Countdown talk:Recap checking style guide

This is a pretty good start, thanks! The numbers template is always the fiddliest to use so I don't think the relative complexity of that section can be helped much. Soo 13:03, 25 September 2007 (BST)

Misdeclaration

Dunno if I'm doing it right, Howard, but I don't use tags for it. Countdown Kid 10:59, 12 June 2009 (BST)

You're doing it exactly right, Kai. The tags are only used in producing the style guide so that it can be demonstrated what one actually types. If I hadn't used the nowiki tags, all anyone would get to see is the result that occurs when typing such things as a misdeclaration, rather than seeing what one has to type.

For example, using the tabs, I could get {{misdeclared|word|5}} to appear, showing the user what to type. drawoh 11:35, 12 June 2009 (BST)

Oh, thanks, that makes sense. I think I just looked at 'difference' instead of the actual edit. :-) 12:18, 12 June 2009 (BST)

Look at Episode 2695. It would appear that {{misdeclared}} has been used to indicate that a contestant declared a number of letters, but failed to give any word. How do people here think this should be notated? -- smjg 17:44, 10 September 2010 (BST)

the recap (on page 47) says he said "7." He then realised that he had made a misdeclaration so did not give any word. --The Doctor 17:51, 10 September 2010 (BST)

I'd got that far. -- smjg 02:23, 11 September 2010 (BST)

Full stop after Teatime Teaser clue?

I'm well aware that it's far from the most important thing on the wiki, but nevertheless perhaps we should establish some sort of standard form for Teatime Teaser clues with regards to whether to put a full stop or any other form of punctuation at the end. As I say, not majorly important but consistency is never a bad target. For the record, I don't tend to put full stops but do put other forms of punctuation, such as exclamation or questions marks, where they are applicable. -- Chris 'Crispy' Philpot 10:14, 28 June 2009 (BST)

My feeling is yes, we should have a punctuation mark at the end of the TTT clue. If it's a question mark or an exclamation mark, then it is given, so why not a full stop too? If the clue were to form two sentences it would be illogical to put a full stop at the end of the first sentence and not the second. I think that one reason most recap writers do not put a full stop at the end of the clue is that the Recap Writer has a full stop in its template, but unfortunately this full stop is not carried through to the wiki version. (Incidentally, Chris, now that you're clearly getting more involved in recaps, which is very welcome, have you considered putting yourself forward for the currently vacant Wednesday recap spot? I always enjoyed the recaps you occasionally did before.) drawoh 10:37, 28 June 2009 (BST)

Equally either side

What if the best possible solutions to a numbers game are the same distance from the target on opposite sides?

If the contestants get them between them, it's already taken care of.

If only one of these nearest solutions is given by a contestant or Carol/Rachel, should the other be given in other?

And if neither nearest possible is given by anybody, then what? -- smjg 02:50, 3 May 2010 (BST)

In my view, we only need to give one nearest solution. It's not like the letters rounds where we give all possible max solutions. With numbers rounds we give just what is given on the programme, together with ONE example of a max solution if the programme doesn't come up with a max. After all, if the contestants and Rachel all miss a solution which can be reached exactly, we only give one even if more than one exact solution is possible. If the nearest solution is one away, it is reasonable that we should give only one example of such a solution, whether we give one up or one down; we don't need both. --Drawoh 15:41, 3 May 2010 (BST)

Puns in TTT clues

If a TTT clue includes a pun, which spelling should be given - the one that the casual listener is led to expect, or the one actually meant?

For example, Episode 3704 "Queen's assistance causes a fence." Obviously "offence" is implied, but "a fence" is what's actually meant. At least, assuming that as usual it wasn't explicitly spelled out - there have been a few odd cases where it is. -- smjg 21:52, 23 May 2010 (BST)

Sorry Stuart, I missed seeing this earlier. IMO, we should give what the viewer is intended to hear in such TTT clues. Thus in the example you quoted, I feel it should say "offence" rather than "a fence".--Drawoh 20:20, 12 July 2010 (BST)

(From User talk:Smjg)

I am writing, as I write, a TTT for one of Richard's final semi's. The clue is "Add to Seven/SeveRn to make a mess. (POLELUST - POLLUTES). So what do you think The Doctor 13:59, 12 July 2010 (BST)

I think this draws a bit too much attention to the pun. Whether we should worry about this, given how OTT Richard went with puns anyway, I'm not sure. But thinking about it now, I think it's nice to have the intended meanings in some form, to help people reading the recaps here who otherwise just don't get the pun. -- smjg 22:30, 12 July 2010 (BST)

Missing numbers solutions

In some cases, they have a question mark in the sol1/sol2 parameter. In other cases, they have the parameter either blank or not at all. We ought to standardise this. Having the question mark there at least has the benefit of making it not look (to one who hasn't yet looked closely) as though the data's all there when it isn't.

At the moment, my tidier detects blank or ? in order to add Category:Partial recaps, but doesn't detect it being absent. I could change it to detect a missing solution and normalise between the three forms, but without a standard I don't know which form to normalise to. -- smjg 16:38, 23 August 2010 (BST)

Phantom letters

It might be a bit late now, but personally I think it would be nice to discriminate between words which are disallowed due to phantom letters and words which are not in the dictionary. Mjbrown 20:58, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

We could run an automated process to identify the words that contain phantom letters. But there are a few caveats:

• There are instances that are both at the same time. To identify these for sure, a program would need access to an electronic version of every dictionary edition Countdown has used to date.
• It isn't always clear whether a contestant has seen a phantom letter or misspelled the word. This already limits how accurately we can rely on misdeclaration labels.
• There's a grey area between seeing phantom letters in the selection and not properly seeing the letters in the word one is giving, e.g. counting only three Es in RESEEDED. Should we treat this as just the same thing?

-- smjg 15:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

It's true that this is not straightforward, but at the moment we're losing information that would be nice to store. Maybe as a start we could have an addition to the misdeclared template to allow us to record phantoms. I also like the idea of an automated process to sniff them out, but it probably needs to be followed up with some manual checking afterwards. As for your last point, I think we could consider those to be close enough to the other scenario that it makes little difference. Mjbrown 18:25, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Brackets in numbers solutions

I realise that the mathematical rules of precedence tend to state that you process X and / before + and -, but unless you're a computer, I don't think removing the brackets necessarily makes the solutions more readable for humans. Just my opinion. Mjbrown 20:58, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Conundrum times

As there is now a trend towards stating conundrum solution times to the nearest quarter-second (!), it would be nice to review existing episodes at some point in the future (obviously not a priority!) and bring them into line wherever we can. It might also be preferable to quote them as fractions, rather than decimals, to emphasize their level of precision. Mjbrown 20:58, 12 February 2011 (UTC)