LET’S TALK ABOUT COUNTDOWN, BABY

It is a fact that lots of people are familiar with and enjoy the family-friendly TV game show Countdown. I know I do; I have watched episodes of it archived on Youtube playing the role of a contestant. It’s just what I do for leisure sometimes. That said, this is the point where I state, quite immodestly, that, in the words game, I usually come up with words at least six letters long. And I got to thinking that my talent as a real linguist might well likely be a key factor in this regard. And I was quite happy to write a business blog relating the two; if you don’t mind reading random ramblings rather than a properly planned and structured essay.

However, I’m not so good at the conundrums at the end, where there’s a collection of nine letters with which it is always possible to make (at least) one nine-letter word. The question is whether you can work it out in thirty seconds. That’s where I stumble. Could I get better at it? The link above is to a video featuring only conundrums. Personally, I would find it nice if I could get better at it, as trivial a matter as it is. And that’s the reason why I have actually developed a habit of making a note of whether words I come across, or just cross my mind, have nine letters in them. Sure, it’s a silly thing to do, but what other starting points are there?

If I were recruited to come up with words for Countdown conundrums, I know I would make a point of ensuring that most of them didn’t share common endings, such as “-ed” or “-ing” in the case of verbs, or “-ly” in the case of adverbs. There are lots of nouns which end in “-tion”, and many nouns and adjectives end in “-ent”, just as there are lots of verbs which end in “-ate” or “-ise”. Now let’s look at the concept of giving hints which are not just dead giveaways, like “something you kiss under” if the answer were “mistletoe”. How helpful are hints as to the meaning of a given word in a conundrum likely to be on a more general level anyway? And look at what I argued above – if you take the hypothetical hint “it’s an adverb”… just about all adverbs end in “-ly”, don’t they? Meanwhile, I don’t think saying which letter comes first or last or whatever will destroy the challenge element too much.

Of course, I usually write blogs with much more meaningful substance than this. Consider that I’m just killing time while I wait for the confirmation that this new project I expressed an interest in has been assigned to me. I look forward to doing translation work again.