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" — for letters games and numbers games, the maximum scores 10 points, 1 off the maximum scores 9 points, and so on. Conundrums always score 10 points.

Letters

2, 3 or 4 letters are given, and the object is to find the smallest word that features all of those letters in order. In rounds where there is no valid word that uses all the letters, the aim is instead to use as many of the letters as possible. So, in a 4-letter round, if there are no valid words that use all four, you need to try and find the shortest one that uses three.

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 – 0	CREOSOTED	CIS*, COS*	10
2	TLA	aviate ☓	5 – 0	amative ☓	TALA*	20
3	PAWN	PRAWN	14 – 0	friar ☓	PAWN*	30
4	51 7 5 8 10 9 → 917	918 (10 + 8) × 51	23 – 9	918 (10 + 8) × 51	Best: 917 = (10 × 8 + 51) × 7	40
5	TOIL	elation ☓	23 – 9	elation ☓	TOIL*	50
6	HS	seagull ☓	23 – 14	LUGHOLES	HAS*, HES*, HIS*, HOS*, OHS*	60
7	GGA	blagged ☓	23 – 14	plaited ☓	GAGA*	70
8	62 19 63 87 4 3 → 157	157 87 + 63 + 4 + 3	33 – 24	157 87 + 63 + 4 + 3		80
9	PDOAT		33 – 24		SPEEDBOAT	90