Ask Graeme?

[Graeme Cole]

Hello again everyone! Just when you thought I'd forgotten about this thread.

Hello Graeme, I wanted to ask
1. Who are the perfect number round players, getting maximum points for each number round they've been in? There are likely many who did so in 1 episode but then lost with the letters, so any who you think did a lot will do.
2. What's the shortest word ever played, has any 1 letter words shown up?

As you say, many players have a perfect numbers record from only playing a small number of games, but of all players never to have dropped a point on numbers, the most numbers rounds played by the player is 12. This was achieved by Jonny Rye and Arran Cleminson, who both lost their third game having scored 120/120 in their 12 numbers rounds.

Jonny actually lost his third game because one of his words was incorrectly disallowed, so he might have got an even longer perfect numbers record (or lost it, of course). Arran met Elliott Mellor in his third game, and despite being beaten on every letters round and on the conundrum, he still scored 40 points on numbers to keep his perfect numbers record.

No player has ever offered a 1 or 2 letter word on Countdown. 90 3-letter words have been offered, of which 43 scored.

[Graeme Cole]

Has any player ever scored more than Alex Robertson (115/92% of max) while winning only one match?

My boy https://wiki.apterous.org/Jamie_Ilett-Jones

Anyone heard from him recently? He's not been to events in a while

Jamie is the only 1-time winner to have scored more than 115 in a game, if you only count ordinary heat games. If you also count specials, Linda Dawe lost her first game, then came back for a special and won that with 126.

[Graeme Cole]

There was reference to the fact that yesterday's game featured two players born in the 21st century. My quarter-final game was the 1st finals game to feature two players born after the millennium. I'd also wager that it is the game with the smallest age difference between two players (5 days), but obviously this is very hard to verify, unless anyone can remember anything being mentioned on previous shows?

The wiki, and the database scraped from it, doesn't store players' dates of birth (if it did, it would be something of a GDPR nightmare, not to mention that it would raise quite a few questions about where all that information came from), so all we have for questions like these are guesses.

Ask Graeme:- Has anyone above the age of 40 ever won a series ? Who is the oldest winner ?

I'm 42 and I won a series in 2011, but let's assume this isn't what you meant.

This question was asked before Fiona Wood won series 90. Without wishing to speculate as to her exact age, it's fair to assume she was more than five years old during her first appearance in 1990.

I don't know who the oldest series winner is. Maybe possibly Joyce Cansfield.

[Graeme Cole]

For each of the last 3 completed series (or more if the data is easy to obtain), how many points were scored in letters games by the picker compared to the non-picker? Am trying to establish the advantage (if any) that there is between picking and not picking in letters games on TV. Would also be interesting to know if there is any difference between the results comparing "normal" episodes between mere mortals, and episodes between top players (e.g grand finals, CoCs, etc). Cheers

I've taken the last four completed series (87-90) as a whole series and a bit has gone by since this comment.

Letters points scored by picker: 23,671.
Letters points scored by non-picker: 23,996.

If we exclude heat games and only count the quarter-finals onwards, it looks like this:

Letters points scored by picker: 1,674.
Letters points scored by non-picker: 1,676.

Pretty much no difference. If we widen the net to the last ten series, and include all games (including the most recent CoC), the pickers scored 64,105 points and the non-pickers scored 64,486 points in total.

If there's a difference at all, it's very, very small advantage to the non-picker, but I'd say that's more likely to be statistical noise.

[Graeme Cole]

Carol Vorderman appeared as a guest on HIGNFY on Friday, with former contestant Little Alex Horne as host. Is this the first time a former contestant has hosted a TV show with a former/current Countdown team member as a participant? (excluding Catsdown)

No, it isn't; Carol Vorderman appeared in a special New Year episode of Taskmaster in 2023.

A rare lapse in discipline see Graeme making a rod for his own back by answering questions unrelated to the Countdown Database.

Here's one for the database - does Carol Vorderman remember Alex Horne from when he was on Countdown?

Gevin makes a humorous (albeit slightly facetious) comment to get the thread back on track.

I wouldn't think so in all honesty, don't really know how much she'd even remember contestants that stood out to her. Could be podcast material if she was on one tho.

Don't even know if Alex is still enthused about Countdown as I assume he was back then.

An American takes sarcasm in earnest.


I enjoyed this sequence of posts. Does the database agree with me?

Code: Select all

sqlite> select * from do_you_agree;
Yes.

[Fiona T]

For each of the last 3 completed series (or more if the data is easy to obtain), how many points were scored in letters games by the picker compared to the non-picker? Am trying to establish the advantage (if any) that there is between picking and not picking in letters games on TV. Would also be interesting to know if there is any difference between the results comparing "normal" episodes between mere mortals, and episodes between top players (e.g grand finals, CoCs, etc). Cheers

I've taken the last four completed series (87-90) as a whole series and a bit has gone by since this comment.

