I'm sure they were shuffled but not that well. What I was thinking of was poor shuffling allowing sets of 2 or 3 letters to "stick together", that would massively increase the chances of getting the same letters. Remember also that during the game they don't reuse the letters (or maybe they go on the bottom) meaning they may only be shuffled once.

Without that, just based upon chance it seems very unlikely to happen. I can't calculate the odds as I don't know how many of each letter there are but it will be a very big number against it happening. (I'm assuming the order was the same. i.e. a permutation rather than combination, there is a much much bigger chance of a same combination happening).

If it was random and there wasn't a limited number of cards then the chances of getting 2 deals the same given 6 consonants and 3 vowels would be 1 in around 10 billion much less than the chances of winning the lottery. The chances will be better than that because there is a limited number and there is not an even chance of each letter but even so the odds are bad. Also we have not specified which 2 deals are the same which greatly increases the chances but not enough.

Yes I meant "5- to- the-power-3 plus 21-to-the-power-6".

5^3 + 21^6 doesn't always display properly (at least it didn't back in the early days of limited character-sets)

I think they shouldn't just shuffle the letters. A computer should choose randomly, which letters go in a pile, and then the pile should be shuffled, otherwise patterns would repeat.

It's not that important though for Countdown, I very much doubt any contestants are checking which letters will come up next.

It could conceivably confer an advantage from familiarity with a previous round but challengers will likely have watched that anyway and there are much bigger ways that luck plays a part in Countdown than that.

I was just thinking to make the program more varied.

Is he on the "Spectrum" he is annoying me now, two nines today, it is becoming predictable and repetitive. I feel sorry for those who are coming up against him, knowing that they have no chance of winning a teapot.

The lady contestant was very poor today, she missed a few obvious words and could have made her final score a bit more respectable.

I think the poor woman was overwhelmed by two nine-letter words scored against her in the first two rounds before she'd had a chance to settle in.

I don't find any pleasure in watching the current champion and can't wait for his 8 wins to be out of the way so we can move on to someone else.

I feel the same, and in fact whenever one of these type of contestants comes on, who is so far ahead of any competitor that the result is obvious, I don't even watch the final.
It IS possible to be good at the game without quoting ridiculous unheard-of words. The first octochamp of this series, whose name I can't remember, is a case in point.
What I find most impressive is the ability to spot long, but normal, words in 30 seconds!

He's not infallible, though. I beat him on a couple of letters games yesterday (I'm quite a good player, but not *that* good) and is it just me or is he actually quite weak at conundrums? We've had a fairly easy run lately but - and this isn't a one-off - it always seems to take him several seconds to solve them, and he didn't get yesterday's at all (which I got immediately). We've had octochamps on before who have been astonishingly quick on a regular basis, but not Dylan.

I know that I'm not alone when I say that Nick continues to annoy and disappoint me. In yesterday's ramble he said that it was Dylan's 8th game, although the lad did try to correct him, as it was his 7th game.

I'm sure that Nick is being paid quite well as host so it's not too much to ask that he knows how many games each contestant has played.

Some of the experts (mainly former contestants) on the C4countdown site thought yesterday's was a hard conundrum but as another of them commented the -OLOGY ending should have stood out and made it easy. That was how I solved it anyway.

I don't mind when they come up with really obscure words that even Suzie hasn't heard of when no others are available, but there have been several occasions when Dylan has done it when perfectly ordinary words of the same length were also there.

Fair enough. It just leapt out at me, but then again I often struggle with ones others find easy.

I guess I'm in a minority, but I quite like it when contestants come up with relatively obscure words, although the really 'out-there' ones can be annoying. What seems to be the case with Dylan is that he is clearly an excellent Scrabble player who has memorised a lot of words but doesn't necessarily know what they are or mean given his hesitancy over pronouncing them.

You're right, it's not really playing the game if you memorise all those obscure words. (A bit like appearing on Call My Bluff and knowing the meaning of a word, instead of trying to guess the most likely, as has happened.)

But, I don't mind being beaten on a round with a word I haven't heard of; it's more annoying missing something obvious.


They record five shows a day; I can imagine it's easy to get mixed up. But if they thought it was important, it's also easy to redo bits of it.

Nick showed a very rare piece of flexibility yesterday by asking the challenger to go first at answering the first numbers game.

Yes, there was a horror last week - a word of French origin that he hadn't even a clue how to pronounce. I forget what it was now but it was quite embarrassing that he didn't appear to understand when Suzie corrected him.

I think it was matelots.

It was and he pronounced it Mates Lots

I don't see how it's not playing the game. As long as he uses his brain, and not a computer. It's not like going on Deal or No Deal, and having X-Ray glasses, like your CMB analogy.

I do find this kind of contestant annoying but he's not cheating. If you want to beat him start reading the dictionary like he does...

I don't think he reads the dictionary. He plays online Countdown and will check results against an automatic generator that will bring up obscure words.

I got both nines (they were easy nines) and beat him on the conundrum which does seem to be his weakness, I don't know some of the words he gets though. It is however one thing being able to do Countdown well when watching on TV, it's another to be able to do it in the studio.

I've done it in a studio (but as a member of the audience!). It's only a little more difficult, mainly due to there being no pause button and therefore you're under a bit more pressure. (And there's no fast forward either.)

Rachel is the only thing that makes the show watchable, crotchety old fart Nick Hewer was fine on the apprentice, does not work at all for countdown tho.

Dylan definitely said Waterman, and Suzie corrected him to Watermen, he didn't disagree and should have shown his written notes.