Thanks for all your votes so far, we’ve almost had as many ballots as last year, and there’s still a few days left to vote – get them in before Wednesday. It’s very tight in certain places and I think the eventual results will make interesting viewing.
Also don’t forget that as the new episode of Wie is De Mol goes out on Dutch TV tonight, if you want to play Daniel Peake’s The Suspect List game you’ll need to get your episode one guesses in this afternoon. So get watching.
£1.49 at time of writing
Out now on iTunes App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore
iOS version tested on iPad, copy supplied by publisher.
Edit: Sounds like a recent update has improved issues regarding letter distribution and Conundrums in an update. Good stuff.
Barnstorm! The idea that they’re working on another TV show up fills us with all sorts of excitement – their previous work (The Chase, Tipping Point, Perfection, Eggheads) all really good apps that capture their shows well that we’d absolutely recommend.
And now here’s Countdown, which is slightly different to usual in that there have been official Countdown apps in the past. They’ve all been strangely not much cop. With a caveat which I will come to once again I’m happy to suggest that if you like the show then you’ll like the game, the first one that lets you play the show’s format as you see it on television – against a range of four AI difficulties, against an opponent or on your own. You can also play a short five round game (two letters, two numbers, a conundrum) and practise any round you like.
It plays out as you’d expect, in a letters game you make as many words as you want and then select one to submit. Numbers game uses your numbers as a sort of calculator (a nice touch here is there are buttons for “six random numbers” and for “one from the top, five for anywhere else” when selecting your numbers if you can’t be bothered to jab at the screen) and feels like the most successful version of number solving in an app so far. The conundrum is buzzing in and tapping the tiles to spell out the word without making a mistake or taking too long.
Two player is pass and play except for the conundrum which is first on the buzzer. It’s a shame that there seems to be no way to play two player simultaneously pad and pencil using the screen as a board, if you’re playing a full fifteen round game in two player you’ll hear the clock 29 times total. Maybe also a system to choose your own Countdown make-up would be nice – pretend you’re back in the eighties with Richard and Carol in a nine-round game perhaps.
Other criticisms. The caveat I have is that I’m not quite sure if the letter distribution algorithm is quite right – if I pick a pretty standard six consonants and three vowels Dictionary Corner rarely seems to come up with anything more than a six, occasionally a seven, rarely an eight. I don’t know if this is me being unlucky or if it’s not quite right (I seemed to get a lot of Vs). Also the conundrums don’t seem to be quite constructed in the usual Countdown style of smaller words which you make a nine-letter word from, or at least less obviously so. Some of the words are pretty obscure – of course rendzinas! This doesn’t stop the game from working but seeing as Barnstorm are normally so good in getting the feel of show correct this seems like a bit of a surprise.
Despite all this it’s difficult not to declare it’s the best official Countdown app released so far, and there’s a fair chance that issues will get updated out in due course.
Weekdays, 2:30pm,
BBC One
Fern Britton ably assisted by an antiques expert leads three teams in a general knowledge quiz, doing well allows them to add antiques to their collections, each presumably worth differing amounts and presumably the team with the biggest value collection will win something.
Antiques not really my thing (although I will watch a bit of Bargain Hunt) but there’s no doubt the subject is popular on BBC daytime, and people like quizzes so in theory this should fill the afternoon slot quite nciely.
The Golden Globes. The BAFTAs. The TV Quick Awards. The humble game show never wins any of them, but we say YES! to great game shows and now you can say YES! in our annual Poll of the Year. The vote is open and you have until Wednesday 13th to make your voice heard.
Here is our Polling Page, and here is the UKgameshows.com one (which basically leads to that one anyway).
Happy New Year! Details of the Poll of 2015 will go up tomorrow evening.
Anyway apropos of nothing I found myself listening to Dave’s Mr Gameshow podcast (iTunes link) the other day which I had no idea about except it turned up on the recommended podcast section of my iTunes. It’s a mildly amusing series of half hour shows hosted by Mike Wozniak as Mr Gameshow ably assisted or otherwise by Diane Morgan (Philomena Cunk from Charlie Brooker’s XWipe) in the increasingly prolific gameshow as comedy farce genre, where two comics you probably haven’t really heard of in theory battle it out over a series of quiz rounds but are really just there to gamely react to what’s going on. I do like the Know Your Enemy jingle. Anyway it’s quite funny, although you’ll have worked out in about three minutes flat if you’re going to listen to the whole run of six episodes or not.
However in looking for more information on it I came across this terrifying monstrosity. You could buy this, it will almost certainly murder you in your sleep:
It’s almost New Year! And that means it’s time for another Jools Holland New Year Hootenanny. Do you remember when everyone thought it was live and what a great guest list it had until the year you flicked across to BBC1 for Big Ben (“the epitome of Greenwich Mean Time” according to Gethin Jones) and saw him playing live on stage elsewhere? Great days. Anyway tomorrow’s one was recorded three weeks ago, for the avoidance of doubt.
But if you can’t wait for him to tinkle the ivories on his boogie-woogie piano with his rhythm and blues orchestra, here appears to be the only episode of early Channel 5’s Name That Tune with Jools Holland on Youtube, with a camera pointing at a television.
Happy new year!