Letters points scored by picker: 23,671.
Letters points scored by non-picker: 23,996.

If we exclude heat games and only count the quarter-finals onwards, it looks like this:

Letters points scored by picker: 1,674.
Letters points scored by non-picker: 1,676.

Pretty much no difference. If we widen the net to the last ten series, and include all games (including the most recent CoC), the pickers scored 64,105 points and the non-pickers scored 64,486 points in total.

If there's a difference at all, it's very, very small advantage to the non-picker, but I'd say that's more likely to be statistical noise.

Certainly on apto, and possibly at co-events, I find it easier to look for words during picking when I'm not actually doing it. When I was filming, I was more anxious about where to say 'please' than what words I could make with the letters I already had (Would be interesting to see the apto stats on this for normal!)

[Fiona T]

A rare lapse in discipline see Graeme making a rod for his own back by answering questions unrelated to the Countdown Database.

More general question...

I've recapped a few games in the past. Noticed the wiki was getting a bit behind so recapped today's game as I was watching. At the end there's an 'add to countdown database' option. First time I've clicked it - but was unable to add my recap (I wasn't on the dropdown list, and it appeared to need some sort of password). Is this the same countdown database to which you refer? How should occasional recappers add their recap? If not, then is this obsolete (are you scraping the wiki?) Is the recapper countdown database alive or dead?

[Graeme Cole]

With the X currently awol and stories of the J having taken an extended holiday "back in 2002 or something", what are the longest gaps between individual letters appearing?

Here we have the usual caveat that the records on the wiki aren't complete, and selections from some very early games aren't there. Still, I put them all in order, and ran them through a Python script. When it saw a selection which wasn't there or wasn't complete, it assumed that every letter appeared in that selection. Hopefully, we are left with only the longest number of consecutive rounds a letter was known to be unseen, for each letter.

The games were sorted in order of transmission date, which is usually the same order as recording date/time except that it can be messed up by specials and by the early 1990s Masters games.

With those caveats in mind, here are the results:

Code: Select all

 A was unseen for   8 letters rounds until episode 230 round 6
 B was unseen for  43 letters rounds until episode 1150 round 2
 C was unseen for 108 letters rounds until episode 6412 round 1
 D was unseen for  26 letters rounds until episode 62 round 5
 E was unseen for   4 letters rounds until episode 330 round 1
 F was unseen for  41 letters rounds until episode 803 round 5
 G was unseen for  61 letters rounds until episode 3480 round 8
 H was unseen for  47 letters rounds until episode 5636 round 11
 I was unseen for   8 letters rounds until episode 3447 round 9
 J was unseen for 480 letters rounds until episode 3196 round 7
 K was unseen for 308 letters rounds until episode 6660 round 12
 L was unseen for  16 letters rounds until episode 7139 round 12
 M was unseen for  27 letters rounds until episode 827 round 7
 N was unseen for  38 letters rounds until episode 195 round 1
 O was unseen for  16 letters rounds until episode 1336 round 7
 P was unseen for  35 letters rounds until episode 798 round 5
 Q was unseen for 224 letters rounds until episode 7478 round 4
 R was unseen for  14 letters rounds until episode 120 round 3
 S was unseen for  10 letters rounds until episode 5248 round 8
 T was unseen for  14 letters rounds until episode 886 round 3
 U was unseen for  25 letters rounds until episode 1073 round 2
 V was unseen for 396 letters rounds until episode 4954 round 2
 W was unseen for  88 letters rounds until episode 1892 round 2
 X was unseen for 463 letters rounds until episode 7653 round 5
 Y was unseen for  84 letters rounds until episode M21 round 4
 Z was unseen for 288 letters rounds until episode 7537 round 12

Unsurprisingly, E has the shortest number of consecutive letters rounds in which it was unseen.

You're right about the J. It appeared on Christmas Day 2001 in the series 46 final, then at the start of series 47 it went unseen for 480 rounds (then 43 games) until it finally reappeared on 25th February 2002.

The C, K, Q, V, X and Z have also had longer absences than one might expect, suggesting they spent some time lost from the pack.

[Graeme Cole]

Possibly an unanswerable question, but.... has anyone ever 'pencilled' a new word on Countdown (i.e. made the first declaration of that word, as a max winner) before it was pencilled on Apterous. After apterous had bedded in, of course

I don't have the ability to search for any other occurrences, but I happen to remember that at the time my first game was shown, neither VENIALLY nor EUCHRING had yet been pencilled on Apterous, which by then was three years old. That's the only time those words have been declared on Countdown.

[Graeme Cole]

Surprised nobody has asked this yet, but on the show which contestant has submitted the most words that were both added as part of the great influx of 2015 and subsequently recently removed?

