c4countdown

So, we're back from the joy of seeing Mark Murray win the Series 70 final on Friday, and we're straight in with Series 71 now.

James Wall is our returning champion, having won the last 3 preliminaries of the last series, which of course means that he could be the first octochamp of the series, if he wins every show this week.

Jon Culshaw will be in DC from today until Wednesday, before Griff Rhys Jones takes over on Thursday.

And don't forget, DC will look a bit different today, as the dictionary has now gone, and Susie will be using a laptop equipped with the Oxford Dictionary Online in it.

Join Andy for the recap later.

PHONEME in R1

Bradley Cates wrote:PHONEME in R1

CHEAPEN too.

Bradley Cates wrote:PHONEME in R1

I got PACEMEN.

REGALISM in R5

Rachel showed one of the harder ways to the 2nd numbers.

SOLVATE as alt in R7

R9 alt: (75 + (6 x 2 + 1)) x 3

Rhys Benjamin wrote:R9 alt: (75 + (6 x 2 + 1)) x 3

or 4x66

Not sure I liked the post-production webpage insert - not as nice as the pencam shots.

OBSIDIAN must be spot of the day - only 6s otherwise there.

Does 6 out of 8 words rejected set a record?

7s available in R13.

Last numbers : 9 x 8 x 4 x 3

I see the "dictionary engineer" is still listed in the credits so presumably the gallery have had an upgrade to the program
to include all the new words from the online version - or do they still have the ODE3 version and have to
argue with Susie whether a word is invalid or not?

OBSIDIAN was a fantastic spot.

p.s. is it just me, but a big part of the show for me was the countdown dictionary. I hate the laptop. It looks awful.

In case anyone from the Coundown Team is watching this, please please please bring back the dictionary!!! Pretty please?

John Garcia wrote:OBSIDIAN was a fantastic spot.

p.s. is it just me, but a big part of the show for me was the countdown dictionary. I hate the laptop. It looks awful.

In case anyone from the Countdown Team is watching this, please please please bring back the dictionary!!! Pretty please?

I'm sorry, but I too was not impressed with the readability of the screen shot of the online dictionary.

Mauro

Tony Atkins wrote:

Rhys Benjamin wrote:R9 alt: (75 + (6 x 2 + 1)) x 3

or 4x66

Or 6 + 9 - 2 for the 13.

To me it looked a bit strange having Susie sat there and us not being able to see what she was looking at. She could have been playing games or doing Rachel's shopping for all we knew. I'm not sure it would help if we had the same view as her either. Assuming it will change in the next 30 years, I tried to imagine a clip from today's edition on YouTube in 2044 - this is how it used to be done

OBSIDIAN makes Tricia Blatherwick an early contender for spot of the series, as well as best surname of the series.

John Garcia wrote:p.s. is it just me, but a big part of the show for me was the countdown dictionary. I hate the laptop. It looks awful.

In case anyone from the Coundown Team is watching this, please please please bring back the dictionary!!! Pretty please?

Tony Atkins wrote:Not sure I liked the post-production webpage insert - not as nice as the pencam shots.

szodiac wrote:I'm sorry, but I too was not impressed with the readability of the screen shot of the online dictionary.

Seeing Susie with a laptop rather than a dictionary is something we'll get used to very quickly. When those white-on-blue score displays were introduced last year they looked unusual at first just because we weren't used to them, but after a couple of weeks nobody cared.

I'm totally in favour of using the online dictionary, and it was completely the right decision. However, I have to agree that the screenshot of the entry for DIORITE didn't look right at all. What I mean is that it was noticeably vertically stretched, and the text was too small and faint. That's not a reason to switch back to the paper dictionary, though. It's just a case of tinkering with the text size/browser width/etc.

I think the laptop was eased in quite well, although I agree the screenshot was a bit off. Would it not be possible to just bring back the pencam and focus it on the laptop screen rather than a dictionary page?

Callum Todd wrote:I think the laptop was eased in quite well, although I agree the screenshot was a bit off. Would it not be possible to just bring back the pencam and focus it on the laptop screen rather than a dictionary page?

Maybe Susie should have a printer on the desk too, then she can print out the page, and then put the pencam on it. Would be much clearer, and small deskjet printers would be easily capable of printing out a plain page of monochrome text quick enough not to interrupt the flow of the programme too much.

Tony Atkins wrote:

Bradley Cates wrote:PHONEME in R1

I got PACEMEN.

PENCAM in that round!

Not sure what happened there with the DIORITE screenshot. It didn't look like that when inserted in post-production. We'll get our technical bods to investigate.

Could the dictionary (and pen-cam?) be given to the DC guest rather than with Susie? The vast majority of words will still be in the book, and presumably from time to time a new version of the book becomes available.

Keith Bennett wrote:Could the dictionary (and pen-cam?) be given to the DC guest rather than with Susie? The vast majority of words will still be in the book, and presumably from time to time a new version of the book becomes available.

No, that would create a weird disparity. In this instance better to go cold turkey rather than cling on to the past.
It could never just be for pencam presentational methods either, which is what you mean I guess, as having the dictionary there would just mean contestants start asking for things to be double-checked if the laptop says no, etc. etc.

Doesn't the printed dictionary go into much more detail than the free online one regarding the origins of words? Obviously this isn't an issue affecting the game itself, but it might make Susie's explanations of the more uncommon words less interesting.

Updates to the full 20-volume OED will only be made to the electronic version (available by subscription or at public libraries) - to judge by the occasional screenshots, this isn't what Susie is using (as it includes all historic variant spellings and obsolete words it would be quite inappropriate for Countdown anyhow).