Countdown:Proposals

See also : Countdown:Proposals/Archive

This page is for making any suggestions of major changes to the Countdown Wiki. This is to try and prevent having a lot of work to undo if other people don't agree with them.

To start a new section, simply type two equals signs around your heading (e.g. ==Heading==), and type ===For=== and ===Against=== to create the subheadings. When adding a comment, please type # ~~~~ under the "For" or "Against" headers, followed by your reason.

New categories

Some new categories that might be worth creating:

Category:Seven-time winners

For

1. TobyMcDonald 22:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC) (Not sure if it should include people that didn't play an eighth game, which were Helen Grayson, Cathy Morgan and Geraldine Hylands)

Category:Co-events

For

1. TobyMcDonald 22:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC) (Subcategory of Category:Countdown tournaments, to separate them from things like Edinburgh Countdown Club, Countdown Marathon, etc.)

Category:Co-event locations

For

1. TobyMcDonald 22:18, 1 June 2024 (UTC) (For pages like this)

Succession templates at bottom of pages

I think templates like {{series winner}} and {{series runner-up}} should be placed at the bottom of each page, as this is what Wikipedia does. Template:S-start says "A succession box is the box you see at the bottom of articles that show what the predecessor to the article you're reading is."

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per proposal)
2. BeachBoy99 Love this idea. 21:22, 02 January 2024 (UTC)

Against

1. Not in favour; keeping them just above the episode tables creates more notability than they would otherwise. We have {{CofC}} which is more Wikipedia-style and I like as a good bottom-of-page thing. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 23:43, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Pitfalls

I would like to suggest a leaderboard of the most commonly disallowed words on Countdown based on the number contestants to declare them. I call these common Countdown pitfalls. I think Pilates ☓ would be top, with more than 20 contestants declaring it. conman ☓, minuter ☓ and elations ☓ would also be up there. Each entry should state the number of times disallowed, a specific reason why it’s invalid, and provide anagrams where possible like the Falseagrams list. This table should appear under the 'Techniques' category. Of course this shouldn’t be an exhaustive list so I suggest top 10 or top 20. I think this would be more valuable for learning than a random list of falseagrams. Mclarenguy22 (talk) 20:41, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

I like this idea. There's probably a way of getting a rudimentary list of words at Special:WantedCategories by adding ifeq/sub functions to Template:R-letters.--Launchballer (talk) 21:14, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Well, here is the top 15: entrail — 18 times (143, 440, 1257, 1400, 1414, 1977, 2469, 2674, 3098, 3209, 3320, 3706, 4082, 4310, 6951, 7852, 8336, M20); casted — 15 times (1108, 1281, 1543, 2588, 3096, 3302, 3889, 4551, 4989, 5145, 5597, 6108, 7770, 7836, 8261); pilates — 15 times (3340, 3966, 4351, 4998, 5991, 6076, 6787, 7121, 7296, 7432, 7955, 8162, 8227, 8329, 8526); staired — 14 times (735, 1366, 1710, 2139, 2848, 3032, 3685, 3852, 4026, 4331, 5455, 6323, 7079, 8177); corgies — 13 times (523, 1513, 1793, 1948, 2731, 3120, 3166, 3626, 3835, 4295, 6103, 7472, 7948); gaited — 13 times (387, 417, 660, 742, 1021, 2505, 3071, 4311, 5568, 5787, 7452, 8066, 8318); pattie — 13 times (2288, 3027, 3603, 4069, 4205, 4755, 4932, 6054, 6398, 6584, 6599, 6748, M88); toadier — 13 times (2097, 3810, 4141, 4296, 4787, 6205, 6693, 6928, 6955, 7147, 8384, 8510, S35); loined — 12 times (103, 2034, 2169, 2664, 3311, 3677, 4384, 5867, 7274, 7362, 7571, 8534); morales — 12 times (4788, 4928, 4991, 6408, 6408, 7327, 7442, 7450, 7663, 7733, 8155, 8589); baisted — 11 times (129, 525, 1469, 2155, 2856, 4322, 4370, 6430, 6555, 7396, 7726); donater — 11 times (791, 1370, 2558, 4036, 5301, 6150, 6167, 6645, 6674, 7025, 7757); girates — 11 times (1337, 1588, 2681, 2902, 3680, 3746, 5300, 6572, 6932, 7275, 7570); flaired — 10 times (1617, 2188, 2894, 3156, 3242, 3554, 4013, 5659, 6147, 6266); outlaid — 10 times (2963, 3562, 3756, 3916, 4404, 6008, 6040, 7412, 7594, 7594). From 7 to 9 times we have: baiter, coarsed, curlies, elations, failers, fainters, masonic, moaniest, outpaid, pantie, waspier, audios, flouter, goaders, malters, mattier, panged, radion, stoney, uncast, barnies, butanes, coater, girated, goaties, impared, moisted, moulter, mounties, purile, untiled. Perhaps there are false positive inclusions here because to compile the list I took all the words that were not accepted by DC. Basically I think this is enough. By the way, minuter is a rare word (if I can call it a word) which was declared twice (8382, 8636) and — moreover — conman was declared only once! Dicto (talk) 03:41, 31 October 2025 (UTC)