I don't have a complete and correct list of only those words that were removed in the great cull of 2024, but to assist in some observations I made at the time I constructed something approximate by finding all words which were in Rob Foster's usefulness list but not in an ancient word list based on ODE3 which was used to check words at some co-event or other in about 2013. Most of these words would be those that were added in 2015 and removed in 2024, but there will be some false positives in the form of genuine new words in common usage added since 2013. (Edit: looking at it again, I now think the word list I used for this may be more accurate than I thought. It's dated a week later than the other files I made at the time, so perhaps we had a more accurate culled word list by then.)

If we go with this list, and accept that the numbers may be off by one or two...

Ahmed Mohamed is way out in front with 33, then James Haughton with 28, then Dan Byrom with 25. Tom Chafer-Cook, Sam Cappleman-Lynes and Harry Savage offered 22 of the probably-culled words. Cillian McMulkin, Bradley Horrocks and Luke Johnson-Davies had 21, and Ronan Higginson and Arthur Page had 20.

[Graeme Cole]

Surprised nobody has asked this yet, but on the show which contestant has submitted the most words that were both added as part of the great influx of 2015 and subsequently recently removed?

Can anyone beat four in https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_8024 - RITUALITY, HENWARE, MIAGITE and OSETROVA?

If you're asking about the number of culled words offered by one player in the same game, there are about a dozen games with four, including the above, but one with six: in episode 7225 James Haughton offered MONRADITE, ACOURIS, ROUGINE, UNROASTED, MACONITE and AEROTOW, all of which are now invalid on Apterous.

[Graeme Cole]

Sorry if it's been asked before bit are there more 9 letter words that are plurals (ending in S) than those that don't.

Caveats for this one are that the word list I'm using is from July 2024 so not quite up to date, and there isn't an easy way to tell whether a word is a plural. I've gone with "ends with an S and the first eight letters is a valid word" but even that isn't entirely accurate - it wouldn't count PENKNIVES as a plural because there's no such word as PENKNIVE, for example.

However, if we can assume this will give us numbers that are even vaguely approximately right, the answer is no. I count 21,632 9-letter words, of which 5,846 are plurals by the above not-entirely-satisfactory definition.

On the same subject. If every conundrum 9 letter set from the first episode of the show was unique without repeats , how long before we would run out ?

Today's episode was number 8472, and if we assume there are about 15,000 valid conundrums*, we'd be just over half way through them.

* If you eliminate from the possible conundrum list words which have another valid conundrum as an anagram, it only subtracts a few hundred or so.

[Graeme Cole]

Words sorted by the number of times they have been validly offered up to the end of series 69...

Code: Select all

     1. RATION       126
     2. TRAINED      125
     3. TRAILED      107
     4. RATIONS      102
     5. ROASTED       96
     6. POINTED       92
     7. PAINTED       90
     8. LOITERS       78
     9. PANTIES       77
    10. COATED        76
    11. COASTED       68
    12. DONATES       67
    13. GLOATED       66
    13. SOLDIER       66
    13. STAGED        66
    16. FLOATED       63
    16. ORANGES       63
    16. WAITER        63
    19. PAINTER       62
    19. RELATION      62
    21. BOASTED       61
    21. MOISTER       61
    21. REASON        61
    24. STONED        60
    25. FLOATER       58
    25. GORIEST       58
    25. STRAINED      58
    28. GOITRE        57
    28. LOITER        57
    28. PRAISED       57
    28. RADIOS        57
    32. POINTER       56
    33. DREAMS        55
    33. POSTAGE       55
    35. ELATION       54
    35. MOANERS       54
    35. PLAITED       54
    35. POLITE        54
    39. COASTER       53
    39. LOANERS       53
    39. MOIST         53
    39. RATIOS        53
    43. IMAGES        52
    44. FASTEN        51
    44. STAINED       51
    46. FAINTED       50
    46. TOILED        50
    46. WAITED        50
    49. POUTED        49
    50. FOISTED       48
    50. PARTIED       48
    50. WAITERS       48

Thanks for that, Graeme. No LEOTARD then!

This one's already been asked.

Here's the updated table, counting all valid letters declarations up to the end of series 90, by number of times the word was validly declared. Top 50 plus ties.

