I think you're reading into that far to much!!

A nice question I thought, seeing as how most buses these days outside of London tend to be the single decker varieties. Very rarely outside of London have I seen double deckers in use.

Most cities still use them, I can think Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Preston. Blackpool still have them too.

In Leeds it's nearly always a double decker.

Yet another high profile race meeting this week so obviously Countdown has been dropped, and yet C4 can still show DOND and a repeat, yes a repeat, of Come Dine With Me!

I wonder why C4 cannot be a little more imaginative with the schedule and show Countdown and DOND after the racing and drop the repeats of CDWM?

I saw a double-decker in the Lake District the other week, must admit I was quite surprised.

I hate horse racing anyway (love horses & all animals though), Countdown should not be sacrificed.

Anyone seen today's Dylan couldn't stop talking, such a kidder too,

I know, his wit had me rolling on the floor with me nearly wetting myself. Mind you, I dare say I'd be scared shitless if I was ever in the studio playing.

Nick Hewer isn't wearing gasses...I think he looks better with glasses.

I think he said last week or the one before that he had surgery done on cataracts which is why he wasn't wearing glasses anymore. Seems strange to see him without glasses on I agree.

There's something a bit 'off' about this Dylan kid, but I can't put my finger on what it is.

Having said that, he is quite brilliant.

We do see this from time to time with some of the contestants. Brilliant at playing the game with their encyclopedic recall of words and skills with the numbers round.......but they are, er, odd.

Yeah I haven't watched Countdown in yonks, since Jeff left almost 2 years ago - just tuned in today and yesterday. I'm in awe of their knowledge of words, I really am, but there is something strange about him though.

Yes - 'mate lots'. How is it that someone with the knowledge of thousands of words, many of them obscure, doesn't know how to pronounce a simple, well known word like that? Me no understandee.

He doesn't know what the words mean (well a lot of them) but does play a lot of online Countdown so knows a lot of words. Hence he knows "matelots" is a word but pronounced it like someone who had never heard it or used it would.

Yes Countdown is treated very badly in terms of cancellations.

Because that would require using common sense, which is not what TV execs have.

In Friday's edition Susie disallowed the "owleries" that Dylan had offered up.

This is in my version of ODoE and that is what Countdown used to use. Have they changed the dictionary and is it not in that one or has it been removed from the latest or did Susie get it wrong?

In my dictionary "owlery (plural owleries)" doesn't have it's own entry but is down as a derivative of owl. It would be easy to miss so I suspect Susie missed it but they do also have common words like "pooter" missing so it could just not be there.

It's been removed from the latest edition (3rd) which is the one Susie uses.

The 7th letters round on Thursday and 3rd on Friday had the same selection : AEGHINNRS. What are the odds?

5exp3 + 21exp6 / (number of rounds) to 1 ??

(Probably not as the letters aren't random).

That's pretty unlucky for him then. Mind you he can cope with a bit of bad luck.

I don't think "exp" is the right term though we know what you mean which is "5/21 to the power of" rather than "e to the power of". That's not quite correct because when you've drawn one letter it doesn't exist in the pack for the next draw, but still a very large number.

As you say though the letters aren't truly random otherwise the chances would be astronomical and foul play would probably have occurred. I would guess they weren't very well shuffled, not a major problem for Countdown.

I'd have assumed that in consecutive letter rounds, but these were 6 or 7 games apart on different recordings.