Countdown/Jeu des Chiffres et des Lettres - source code
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Are there any logophiles in Britain who were not glued to the TV every weekday
at 4pm when Countdown came on? Originally a French TV game, Britain
adopted it with vigor. (This independant web page is better than C4's)
(There's an infamous and not-very-true story about Countdown:
http://www.okent.freeserve.co.uk/chance.htm - Countdown contestants,
like Scrabble players - are notorious for playing the best word they
can whether it is appropriate for a children's TV slot or not;
I remember one young contestant (may have been Alan Saldhana at 15?)
who played "lesbians" which was quickly glossed over by Richard
Whitely. "Yes. Perfectly valid word. Hrmph.")
- countdown/
C Language, X windows implementation.
- motlong/
French version of Countdown. Implemented in Javascript. Comes with
nice short 120K wordlist of common French words. Requires a CGI
which is not included.
- Palabras Y Numeros
Spanish version. [Download here]
There is also an incredibly good rendering of Countdown for Windows by
Loz Archer,
but it is executable only and the most blatant violation of copyright
you could imagine! Complete with sound samples from TV, scans of Carol,
the Countdown clock etc etc. It will not be included
here, although I'm sure anyone with half a brain and a search engine
will be able to find it.
Although not a word game, the problem of the "Numbers Game" in Countdown
is an interesting one, and here are two solutions to it which attempt
to imitate the inimitable Carol Vorderman.
- countdown/
This is the C source of the 'carol' solver in the Countdown game above.
- Neil Pearce's "Vorderman"
- carol/
Javascript solution to numbers game.
- simcarol/
C language solution to numbers game.
- scratch-carol/
My own C language solution to numbers game, which I wrote in a very idiomatic style of C that is chosen to make it easier to translate this code into the "Scratch" programming language.
- Six Dice
Derivation of the numbers game. No sources.
See also Anagrams for generically similar programs.
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Countdown is a trademark of Channel Four.