Teatime Teaser
The Teatime Teaser is an anagram presented for the viewers to solve during each commercial break. They have been used continuously since Series 46, back when Countdown aired at teatime with the exception of Floella Benjamin's week of 40th anniversary episodes during Series 86 when clips of previous episodes aired instead.
Initially, seven-letter anagrams were used – from 8 December 2003 to 30 November 2016, the anagrams were eight letters long – and from 1 December 2016 to 17 November 2020, the anagrams were nine-letter anagrams. Since then, the lengths of Teasers have flipped sporadically between eight and nine letters as shown in the table. In addition, 1 April 2020's first Teatime Teaser (RIVALTUNE → AVIRULENT) was cut for sensitivity reasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several episodes in July 2025 used one nine and one eight-letter teaser.
The scramble and a clue for the solution are read out by the presenter, each time a commercial break is introduced. The puzzle then appears on the Countdown logo screen – at the end of the commercial break, the solution is displayed.
Before the name of "Teatime Teaser" was decided, this feature was known at different times by the names of "Granagram" and "Intergram" (from "interval" and "telegram"). It was also briefly renamed to "Santagram" during at least one Christmas season, and "Tinsel Teasers" from 21 December to 23 December 2020. They were initially clueless, but clues became standardised at some point during Series 47.
A forerunner to the Teatime Teaser was used from Series 40 to 42, when Countdown was sponsored by Seven Seas cod liver oil whose sponsorship screen presented an anagram between five and nine letters in length for the viewers to solve during the 9-round format's single commercial break. Despite its having appeared in more than 300 episodes, only about 100 distinct Seven Seas Teasers were ever used with many scrambles having been repeated up to four times over the course of the feature's history.
Unlike conundrums, Teatime Teasers can have more than one solution such as NUDEMAN could give MUNDANE or UNNAMED. The clue would most likely indicate that one is more acceptable than the other.
On Letters and Numbers (the Australian adaptation of Countdown), Teatime Teasers were known as "Word Mixes". They were eight letters in length and there were two per game, one at each advert break.
