Goatdown

Goatdown is a variant on the general Countdown game that is popularly played over MSN Messenger, on Apterous, but also occasionally played at real life tournaments.

In 2020, Callum Todd announced a co-event would be played with Goatdown, but this never happened owing to the 2020 COVID-19 hiatus.

Differences from regular Countdown

The main difference from Countdown is that instead of choosing a consonant or a vowel for the ninth letter, a contestant may select any specific letter of the alphabet. For example: 'consonant, consonant, vowel' might become 'consonant, consonant, E'. Scoring is the same as in standard Countdown.

Example game

(Specifically chosen letter in italics).

Rnd	Selection	Player 1	Score	Player 2	Others	Max.
1	OAOTTRTTW	TATTOO	6 – 6	TATTOO		6
2	SEDOTODLS	DOODLES	13 – 13	DOODLES	LOOSEST*, STOOLED, TODDLES	13
3	OIEARSDJL	DARIOLES	21 – 21	DARIOLES		21
4	25 5 4 6 7 3 → 704	704 (25 × 7 + 6 − 5) × 4	31 – 31	704 (25 × 7 + 6 − 5) × 4		31
5	BEVUQIPHF	EQUIP	36 – 36	EQUIP	PIQUE	36
6	IOUABRNDA	AROUND	36 – 43	OUABAIN	AIRBAND*, BANDORA*, BANDURA*, INBOARD*, UNBRAID*	43
7	KONITURAI	RAINOUT	43 – 50	RAINOUT	OUTRANK*	50
8	4 5 10 8 7 2 → 761	760 ((7 + 2) × 10 + 5) × 8	50 – 57	760 (7 × 2 + 5) × 4 × 10	Best: 761 = (10 × 8 + 4) × (7 + 2) + 5	60
9	FOURSWOR...		50 – 67	SORROWFUL (10 seconds)		70

See also

• Hypergoatdown