Code: Select all

1.  RATION   175
2.  TRAINED  165
3.  TRAILED  151
4.  ROASTED  149
4.  RATIONS  149
6.  POINTED  131
7.  PAINTED  124
8.  PANTIES  123
9.  LOITERS  117
10. POLITE   105
11. ELATION  103
12. COASTED  100
12. PAINTER  100
14. COATED    99
14. WAITER    99
16. RELATION  98
17. ORANGES   97
19. DONATES   95
18. POSTAGE   95
20. LOANERS   94
21. BOASTED   93
22. LOITER    91
22. STAGED    91
24. POINTER   90
24. RADIOS    90
26. WAITERS   89
27. MOANERS   88
27. SOLDIER   88
29. GLOATED   86
29. REASON    86
29. STRAINED  86
32. FLOATED   83
32. LOANED    83
32. RATIOS    83
35. MOIST     82
35. MOISTER   82
37. STAINED   80
38. GOITRE    78
39. COASTER   77
40. STONED    76
41. REMAINS   75
42. TOILED    74
43. IMAGES    73
43. WAITED    73
45. WAISTED   72
46. COUNTER   71
46. FASTEN    71
46. FLOATER   71
46. GORIEST   71
46. POUTED    71
46. RATIONED  71

LEOTARD has been validly declared 53 times, and LEOTARDS 40 times.

[Graeme Cole]

Has there ever been more than two impossible numbers games in one show?

If by "impossible" you mean "impossible to reach the target exactly", then yes. There were three impossible numbers rounds in episodes 5856 and 8048.

If you mean "impossible to score any points" or "impossible to get within 10", then no. This hasn't happened more than once in any episode.

[Graeme Cole]

A rare lapse in discipline see Graeme making a rod for his own back by answering questions unrelated to the Countdown Database.

More general question...

I've recapped a few games in the past. Noticed the wiki was getting a bit behind so recapped today's game as I was watching. At the end there's an 'add to countdown database' option. First time I've clicked it - but was unable to add my recap (I wasn't on the dropdown list, and it appeared to need some sort of password). Is this the same countdown database to which you refer? How should occasional recappers add their recap? If not, then is this obsolete (are you scraping the wiki?) Is the recapper countdown database alive or dead?

The "add to countdown database" option adds the game to something behind the scenes of this, which is run by Charlie, and looks like it hasn't been updated in a while. It is unrelated to the SQLite database I use to answer these questions, which I update at the end of each series by scraping the wiki.

The first time I tried to submit a recap using the recap writer, I also realised I didn't know the password. Fortunately, I could find it pretty easily from the fact that the message telling me I had the wrong password came back very quickly and was a JavaScript alert box. The problem you're more likely to have is that your name isn't on the list of recappers. I'm not sure if Charlie can add you to the list or if more people have permission to do that. (I don't.)

[Fiona T]

Surprised nobody has asked this yet, but on the show which contestant has submitted the most words that were both added as part of the great influx of 2015 and subsequently recently removed?

Can anyone beat four in https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_8024 - RITUALITY, HENWARE, MIAGITE and OSETROVA?

If you're asking about the number of culled words offered by one player in the same game, there are about a dozen games with four, including the above, but one with six: in episode 7225 James Haughton offered MONRADITE, ACOURIS, ROUGINE, UNROASTED, MACONITE and AEROTOW, all of which are now invalid on Apterous.

Scoring that game on today's dictionary, James scrapes a 82-79 win!

[Martin Hurst]

Brilliant work as ever Graeme

[Graeme Cole]

This week Pam Hill made a reappearance, she is the fourth of my opponents in my octorun to return (in regular heat games). Am I the only octochamp to have four opponents from my run reappear?

Unless another octochamp has had a fourth opponent return some time in series 91, yes.

Also which other octochamps have had the most opponents later return?

Considering only games up to the end of series 90, Kevin Thurlow, Richard Pay, Conor Travers and you all had three opponents from their octorun return for another run at a later date. As you say, Pam Hill in series 91 was your fourth.

In addition, Elliott Mack, Samir Pilica, Kevin Steede and Daren Barnes had three opponents from their octorun who either returned later on or had previously appeared in a separate run.

[Graeme Cole]

During my telly run, I declared two words twice - adjoiner (no longer valid ) and watering.

3 part question -

a) what's the most times someone has declared the same one word in their telly run

"telly run" is difficult to define, but whether you define it as either "a player's run of consecutive heat games" or "all televised games a player played", the answer is 3. By the first definition, six players declared the same word three times in their heat game run, and by the second, 14 players declared the same word three times across all their games. These are mostly seven-letter words, but Kevin Thurlow is the only person to have declared the same eight-letter word three times (GLOATERS).

b) what's the most number of different words that a player has declared more than once

Seven, by two players: Nik Von Uexkull (ADROIT, CLIMATES, COMPARE, MARDIEST, RANDIEST, SAMPLE and SEDATION twice each), and Conor Travers (DELATION, HOLINESS, IDIOTS, MEDIANT, MINORED, RELATOR and SOCIETAL twice each).

c) has anyone declared 3 different words 3 times each (or 4, 4 or more?)

No. Nobody has declared multiple words three times each.

[Graeme Cole]

Very nearly a nine letter Q-word in the selections today. Has this ever happened? What are the lowest probability words to come up?

