Richard used to call these Octochamps, later Octavians. The programme has been running on French television since We can't understand why, because it's slow and boring. Composed by Alan Hawkshaw, who - natch - also composed the think music. Apparently, he gets a royalty every time the clock is started.
As of , this has happened over 27, times. Countdown was the first programme ever broadcast on Channel 4, and Richard Whiteley was the first face to be seen. Richard's first words at the start of the very first episode of Countdown were: "Hello, hello - good evening and as the countdown to a brand new channel ends, a brand new Countdown begins.
The first daily winner, Michael Goldman, later sued the organisers of a Scrabble tournament for not allowing him sufficiently long to go to the toilet. Countdown was originally commissioned for just seven weeks. However, it has stood the test of time. It celebrated its th edition on 2 July , its th edition on 23 May , its th edition on 27 April , its th edition on 3 January , and its th edition on 26 March Its th edition, on 4 May , preceded a short tribute to Marcel Stellman, who had died on 2 May, and whose name appears at the end of every episode in the credit "By arrangement with Marcel Stellman".
Why does the writer of "Tulips from Amsterdam" get his name on screen? Back in the s, he bought up the rights to Des Chiffres et des Lettres for the world outside France, and controls the format that Yorkshire Television and its successor companies use. The listing in the TV Times for the very first episode at 4.
Countdown combines entertainment and intellectual tease as it juggles letters, numbers, anagrams and sums. Contestants compete against the clock and against former Brain of Britain star, farmer Ted Moult and his team of statisticians and wordsmiths. It's light-hearted but educational as Ted tells us about the origins of certain words.
And it's a game for the family at home - so have pens and paper ready. Presented by Richard Whiteley , Countdown will be on screen four nights a week from Monday to Thursday. The following week's TV Times contained the following cryptic billing: Fi uoy anc orwk tou hits margana ouy rea lysuoivbo a ededvot afn fo Countdown. Otinght ehrte si orme ufn iwth gifures, eiswrcaksc dna ordsw. Dirty Wheelchair stsoh, hwit Dem O'Tult. Until , if a game ended in a tie, the two contestants would return the next day for a replay.
Additional conundrums were only used in the series final. But after no less than four tied games in series 21, the format was changed so that additional conundrums were used in all games that ended level until there was a winner. The series 53 grand final was the 3,th episode of Countdown and Richard presented all but one of these episodes.
The only other person to have hosted Countdown is William G. Stewart who fronted the Christmas special, a match between Richard and Carol. He also hosted a This Is Your Life -style retrospective which was broadcast immediately after the th edition though it's not considered a proper Countdown episode. For the show's and Channel 4's 25th birthday in , there was a special match between two outstanding latterday players, Chris Wills and Conor Travers, with the letters and numbers being picked by celebs in filmed inserts.
Until the show was half an hour long with the grand finals 45 minutes long. All episodes are now 45 minutes long. Countdown went six days a week in January , making up a game show double-bill with Deal or No Deal from Monday to Saturday. Although Des and Carol made a big deal of this being the "first ever" time the show had been aired on a Saturday, this had actually happened a few times before albeit not as a regular thing , the first time being the grand final of series 2 way back in July Three games in series 14 were broadcast on Saturdays in leading up to the first Christmas Day final there were also Christmas Day finals four years running from , and again in , and another episode went out on Saturday in July because Channel 4 had something else on the Friday.
In January one episode even went out on a Sunday, due to its regular Wednesday slot being usurped that week. Thanks to Chris Wills for pointing this out. On 2 January , as part of celebrations to mark Channel 4's 30th year of broadcasting, the channel aired an evening of special programmes, entitled the Channel 4 Mash-Up , which saw the presenters of different Channel 4 series take part in a 'job swap'.
This special proved popular, and the programme has since become a series in its own right. Series 82 took a break in the middle as a consequence of the Covid pandemic. Two episodes of series 83, broadcast 24 and 25 February , premiered on More 4 due to Channel 4 buying the rights to cricket at short notice, with these two days having already been filmed.
