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Countdown:Featured articles
A featured article is of one the Countdownwiki's finest articles. These are selected by the editors of the Countdownwiki on this very page. A featured article could be a player, a game or a piece of terminology. The article should be of a certain length and preferably contain images and external links to make the article more readable.
Contents
List of featured articles
- Championship of Champions XI, chosen by User:Mglovesfun
- Championship of Champions XII, chosen by User:Reams
- Countdown, chosen by User:Reams
- Des chiffres et des lettres, chosen by User:Mglovesfun
- Jon O'Neill, chosen by User:Reams
- Conor Travers, chosen by User:Mglovesfun
Proposed featured articles
- If we need more articles for the main page, let's think of a bunch of them. I'd go for Julian Fell, Ben Wilson, Martin Gardner (vanity!), Conor Travers, Harvey Freeman etc. Mglovesfun 21:26, 8 April 2008 (BST)
- Yeah, maybe we should have a Project of the Week and try to bring some of those articles up to full strength for future FAs. We'd have to pick the more recent players I suspect, because for a lot of the older one we don't have any more than the scores. Soo 22:31, 8 April 2008 (BST)
- Yes I could start that project right now, we need to decide how often to change the featured article. One thing I noticed is that the <ref></ref> doesn't seem to work on here, or doesn't that matter? As for players with games, there's me, Ben and Conor that all have round details. I will think more about which players have round details as well, and of course series and CofCs are another good source of FA's. Mglovesfun 13:35, 9 April 2008 (BST)
- Yeah, maybe we should have a Project of the Week and try to bring some of those articles up to full strength for future FAs. We'd have to pick the more recent players I suspect, because for a lot of the older one we don't have any more than the scores. Soo 22:31, 8 April 2008 (BST)
- Graham Nash - there's now a photo and the articles a lot longer with more detail. Mglovesfun 17:25, 29 April 2008 (BST)
- Mark Tournoff is another possible one, although we nearly have enough for a year already. My next project will be to get the Paul Gallen article up to the same standard. Mglovesfun 15:35, 3 May 2008 (BST)
How to make a now proposal
Follow this edit link, or the one at the top of the page, and add your own suggestion. The name of the article should be placd between two square brackets to make a blue link (example: [[Jon O'Neill]]).
Future featured articles
When an article is featured, it is given a short write-up on the front page. This is not editable by ordinary users (the risk of vandalism to the front page is too high.) But we will post a draft here well in advance, so please feel free to edit that and who knows -- your words may appear on the front page!
Previous featured articles
Novemeber 2008
A letters game is one of the 11 rounds during a 15 round game in which the contestant chooses 9 letters by selecting either a vowel or a consonant until there is a total of 9 letters. The player in the champions chair chooses 6 letters games and the challenger chooses 5, but gets an extra choice of numbers. The player can choose the letters in any order, but the selection must include at least 4 consonants and 3 vowels, hence there are only three valid choices in modern Countdown: 3 vowels, 6 consonants; 4 vowels, 5 consonants and 5 vowels, 4 consonants.
When the show was first broadcast, and for a number of years, contestants could choose as many vowels and consonants as they liked, which often led to poor selections where only 4's and 5's were available. Since then the rules have been changed. In the original 9-round format, there were 6 letters games.
A player scores points on a letters game by writing down a valid word within the 30 seconds. This word must be in the current New Oxford English Dictionary, but not a proper noun, nor an abbreviation. Players can use each lettter only once, but can use a letter more than once if it appears more than once in the selection. For example from EEEECDLST the player could play SELECTED, which uses three E's, but there are four E's in the selection. Words score 1 point per letter, but 18 points for a nine-letter word.
Unlike the game of Scrabble, Countdown does not allow all nouns to have a plural form. In particular, a mass noun is a noun that that does not logically have a plural, like GUNFIRE or HEALTH -- in standard English they would rarely be used in the plural. This system has been the cause of some controversy and confusion. Since the start of Series 49, the rules have been refined to allow the plural of some mass nouns; for example, CONGEES was allowed in Series 58 because it was argued that one could ask for "two congees". Again this rule has been enforced with some inconsistency, and words like OPALINES have been allowed on some occasions and not others.