I'm not sure exactly how many times such a word has been available from the selection (the dictionary changes over time), but I can check how many times they've been declared.

If you mean a nine-letter word beginning with Q, only two contestants have declared one. They are QUEENIEST by Andy Platt and QUESTIONS by Ben Bazzard. Cillian McMulkin gets an honourable mention for trying the invalid QUANDRIES.

If you mean a valid nine-letter word with a Q anywhere in it, you can also add EQUALISED (Richard Saldanha), MISQUOTED (Innis Carson), and REQUOTING (valid when Matt Gould found it, but not any more, go with ROQUETING instead).

Deciding which words are the lowest probability is hard. I guess QUIZZICAL has a probability of zero because there's only one Z in the pack. For the lowest nonzero probability, possibly JUKEBOXES? J, K and X only appear once in the usual consonant distribution.

[Fiona T]

Thanks Graeme! Top work

[Philip A]

What is the longest run of consecutive episodes to finish with a conundrum solved by either contestant?

[Graeme Cole]

What is the longest run of consecutive episodes to finish with a conundrum solved by either contestant?

I'm excluding Countdown Masters games from this, because those games were played over five days even though the database assumes all rounds were played on the first day, and including them would interrupt the sequence of the regular series episodes.

I'll start with the subtly different but slightly easier question "what is the longest run of consecutive conundrums that were solved by either contestant?" So this counts all conundrums in order regardless of whether the conundrum was followed by a tiebreak or was one of those mid-game conundrums they used to have in the 14-round finals.

By this definition, the longest run of solved conundrums is 24, from Jon Corby's solve of UNOPPOSED in episode 4094 to John Mayhew's OCTAGONAL in episode 4117. In the next episode, the scramble SNOWFABLE went unsolved to break the streak.

If we strictly apply the wording of the question, then that means we're only considering conundrums which were the last round in a game. The longest run of episodes which ended with a solved conundrum is 27. It started with Jack Worsley's GUIDEPOST in (ahem) episode 5633, and continued through the rest of the 30th Birthday Championship into the first week of series 68, ending with Juliette Bains' solve of AMUSEMENT in episode 5659. There were two unsolved conundrums, neither of which count here because they were both followed by tiebreaks. The streak was broken by the unsolved scramble THEIRCOPY in episode 5660. Incidentally, this scramble had previously appeared in Julian Fell's then-record 146, when it also went unsolved.

The longest run of unsolved conundrums, by either of the two variations on the question, is 6. This has happened on five occasions up to (literally!) the end of series 90:

• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_256 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_261
• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_2099 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_2103 (episode 2102 was a 14-round final with two unsolved conundrums)
• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_5333 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_5338
• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_6075 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_6080
• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_8417 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_8422 (in the next episode, Fiona Wood broke this streak to win the series 90 final)

[Philip A]

What is the longest run of consecutive episodes to finish with a conundrum solved by either contestant?

I'm excluding Countdown Masters games from this, because those games were played over five days even though the database assumes all rounds were played on the first day, and including them would interrupt the sequence of the regular series episodes.

I'll start with the subtly different but slightly easier question "what is the longest run of consecutive conundrums that were solved by either contestant?" So this counts all conundrums in order regardless of whether the conundrum was followed by a tiebreak or was one of those mid-game conundrums they used to have in the 14-round finals.

By this definition, the longest run of solved conundrums is 24, from Jon Corby's solve of UNOPPOSED in episode 4094 to John Mayhew's OCTAGONAL in episode 4117. In the next episode, the scramble SNOWFABLE went unsolved to break the streak.

If we strictly apply the wording of the question, then that means we're only considering conundrums which were the last round in a game. The longest run of episodes which ended with a solved conundrum is 27. It started with Jack Worsley's GUIDEPOST in (ahem) episode 5633, and continued through the rest of the 30th Birthday Championship into the first week of series 68, ending with Juliette Bains' solve of AMUSEMENT in episode 5659. There were two unsolved conundrums, neither of which count here because they were both followed by tiebreaks. The streak was broken by the unsolved scramble THEIRCOPY in episode 5660. Incidentally, this scramble had previously appeared in Julian Fell's then-record 146, when it also went unsolved.

The longest run of unsolved conundrums, by either of the two variations on the question, is 6. This has happened on five occasions up to (literally!) the end of series 90:

• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_256 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_261
• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_2099 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_2103 (episode 2102 was a 14-round final with two unsolved conundrums)
• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_5333 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_5338
• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_6075 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_6080
• https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_8417 to https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_8422 (in the next episode, Fiona Wood broke this streak to win the series 90 final)

Great work as ever. Obviously I meant episodes themselves rather than conundrums, which would include tie-breaks and the two conundrums in the 14-round game as you mentioned. It’s very interesting to note that the longest streak of episodes ending with solved conundrums including tie-breaks happened in the 30th Birthday Championship (an amazing tournament). Looking at these, I think every single one is an ahh, not a wtf. When comparing these 40 conundrums + tie-breaks to the 15 in the most recent Champion of Champions in 2023, some of them were in the latter and drew criticisms from regular viewers, citing anti-climaxes. The conundrums in the CoC prior in 2019 were better overall, except for the now invalid TIMESAVER (which actually came from a now-defunct dictionary, Lexico). At least we don’t have OED words now.

