Aegilops

Aegilops, an anagram of Spoilage, is a variant of Countdown. As the name suggests, it is perhaps considered the direct opposite to spoilage.

With the game focusing on smallness of words, the game is scored in "Stepdown" - with 10 for the best possible solution, 9 for one away, and so on down to 1.

Letters

Several letters are given, and the object is to find the smallest word that features all of those letters in order.

Numbers

Similar to the normal game of Countdown, with the exception that the large numbers could be anything between 11 and 99.

Conundrum

As per Only Connect's "missing vowels" round, a nine-letter word is shown with several of the letters removed, but the remaining letters are in order. Players of Only Connect have been known to use Aegilops conundrums to assist with the "missing vowels" round on the latter show.

Example game

(based very loosely on Episode 1907)

Rnd	Selection	Player One	Score	Player Two	Others	Max.
1	CS	CREOSOTE	5 – 4	CREOSOTED	CIS*, COS*	10
2	TLA	aviate ☓	5 – 4	amative ☓	TALA*	20
3	PAWN	PRAWN	14 – 4	friar ☓	PAWN*	30
4	51 7 5 8 10 9 → 917	918 (10 + 8) × 51	23 – 13	918 (10 + 8) × 51		40
5	TOILS	elation ☓	23 – 13	elation ☓	TOILS*	50
6	HS	seagull ☓	23 – 18	LUGHOLES	HAS*, HES*, HIS*, HOS*, OHS*	60
7	GGA	blagged ☓	23 – 18	plaited ☓	GAGA*	70
8	62 19 63 87 4 3 → 157	157 87 + 63 + 4 + 3	33 – 28	157 87 + 63 + 4 + 3		80
9	PEDOT		33 – 28		SPEEDBOAT	90