Tue Feb 03, 2026 10:14 am
Philip A wrote: Mon Feb 02, 2026 12:57 pm With Colin Murray unavailable for the recordings, Les Dennis returns to guest host this week’s 5 shows. Great to have him back.
Where is Colin?

Well according to the Countdown Wiki Colin had back pain apparently. Unsure if that’s legit but he’s billed to return next week.

Philip A

With Colin Murray unavailable for the recordings, Les Dennis returns to guest host this week’s 5 shows. Great to have him back.

Philip A

C4Countdown on X 110% confirms Les Dennis will host 5 shows this week.

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