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Touchdown

From Countdown

Touchdown is a variant on the general Countdown game that was popularly played over MSN Messenger, and is now played on Apterous, but also occasionally played at real life tournaments.

Differences from regular Countdown

The main difference from Countdown is that a contestant may exchange any one of their letters for any specific letter of the alphabet. This differs from Goatdown in that only the final letter may be chosen in Goatdown, but it can be any one of the letters in Touchdown.

The original idea came from "If Only" Scrabble, a variant where you may use a blank in any round.

Letters rounds

Any letter can be substituted for another. So, for example, the round TOUCHDOWZ does not have a nine in the standard rules; but, if we imagine the Z to be substituted for an N, we can declare TOUCHDOWN for nine. Players do not have to make explicit which letter they are substituting. Also, if there is already a nine in the selection, then that will be valid too. For example, if the selection is LNRSTAEIO, RELATIONS will be valid. Scoring is done by Gevin rules, so 9-letter words are worth 9 points instead of 18.

Example

Rnd Selection Player One Score Player Two Others Max.
1 IBOTEZPOD BOOZIEST 0 – 9 ROBOTIZED POTBOILED 9
2 EBSOEFMAY DEFAMES 7 – 9 defamous ☓ FEARSOME, MESOLABE 17


Numbers rounds

Numbers are drawn with replacement. For example, asking for 4 large might yield 50, 50, 75, 25, or even 50, 50, 50, 50. Other than the drawn numbers, the game is the same as usual.

Example

Rnd Selection Player One Score Player Two Others Max.
3 4 4 1 1 4 10 → 428 432
(10 − 1) × (4 − 1) × 4 × 4
14 – 9 428


24
4 25 2 1 8 8 4 → 192 192
25 × 8 − 8
24 – 19 192
(25 − 1) × 8


34


Conundrums

One letter in the conundrum must be substituted with another before solving the anagram. For example, if the conundrum was AWKWARDLY, the answer would be WAYWARDLY because the K from AWKWARDLY can be substituted with a Y. The solution to these "Touchundrums" is guaranteed to be unique, so there's only one letter that can be substituted to give a solution.

Example

Rnd Selection Player One Score Player Two Others Max.
5 LABRETRFV veritable ☓
(1 second)
24 – 19 VERTEBRAL 44
6 AGUOVIQLE 24 – 29 EQUIVOCAL
(25 seconds)
54


See also