What do countdown winners win

The final round of the game is the "Countdown Conundrum". A board revolves to reveal the "conundrum" - a nine-lettered anagram, usually arranged into the form of two condensed words see example. The contestants have thirty seconds to find the word. The first contestant to buzz with the correct answer is awarded ten points, but each contestant may guess only once.

Once a contestant guesses correctly or the time expires, a second board rotates to reveal the answer. Each conundrum is designed to have only one solution but if, unintentionally, the conundrum has two answers e. A "crucial Countdown conundrum" occurs if, before the conundrum, the leading contestant is ahead by ten points or fewer.

The studio lights are dimmed and the first contestant to answer correctly wins the game. If the scores are level after the conundrum, additional conundrums are used until the match is decided. The rules of Countdown are derived from those of Des chiffres et des lettres. Perhaps the biggest difference is the length of the round; DCedL 's rounds are each 45 seconds long to Countdown 's Also, DCedL has a standard letters round as its final round, so there is no analogue to Countdown 's Conundrum finale.

However DCedL has an alternative two rounds, called " duels ", in which players compete to solve a mental arithmetic problem, extract two themed words, or spell a rare word. Other minor discrepancies include a different numbers scoring system 9 points for an exact solution, or 6 points for the closest inexact solution in DCedL and the proportion of letters to numbers rounds 10 to 4 in Countdown , 8 to 4 in DCedL.

The pilot episode followed significantly different rules to the current ones. Most noticeably, only eight letters were selected for each letters round. If two contestants offered a word of the same length, or an equally close solution to a numbers game, then only the contestant who made the selection for that round was awarded points.

Also, only five points were given for an exact numbers solution, three for a solution within 5, and one point for the closer solution, no matter how far away. Until the end of Series 21 , if the two contestants had equal scores after the first conundrum, the match was considered a draw and they both returned for the next show. A significant change in the format occurred in September , when the show was expanded from nine rounds and 30 minutes to the current fifteen rounds and 45 minutes.

The older format was split into two halves, each having three letters and one numbers game, with the conundrum at the end of the second half. When the format was expanded to fifteen rounds, Richard Whiteley jokingly continued to refer to the three segments of the show as "halves". Under the old format, Grand Finals were specially extended shows of fourteen rounds, but now all shows follow the same format.

The rules regarding which words are permitted have changed with time. American spelling was allowed in early shows, and more unspecified inflections were assumed to be valid. Since Countdown 's debut in , there have been over 7, televised games and 83 complete series. There have also been 15 Championship of Champions tournaments.

Several of Countdown 's most successful contestants have received national media coverage. Teenager Julian Fell set a record score of in December More recently, fourteen-year-old Conor Travers became the youngest series champion in the show's history, gaining wide newspaper interest. At eight years old, Tanmay Dixit was one of the youngest players ever to appear on the show when he achieved two wins in March He also received press attention for his offerings in the letters round, which included fannies and farted.

More recently, Kai Laddiman became the second youngest player ever to win all 8 games, at just 11 years old. Later that year, he reached the semi-finals of the series losing to No.

In , sixteen celebrities were invited to play Celebrity Countdown , a series of eight games broadcast every Thursday evening over the course of eight weeks. The highest and lowest scores were posted in the same game when Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall defeated Jilly Goolden 47 — 9. For this game, the presenter's chair was taken by William G. Stewart , the host of fellow Channel 4 game show Fifteen to One. Celebrities including footballer Matt Le Tissier and golfer Jason Palmer have also appeared on the show; celebrities such as Alex Horne and Mark Labbett appeared on the show before becoming famous.

Countdown is often referenced and parodied in British culture. Fry played Richard Whiteley, while Gyles Brandreth got the non-word sloblock — an anagram of bollocks.

Countdown has also generated a number of popular out-takes, with the letters producing the occasional word that was deemed unsuitable for the original broadcast. A round in which Dictionary Corner offered the word gobshite featured in TV's Finest Failures in , and in one episode, contestants Gino Corr and Lawrence Pearse both declared the word wankers. This was edited out of the programme but has since appeared on many out-take shows.

Other incidents with only marginally rude words have made it into the programme as they appeared, such as those with Tanmay Dixit referred to above, and a clip from a episode in which the word fart appeared on the letters board, which also featured on Greatest TV Moments from Hell. When Carol Vorderman first appeared on Have I Got News for You in , one of the usual rounds was substituted for a conundrum round based on the week's news.