[Jamie Weisenberg]

If Colin and gang were to shoot an episode today, when would it be broadcasted ?

[Peter Thomas]

Very nearly a nine letter Q-word in the selections today. Has this ever happened? What are the lowest probability words to come up?

I'm not sure exactly how many times such a word has been available from the selection (the dictionary changes over time), but I can check how many times they've been declared.

If you mean a nine-letter word beginning with Q, only two contestants have declared one. They are QUEENIEST by Andy Platt and QUESTIONS by Ben Bazzard. Cillian McMulkin gets an honourable mention for trying the invalid QUANDRIES.

If you mean a valid nine-letter word with a Q anywhere in it, you can also add EQUALISED (Richard Saldanha), MISQUOTED (Innis Carson), and REQUOTING (valid when Matt Gould found it, but not any more, go with ROQUETING instead).

Deciding which words are the lowest probability is hard. I guess QUIZZICAL has a probability of zero because there's only one Z in the pack. For the lowest nonzero probability, possibly JUKEBOXES? J, K and X only appear once in the usual consonant distribution.

Thanks Graeme.

[Jon O'Neill]

Fabulous updates.

[Philip A]

Which contestant has the longest consecutive run of numbers rounds scored? I.e. no scores of 0, for any reason.

[Johnny Canuck]

Very nearly a nine letter Q-word in the selections today. Has this ever happened? What are the lowest probability words to come up?

Long after the fact but I just remembered this has been discussed before, and the least likely possible nine may be WAKIZASHI

[Gavin Chipper]

Very nearly a nine letter Q-word in the selections today. Has this ever happened? What are the lowest probability words to come up?

Long after the fact but I just remembered this has been discussed before, and the least likely possible nine may be WAKIZASHI

It is mentioned on the wiki as being the lowest probability nine. Graeme also mentioned it in this post, also in answer to the question of the lowest probability nine to come up.

In terms of the question asked, the only suggestions that I've seen have been QUODLIBET and CUNJEVOIS upthread. I did also think of URTICARIA when it came up on the show a while ago but maybe it's more of a weird word than low probability.

[Gavin Chipper]

I'm not sure if a similar question has been asked off the top of my head, but has it been worked out whether the random number generator does a good impression of a uniform distribution and whether the small numbers all come up equally (given that they must be pre-selected to some extent as there aren't 20 on display). With the small numbers, because there's few enough of them, it would be enough to just see the frequencies of each one. With the generator a more sophisticated statistical technique may be required. But you could just separate the targets into blocks of 20 or 50 or whatever to check each block is equally represented within reason.

[Steve Hyde]

(given that they must be pre-selected to some extent as there aren't 20 on display)

There are, though? Two rows of 7 and one row of 6

[Gavin Chipper]

(given that they must be pre-selected to some extent as there aren't 20 on display)

There are, though? Two rows of 7 and one row of 6

I mean, I haven't paid attention recently but I'm sure this has been talked about in the past. Either it changed or I dreamt it.

Edit - It was all Corby's fault.

Edit 2 - But in the first episode I can only count 19!

[Philip A]

Has any contestant ever scored 18 points for a loanword?

[Gavin Chipper]

FLORUITED? That's a pretty niche question btw.

[Martin Hurst]

How many episodes have there been that have pitted two contestants both with verbs as surnames against each other?

[Piaras Piarasman]

On Tuesday's episode, the conundrum was a 7/10, going by Apterous' hardness scale thing. They do always make sure heat conundrums are words that are at least decently well-known, so what are some of the most difficult conundrums that have shown up in a heat game?

[Philip A]

On Tuesday's episode, the conundrum was a 7/10, going by Apterous' hardness scale thing. They do always make sure heat conundrums are words that are at least decently well-known, so what are some of the most difficult conundrums that have shown up in a heat game?

Without a doubt, these: KINGOLEON from https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_6367 and HAVENOCAT from https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_6775. They were both solved by an audience member though. I think the latter was not on Ascension at the time, but has since been added with hundreds of other answers.

Months before the cull, there were some unsuitably difficult words during Series 89, some of which were directly from the historical dictionary such as SUPERNICE from https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_8230. This one has since been removed due to the cull; normally we’d use IMPRECISE. I think this one https://wiki.apterous.org/Episode_8228 was particularly nasty and given this is a 10/10, I would have used it in a semi-final fwiw.

