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Lockdown
- This page is about the Countdown variant. You may be looking for 2020 COVID-19 hiatus.
Lockdown is a variant of Countdown invented by Ben Wilson and first played as an exhibition game at COLIN. It was introduced on Apterous on 17 February 2011, Charlie Reams's 25th birthday.
Letters rounds
Played the same as regular variant, however the first and last letters selected must be used. (Imaginably, this can be tricky if Q, X, Z, etc. is one of the letters that must be used, and in some cases (normally involving the Q) this has led to some rounds having no valid words and a max of 0). Scoring is done by Gevin rules, so 9-letter words are worth 9 points instead of 18.
Numbers rounds
The first number selected (and therefore the last number left to right), highlighted in red, must be used in the solution. Some games with easy regular solutions can be exploited so that the last number is used in a calculation but doesn't get used in attaining the target. For example, if 2 were the red number and 225 the target, 6 − 2 = 4, 3 × 75 = 225 would be a valid solution.
Conundrums
10 letters are shown, from which there is exactly one 9-letter word available. This word is the answer.