The Doctor Who episode The Long Game mentions a futuristic version of Countdown , in which the goal is to stop a bomb from exploding in 30 seconds.

Never been the same since Des took over. Both Deses. What's the plural of Des? Richard Whiteley was the victim of a practical joke while presenting the show. The contestants and rounds had been planted as part of a " Gotcha!

Whiteley did not uncover the joke until House Party presenter Noel Edmonds appeared on the set at the end of the programme. Jump to: navigation , search. American spelling was allowed until , [59] and more unspecified inflections were assumed to be valid. In September , a new feature was added to the show in which Susie Dent explains the origin of a word or phrase which she has been researching.

This Origin of Words spot currently follows the eighth letters round, almost mid way through the third section of the programme. For the short time Susie was on maternity leave this addition was not continued; however, when she returned on Wednesday 6 February , it was reinstated.

When the fifteen round format was first introduced in September , the composition of the rounds was different from that used by the programme today. The three sections each had five rounds, four letters rounds and one numbers round in each of the first two sections, with three letters rounds, one numbers round and the conundrum in the third section. This meant that there was a slight imbalance, whereby one contestant made the letters sections for six rounds, but had the choice of the numbers selection just once, whereas the other contestant chose letters five times and numbers twice.

The dictionary corner guest's spot was immediately before the first advertising break, and Susie Dent's Origin of Words spot preceded the second numbers game shortly before the second break. The change to the present format was made on 25 March , three weeks into the second section of Series 68, to comply with Channel 4's decision to increase the amount of adverts and alter the times when they occur during the programme, therefore reducing Countdown's actual show length from 36 to 35 minutes.

Since Countdown 's debut in , there have been over 5, televised games and 70 complete series. There have also been thirteen Champion of Champions tournaments, with the most recent starting in January as a special 30th Birthday Championship.

Several of Countdown 's most successful contestants have received national media coverage. Teenager Julian Fell set a record score of in December Conor Travers went on to win the 30th Anniversary Champion of Champions series in March with a record equalling top score of At eight years old, Tanmay Dixit was one of the youngest players ever to appear on the show when he achieved two wins in March In April , Giles Hutchings, a student at Royal Grammar School, Guildford broke the record for the highest octochamp score, amassing points over 8 games.

He went on to win series In , sixteen celebrities were invited to play Celebrity Countdown , a series of eight games broadcast every Thursday evening over the course of eight weeks. For this game, the presenter's chair was taken by William G. Stewart , the host of fellow Channel 4 game show Fifteen to One. The letters of the infamous round during a episode in which both contestants declared the word wankers.

The Doctor Who episode "Bad Wolf" mentions a futuristic version of Countdown , in which the goal is to stop a bomb from exploding in 30 seconds.

Countdown was referenced again in a later series in "Last of the Time Lords" , where Professor Docherty expresses a keen fondness for the show and how it "hasn't been the same since Des took over—Both Deses". Fairport Convention guitarist Simon Nicol named one of his solo records Consonant Please, Carol , echoing one of the show's most famous catchphrases.

Countdown has also generated a number of popular outtakes, with the letters occasionally producing a word that was deemed unsuitable for the original broadcast. A round in which Dictionary Corner offered the word gobshite featured in TV's Finest Failures in , [72] and in one episode, contestants Gino Corr and Lawrence Pearse both declared the word wankers.

This was edited out of the programme but has since appeared on many outtakes shows. Other incidents with only marginally rude words including wanker , singular have made it into the programme as they appeared, such as those with Tanmay Dixit referenced above, a clip from a episode in which the word fart appeared as the first four letters on the board which also featured on Greatest TV Moments from Hell , [75] and a round where an anagram of the word fucked appeared on the board in the string "A U O D F C K E G", although neither player chose to use the word, and Dictionary Corner was able to find two seven-letter words that could have been made from the board's offerings.

Finchy states that it probably was 'professor in charge of watching Countdown every day', commenting on its student audience, and referring to the fact anyone watching Countdown during its 'hometime' time slot cannot be out at work. In the Christmas special, Richard Whiteley even made a special guest appearance, which amuses Nick. In another episode, Nick is taken aback when he thinks that bad news about his father is really about a cancellation of Countdown.