It makes me raise another question: which regular series has the lowest percentage of conundrums solved, barring tie-breaks? What about longest run of unsolved conundrums barring tie-breaks?

The one you referred to: admittedly I solved in on the bell.

[Philip A]

In terms of percentages, how many episodes of Series 90 featured a returning contestant? How does this percentage compare to Series 91?

[Rhys Benjamin]

Deciding which words are the lowest probability is hard. I guess QUIZZICAL has a probability of zero because there's only one Z in the pack. For the lowest nonzero probability, possibly JUKEBOXES? J, K and X only appear once in the usual consonant distribution.

QUIZZICAL has appeared as a conundrum in this game, albeit not for 42 years at the time of writing, suggesting there were at least 4 Zs in the pack at one point. Unless they turned some Ns on their side or something.

[Adam Gillard]

How are you?

[Rhys Benjamin]

In light of recent events:

How many rounds have had 2 or 6 vowels (and indeed other non-standard numbers (0, 1, 7, 8, 9) if these values exist)?
How many of these instances have slipped through since 1995 (and the 3V 4C rule)?
If a manageable number, could these please be listed?

[Philip A]

If you removed ten small numbers each from 1 to 10, so that each small number appears once only instead of twice (and therefore 14 numbers instead of 24: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100), how much per cent of all standard numbers games would be impossible to score any points at all?

[Callum Todd]

If you removed ten small numbers each from 1 to 10, so that each small number appears once only instead of twice (and therefore 14 numbers instead of 24: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100), how much per cent of all standard numbers games would be impossible to score any points at all?

Wow, great question. My intuition says it will be less than under the current system. Let's see how wrong I am.

[Gavin Chipper]

Sounds a bit of an arbitrary one!

[Philip A]

If you removed ten small numbers each from 1 to 10, so that each small number appears once only instead of twice (and therefore 14 numbers instead of 24: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100), how much per cent of all standard numbers games would be impossible to score any points at all?

Wow, great question. My intuition says it will be less than under the current system. Let's see how wrong I am.

As a matter of fact, Drumond Park did once release a Countdown board game (which I got for Christmas once) during the Jeff Stelling era. It wasn’t a good game unfortunately, because the wind-up clock was too fast, there were insufficient letters for 11 letters games (and even two Zs), and there was no target generator so the opponent had to come up with a target. There were also just 14 numbers cards, with the small numbers each appearing only once as described in my question. The cards were nicely presented on a board though.

Rocket Games made a better version in 2014, but there’s been no new Countdown board game since.

Anyway, I think 14 numbers would make it easier to score, because to be honest, it sucks when you pick 6 small and you have a target that is impossible to get to within 10 meaning the contestants don’t actually get to do anything.

[Gavin Chipper]

Yeah the worst you can get would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (which clears 1000 with a max of 1080) rather than 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3 (max of 81). Could be worth petitioning the production team...

[Callum Todd]

If you removed ten small numbers each from 1 to 10, so that each small number appears once only instead of twice (and therefore 14 numbers instead of 24: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100), how much per cent of all standard numbers games would be impossible to score any points at all?

Wow, great question. My intuition says it will be less than under the current system. Let's see how wrong I am.

Okay, so I had a go at trying to find the answer to this as a bit of computer programming practise. Before having any faith in the accuracy of my results please consider these three key details:

1. This is Ask Graeme but I am not Graeme.
2. I have no experience, skill, or training in either computer programming or mathematics.
3. The following is the products of some mathematics I programmed a computer to do.

With that out of the way, I gather that there would be 3,003 possible selections of the Countdown numbers game if there were only one of each small number in the deck:

45 possible 4 large selections
480 possible 3 large selections
1,260 possible 2 large selections
1,008 possible 1 large selections
210 possible 6 small selections

As there are 900 possible numbers targets (100-999 inclusive), this means there would be 3,003 * 900 = 2,702,700 possible distinct numbers rounds under this system. Of them, only 127 are impossible to score from. This makes 0.0047%. These 127 impossible rounds are spread across just 5 selections:

1 2 3 4 5 6 has 95 impossible targets: 821-829, 851-853, 875-889, 911-949, and 971-999.
1 2 3 5 6 7 has 15 impossible targets: 983-997
1 2 3 4 5 7 has 7 impossible targets: 991-997
1 2 3 4 6 7 has 7 impossible targets: 907-913
1 2 3 4 5 8 has 3 impossible targets: 851-853

Thanks to some wizardry from Maus and Corby on an old thread I found on c4c, they've already done the work on the existing Countdown game with two of each small number in the deck:

55+840+3690+5808+2850= 13,243 numbers selections.

