Countdown:Featured articles

A featured article is of one the Countdownwiki's finest articles. These are selected by the editors of the Countdownwiki on this very page. A featured article could be a player, a game or a piece of terminology. The article should be of a certain length and preferably contain images and external links to make the article more readable.

List of featured articles

• Championship of Champions XI, chosen by User:Mglovesfun
• Championship of Champions XII, chosen by User:Reams
• Countdown, chosen by User:Reams
• Des chiffres et des lettres, chosen by User:Mglovesfun
• Jon O'Neill, chosen by User:Reams
• Conor Travers, chosen by User:Mglovesfun

Proposed featured articles

• If we need more articles for the main page, let's think of a bunch of them. I'd go for Julian Fell, Ben Wilson, Martin Gardner (vanity!), Conor Travers, Harvey Freeman etc. Mglovesfun 21:26, 8 April 2008 (BST)

Yeah, maybe we should have a Project of the Week and try to bring some of those articles up to full strength for future FAs. We'd have to pick the more recent players I suspect, because for a lot of the older one we don't have any more than the scores. Soo 22:31, 8 April 2008 (BST)

Yes I could start that project right now, we need to decide how often to change the featured article. One thing I noticed is that the <ref></ref> doesn't seem to work on here, or doesn't that matter? As for players with games, there's me, Ben and Conor that all have round details. I will think more about which players have round details as well, and of course series and CofCs are another good source of FA's. Mglovesfun 13:35, 9 April 2008 (BST)

• Graham Nash - there's now a photo and the articles a lot longer with more detail. Mglovesfun 17:25, 29 April 2008 (BST)

• Mark Tournoff is another possible one, although we nearly have enough for a year already. My next project will be to get the Paul Gallen article up to the same standard. Mglovesfun 15:35, 3 May 2008 (BST)

How to make a now proposal

Follow this edit link, or the one at the top of the page, and add your own suggestion. The name of the article should be placd between two square brackets to make a blue link (example: [[Jon O'Neill]]).

Future featured articles

When an article is featured, it is given a short write-up on the front page. This is not editable by ordinary users (the risk of vandalism to the front page is too high.) But we will post a draft here well in advance, so please feel free to edit that and who knows -- your words may appear on the front page!

Previous featured articles

See: Countdown:Featured article archives.

April 2009

Mike Brown on the old beige set.

Mike Brown was a finalist in Series 48. He beat Joyce Dunkley in his first appearance with 112 points, following that up with 112 points again against David Cottee. He dipped below 100 in his next two games, but got 107 against Trish Staples in his 5th game. He lost his sixth game narrowly to Neil Evans by just 13 points. Despite losing a game, he averaged 97.33 points per game which was more than three of the six Octochamps in that series. He returned to the series finals as #8 seed and faced the runaway #1 seed Julian Fell. The game was close until he had SENTRIED X disallowed, and Fell had ORIENTED. When Fell spotted WOMANISER and DAIMYOS the game was effectivelty over, and he lost 125 - 67. Fell scored in every round.

Brown is one of the longest-serving and most committed contributors to the Countdown online community. He runs The Countdown Page which is the oldest and one of the most complete Countdown fansites on the web. The site also formed the template from which The Countdown Corral, The Countdown Database and The Countdown Wiki were formed. Brown has participated in many of the COLIN and other Co-events, including winning four games out of six in 2008. Of the seven players that finished ahead of him, four were Series champions (Travers, Wills, Tournoff and Holden).

March 2008

Ben Wilson.

Ben Wilson (22 March 1983-) first appeared on Countdown in Series 46, his first programme being broadcast on 6 November 2001. He defeated namesake Peter Wilson 101-70 in his first show, before winning 5 more games and becoming one of only five viscounts in Countdown history.

He returned for the series finals as number 1 seed, beating fellow Lincoln resident Simon Cartwright 83-68 in the quarter-finals, and Scotland's Paul Ryan 101-80 in the semi-finals after a close and tense game. In the grand final on Christmas Day against Steve Sandalls, the scores were level until round 9, but Ben built up a lead of 17 points over the next two rounds. A series of poor rounds put Ben 1 point behind going into the conundrum, but, he was able to solve the conundrum in 5 seconds to become champion of the 46th series, and the first champion of the 15 round format. Aged just 18 at the time, Ben also has the distinction of being the first ever series champion of Countdown to have been born after the show's debut on Channel 4.

Ben was invited back for Championship of Champions XI in January 2003, where he was paired against Northern Ireland's Geraldine Hylands in the first round. Ben scraped through, winning 94-91, but was ultimately beaten in the quarter-finals of the tournament by Tom Hargreaves, by a score of 131-98. At the time, this game set the record for highest aggregate score in a 15-round game, and 98 still remains one of the highest losing score of all time.

Wilson is notably the organiser of Countdown in Lincoln and won the first ever meeting of Countdown in Redhill. Wilson is also a tournament Scrabble player and won his first tournament (Peterborough) in 2008.

See also

• Countdown:Articles for improvement
• Countdown:Broken pages