The episode due to be broadcast 26 February might also have been burned off there had cricket not ended early. The youngest champion is year-old Conor Travers, winner of series Episodes from series 64 have not allowed those under 16 to take part.
Occasionally, people who were child contestants get accepted back for another go as adults. One such contestant was Junaid Mubeen, who lost on his first appearance as a year-old in , before becoming series champion ten years later. Multiple winner Mark Nyman see Champions below produced the programme for many years, as well as appearing in Dictionary Corner and writing several of the Countdown puzzle books.
He is also known as a veteran Scrabble champion. Latterday producers Michael Wylie and Damian Eadie were also both former series finalists - Wylie was runner-up in series 1, Eadie was champion of series Series winner David Acton asked for the CD-ROM version of the dictionary as his prize, because he was a vegan and didn't approve of the leather-bound version.
Child genius Allan Saldhana was awarded a complete OED despite losing the series 15 final after it was discovered that lexicologist Catherine Clarke had made a mistake in disallowing the perfectly acceptable word "yolked".
Notts County's Neil Mackenzie was the first league player to appear. Carlisle said "I can't say it's better than winning a big football game, but it's up there. As it happens, he was also the winner of Britain's Brainiest Footballer in It is allowed. The remarkable thing about that selection is that it actually spells out a nine-letter word - just backwards.
Presenting rolling news programmes for Sky News and Arise News? On a lifestyle show. How dare I. Pardon me for breathing. Yes, Risky Hire Syndrome has been and still is a precarious reality for women like me: dark-skinned, Black and over years-old. I have never been sporty my svelte figure is living proof. I cannot tell jokes and I have never appeared on a reality TV show. My singing voice is not what it was. Black To Front is bold for Channel 4.
Thereafter nothing about employing Black people should be bold. And hiring black women over 40 should be normal too. Fresh new look, redesigned programme hub, richer content…. Back to Main menu What to watch Film news. Home Countdown Page navigation Countdown. Powered By. How to watch Loading. Latest season. Season Not all games are solvable, and for a few selections it is impossible even to get within 10, most commonly when a contestant picks six small numbers and the target number is quite large.
Template:Citation needed. There is a tactical element in selecting how many large numbers to include. One large and five small numbers is the most popular selection, [49] despite two large numbers giving the best chance of the game being solvable exactly.
The numbers are usually placed from right to left. Starting with the small numbers and then the large numbers.
In some episodes, the small and large numbers were placed and displayed in disorder. On Carol and Des's last show, the last numbers game was Charlie Reams's selection of all large, two small, , 75, 50, 25, 6, and 4, with a target of A special edition, broadcast on 15 March , for two previous series champions, Kirk Bevins and Chris Davies, used instead of the usual four large numbers, the numbers 12, 37 and two numbers unrevealed for the duration of the show.
In a further special broadcast on 16 August between the Series 59 finalists Charlie Reams and Junaid Mubeen, the other two numbers were revealed to be 62 and The final round of the game is the "Countdown Conundrum".
A board revolves to reveal the "conundrum"—a nine-letter anagram, usually arranged in the form of two condensed words see example. The contestants have thirty seconds to find the nine-letter word. The first contestant to buzz with the correct answer the champion rings in with a bell, while the challenger rings in with a buzzer is awarded ten points, but each contestant may guess only once.
If neither contestant guesses correctly, the presenter asks if anyone in the audience knows the word, and if so, chooses someone to shout it out. This was stopped temporarily in , because of difficulties with camera angles in the new studio layout. 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, both contestants have scores which are within ten points of each other. 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 number rounds are each 45 seconds long to Countdown 's DCedL also feature "duels", in which players compete in short tasks such as mental arithmetic problems, extracting two themed words from another, or being asked to spell a word correctly.
Other minor differences 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 from 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. When the format was expanded to fifteen rounds, Richard Whiteley continued to refer jokingly to the three segments of the show as "halves".
Under the old format, Grand Finals were specially extended shows of fourteen rounds, [57] but now all shows use a fifteen round format. The rules regarding which words are permitted have changed with time. 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".
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