Times the targets and you have 13,243*899= 11,905,457 of whatever I was working out.

Here is the breakdown by type, and how far away you can get:

Code: Select all

      Zero away         1 away   2 away   3 away   4 away   5 away   6 away   7 away   8 away   9 away   10 away   11+ away
6S   1963726 (76.64%)   353472    65417    26954    15232     9859     7357     5780     4589     3945      3326     102493
1L   4966076 (95.11%)   220295    21730     5813     2527     1272      713      470      339      264       217       1676
2L   3192103 (96.23%)   112258     8487     1880      865      435      313      207      144      114        78        426
3L    693131 (91.79%)    53875     4577     1332      724      461      296      206      139       87        64        268
4L     43710 (88.40%)     4661      556      179      112       75       42       28      22        18        16         26

However, since their excellent work we have discovered that 100 is a valid numbers target which changes things ever so slightly. Specifically it adds another 13,243 possible rounds (one for each selection) to give us 11,918,700 possible rounds. I haven't done the hard maths on this but I am going to run with the assumption that 1 1 2 2 3 3 is the only selection for which it is impossible to get within 10 of 100, so that adds just one to the total of impossible (11+ away) games, giving us a new total of 104,890, or 0.88%

So, in conclusion: Yes, having only one of each small number in the deck would significantly cut the percentage of rounds it would be impossible to score on, from 0.88 to 0.0047.

[Rhys Benjamin]

The longest run of unsolved conundrums, by either of the two variations on the question, is 6. This has happened on five occasions up to (literally!) the end of series 90:

I have just realised (at 1:15am) that this doesn’t mention the caveat of listing unsolved broadcast conundrums. Of course, I know this from personal experience having had a three-conundrum game cut down to one. It’s very possible that a tie-break game has gone to umpteen conundrums, the middle ones being cut for time.

That said, I don’t think any explanation was given for why my game lost one too many conundrums, but we did record the third conundrum as Nick saying “the second” one, so clearly they have experienced ad infinitum conundrums at some point.

[Fiona T]

Considering how the numbers come up in a Bristol style event with multi-choice, filling from 6s to 4L right to left, then generating the same target for all the rounds, is there a fill pattern and target that would mean none of the five options could be solved exactly?

[Matthew Brockwell]

There are several impossible targets with 100 75 50 25 1 1 2 2 3 3 as the selection such as 557, 896, 907.

[Stephen R]

I was checking the same thing. 3 3 2 2 1 1 25 50 75 100 has a total of 400 impossible targets. Most of them are above 600 as you'd expect, but the impossible targets below 300 are 213, 237, 257, 263, 266 and 268.

The worst targets with that fill pattern are 787, 788, 789, 811, 812, 813 and 814, where no points are available for any of the selections.

[Fiona T]

There are several impossible targets with 100 75 50 25 1 1 2 2 3 3 as the selection such as 557, 896, 907.

I was checking the same thing. 3 3 2 2 1 1 25 50 75 100 has a total of 400 impossible targets. Most of them are above 600 as you'd expect, but the impossible targets below 300 are 213, 237, 257, 263, 266 and 268.

The worst targets with that fill pattern are 787, 788, 789, 811, 812, 813 and 814, where no points are available for any of the selections.

Perfect - thank you both!

[Matthew Brockwell]

I thought about the best possible selection and 25 50 75 100 9 8 2 7 10 5 has 14 impossible 4L games only, with every other selection/target combo solvable exactly.

[L'oisleatch McGraw]

Hey Graeme,

I just compared Rob Foster's latest "usefulness" thing [The ROSTER] with this page on Apterous [https://www.apterous.org/dic.php?dic=0]
The ROSTER says there are 27,622 nines (excluding anagrams... so the true number is higher), but Apterous says there are 21,633 nines (including anagrams, I have to assume)

This is a vast difference.
Who's right?

[Fiona T]

Hey Graeme,

I just compared Rob Foster's latest "usefulness" thing [The ROSTER] with this page on Apterous [https://www.apterous.org/dic.php?dic=0]
The ROSTER says there are 27,622 nines (excluding anagrams... so the true number is higher), but Apterous says there are 21,633 nines (including anagrams, I have to assume)

This is a vast difference.
Who's right?

There are 21,633 nines on the current word list.
Which 'latest' version of Rob's thing are you using? This one (post apocyalypse) has 20,623 excluding anagrams which sounds about right

[L'oisleatch McGraw]

Ah... yep.
Bad maths on my part.
Terrible question.

As you were...

[Philip A]

Niche one again (sorry): How many teapot owners have also won money on The Chase?

[Philip A]

What is the highest average score among 8 challengers versus their would-be octochamp?

For example, Elliott Mellor’s challengers combined 207 points, thereby averaging a smidgeon under 26 points per game (is that the lowest?).