Here is a jumble of nine letters. In 30 seconds, try and find as long a word that you'd be able to find in a standard English dictionary as you can.
P P N O A A N C G
At the end of the entry I'll put what is apparently the best word possible from that set, and the word I found.
How about this? Six integers, and a three-digit target number. Using standard arithmetical operators - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, see how close you can get without using a calculator, again in 30 seconds. No need to use all the numbers and parenthesis are allowed if you need them.
25 7 8 8 4 5
Target - 388
At the end of the entry, I'll show what I was able to get and as close as is possible.
Finally, see if you can figure out what this is a nine-letter anagram of, again in 30 seconds - And see how fast you can get it.
T H E M E S O D A
Again, both the answer and how I did are at the end of the entry.
Those are the three elements of Countdown, a long-running game show for Channel 4 in the UK. It's played and the best way of describing it would be cosy. Whenever I play along at home, I'm rubbish, but there's something about it that's inviting anyway. Two contestants play, the winner comes back as returning champion for a maximum of 8 games, at the end of each season is a single-elimination tournament for the players with the best total scores from their runs. The grand prize, at least last time I watched the tournament at the end of the season? A dictionary. All contestants get a goody pack, win any game you also get a teapot. A slight exaggeration - These days it's a 21 volume dictionary, a MacBook, and a lifetime subscription to an online version of that dictionary.
Originally there were six letters games, two numbers games, and one conundrum - that's what they call the nine-letter anagrams. The letters games were worth one point per letter in the longest word found, both players scoring in ties, and a 9 letter word was worth double for 18. The letters were on shuffled tiles, one stack for vowels, one stack for consonants, and one contestant picked the nine letters for that round, alternating who chooses over the six rounds. After each set of three letters games, there was a numbers game, where the numbers available were 25, 50, 75 and 100 once each (large), and 1 through 10 twice each (small). These were arranged face down, giving more illusion of control, but ultimately each contestant on picked how many of the six numbers would be large how many small. Then a random three-digit number was generated by a computer. 10 points were awarded for being spot on, 7 for being within 5, and 5 for being within 10, only the closest scored. At the end of the show was the conundrum. Fingers on buzzers, 10 points if you can get it, passes over for the remainder of the 30 seconds if wrong. This would be played even if one contestant couldn't win. From 1991, a tie at the end of the game would result in another conundrum, repeat until a winner is found. Before then the next episode would be a rematch. The scoring conventions haven't changed since, nor has the presentation of the selection of letters and numbers. It remains relentlessly manual.
It's based on a French format - Des Chiffres et Des Lettres, which translates to Digits and Letters. A more descriptive name, certainly, but not by that much. Watching a sample episode of the original as someone only familiar with the British version, and after adjusting to the more modern aesthetic of the set, what was most striking is just how much faster-paced it is. The lack of obsession with being relentlessly analogue, no dictionaries or visible computers on the set, digital displays of letters (and numbers), having contestants pick how many consonants rather than individually call for consonants or vowels, no selection process for numbers, just six small, allows the game to fly through rounds at what feels like a far brisker pace to how the UK version remains, all while the numbers game has a longer time limit. This pace only slows down, almost perversely, when about two-thirds of the way through it switches to a buzzer quiz, each question based on letters or digits - Spell this word, find two places in this set of ten letters, solve this mathematical equation, that sort of thing. And it ends not with an anagram, but instead with the show's winner trying to find a word over a target length on a series of racks at €100 per word.
The UK version has changed a bit since shifting to 45 minutes but mostly just in tweaks to the proportion of letters and numbers games played. Now on the show's fourth host, it currently has 10 letters and 4 numbers games and as well as the dictionary corner guest giving a brief bit of entertainment, Susie Dent, the show's resident lexicographer, gives the origins of a word. There are also now anagrams to play at home during the commercial breaks, with a riddle that also clues the answer.
The pacing has improved somewhat since prior 45 minute versions and to a certain extent even the half-hour format. Now we have rounds in three-round blocks, consisting of two letters games and a numbers game (except for block 4, which is just two letters games, and block 5 which is two letters, a number, and the conundrum), with the commercial breaks between set 1 and 2, and set 3 and 4, the dictionary corner guest now gives their anecdote between set 2 and 3 instead of just before the first commercial break as they had done since the show's inception, and Susie Dent gives her origins of a word between sets 4 and 5 instead of just before the second numbers game of the old 45-minute structure. The shift to an online dictionary from a paper one has also sped things up a little bit.
Of these tweaks, only the shift to an online dictionary has done anything that feels like it has increased the pace of the show, but they have improved the show's rhythm making it feel faster, especially from the first 45-minute45-minute format. Let's have a look at what these three are doing, annotating Letters games as L, Numbers as N, Conundrums as C, with breaks and pauses for anecdotes or other non-game content represented by |.
LLLN||LLLNC
LLLLN||LLLLN|LLLNC (Switched to LLLLN||LLLL|N|LLLC at some point)
LLN|LLN|LLN|LL|LLNC
The obvious improvement is that having at most two of the same round type in a row before moving either onto a different round or an actual rest in proceedings gives a lot more feeling of variety. This means that the game feels like it has more forward momentum than more of the same game type in a row. Also not putting a bunch of non-game content together (i.e. not having anecdotes before the ad breaks but instead between games) - more but shorter pauses in the action - allow the pauses to clearly divide rounds into short sets of mostly 3 rounds each, giving the show an almost waltz-like structure. Maybe that would be improved if the fourth numbers game was moved to round 12 from 14, but this structure feels a lot better than either prior structures used in regular seasons even with that slight oddity that disrupts what is now a waltz of letters and numbers.
Answers:
Letters - Goanna is the only six-letter word in that board, so congratulations if you found it - I was only able to find Pang for four.
Numbers - 8 + 8 is 16; multiply by 25 gives 400. 5 + 7 is 12, 400 - 12 is 388. I was able to get 388.
Conundrum - Homestead. I didn't get it.