In , when Carol was a guest one of the usual rounds was replaced with a conundrum round based on the week's news. When Carol hosted the show in , one of the rounds was the "Spinning Conundrum Numbers Round", altering the "Spinning Headlines" round, by adding a number to a picture relating to the week's news, then at the end of the round the 6 numbers from the picture were used for a numbers game.

Richard Whiteley was the victim of a practical joke while presenting the show. The contestants and rounds had been planted as part of a "Gotcha! In the prank, both the two contestants and Dictionary Corner missed the word "something" from the letters OMETHINGS, and from another selection, both of the contestants declared "I've got diarrhoea" referring to the selection. In the numbers round that followed, the male contestant "answered" the puzzle by reading out the numbers.

Whiteley did not uncover the joke until House Party presenter Noel Edmonds appeared on the set, having revealed the unusually short conundrum of HOGCAT to be "gotcha" at the end of the programme. The first time it was referred to was when "Dev" Coronation Street made a sound like the countdown end of thirty seconds time.

British entertainer Stevie Riks has also parodied the show on one of his many YouTube comedy videos. The game has also been played on a number of different programmes, notably as the first challenge in "What's Next" on Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway , featuring the pair versus one of the duo's old head teachers. In , it was played as a shopping task on the final Channel 4 series of Celebrity Big Brother , with a team of housemates competing in the house against the-then current champion, Chris Davies, in the Countdown studio via satellite.

The housemates failed this task. There is a strong Internet Countdown community, which is mainly centred around the forum C4Countdown and the training website Apterous — indeed, since the website's inception all the series winners have used the website to train, as have many of the other finalists.

Template:Unreferenced section. Several boardgames, books and video games have been released under the franchise. Many boardgames have been developed to replicate the rules and game play of the television show. The boardgame will often consist of a board to place letters and number on, several scorecards, a selection of numbers and letters, a number generator and a timing device older models use an hourglass whilst newer models contain a battery powered timer.

These contained LCD black and white displays and a variety of physical controls. Many of these often bore the official Countdown logo. Gameplay is achieved via a DVD player and the remote control. The DVD was sold disk only, or as a bundle containing notepads and pencils. Gameplay is replicated as it is on the show. On the DS version, players can compete against each other via Download Play, using a single game card.

In Belgium many local clubs were founded where people could play the game themselves. An American version of the show had a pilot taped in , though major format changes were made; specifically, the numbers round was dropped entirely, and regular people played alongside celebrities.

The pilot was not picked up. In , Template:Citation needed a Spanish version of this show was released: Cifras y Letras numbers and letters. The show was originally presented by Elisenda Roca, along with a word expert and mathematician. As this show progressed, a second version of the same show was also produced, which covered Latin American Spanish. The current Peninsular Spanish edition is presented by Paco Lodeiro.

Shortly after this, a Galician version was also released: Cifras e Letras , differing from the above only in the fact that it used Galician instead of Spanish, and a studio design variation. On 2 August , the new Australian version entitled Letters and Numbers to avoid confusion with the Australian music program Countdown debuted on Special Broadcasting Service, hosted by Richard Morecroft.

Each episode is 30 minutes long and consists of five letters rounds, three numbers rounds and the conundrum. The last episode was aired on 27 June , after five series and one masters series. The timeslot was filled with the UK version of Countdown. In September , an Isle of Man version of the show was broadcast, which saw the first teenager take part on the show. Connor Christian, now a student at Lancaster University, took the place of a contestant who could not make it to the show.

Although succeeding at every number round, he lost at all letters and anagrams rounds, causing him to lose the game. Countdown has been sponsored by the following companies over the years: [] []. Template:Spoken Wikipedia. Template:Commons and category. Britquiz Wiki Explore. Wiki Content. Crystal Maze - The out-takes 2 Golden balls. In the past, he was interested in speedcubing — where participants attempt to solve a Rubiks cube as quickly as possible; he even took part in an official speedcubing competition.

After graduation, Luke wants to travel and is unsure of which career path he will follow. But I think that anyone can get good at anagrams. So it just takes a bit of time and passion for it. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Skip to content. January 7, January 9, sub. Image: Channel 4. More by this author. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.