On today's "Countdown" . . .

I didn't get a chance to capture it from the TV card, so I threw together this dodgy mock in PowerPoint . . .

http://djgm.co.uk/stuff/countdownpuzzle-506.png

Is this the easiest Countdown number puzzle ever, or has there been any easier ones than that?

If I'm awake at 05:05 tomorrow morning, I'll try and catch the re-run, and get a proper screengrab.

There have been easier ones than even that. Such as

TARGET = 125
NUMBERS = 100 25 7 5 1

etc etc. 30 seconds seems like such a long time to wait when everyone knows the answer, but they still have to do it!

Nope, there have been much easier ones than that, once not too long back they had something like 150, and the numbers available were 100, 50 and 4 small ones. Or there was a target of 388, where the numbers were 100, 4, 8, 4 or something like that, so you could do 100 X 4 - 8 - 4= 388, but someone actually got it wrong, but they were trying to find a hard way of doing it. But there have been more easier ones than any that I have mentioned.

There are easy ones like that all the time -- generally of the form "big number plus one of the small ones=answer". That one actually could take a second or two to twig, because of the ordering of the digits.

Yes that one is easy btw -- (7-1)*(9*9)+(100/5) -- piece of cake

A target of 103 has come up before and the numbers included 100 and 3...

Just the luck aspec of CECIL, that's all. Can have a good range of numbers and a ridiculously difficult target. Well, if Carol can't do it then nobody can.

If you want to go the hard way round though, I'm sure Robovord will oblige as it will use ALL the numbers:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7069/robovord.html is the address.

Using your example and Robovord:

16 ways to make 506 from those six numbers, here's one of them:

( ( ( ( 100*5) + 7) *9) /9) -1)

LOL - Haven't heard CECIL mentioned in a long time. I wonder if when Countdown was shifted up to Tyne Tees in favour of Wellbeing coming from Leeds he was called CECIN??? Oh well, maybe not...

Has the ever been the incident where the target was 100 and one of the cards was 100?

I imagine that's the only possible way to get the answer using just one card.

I think there was something like not too long ago, but 100 wasn't the target, but as the target was dead low and p*ss easy to get I remember that Carol hit the button again when I gave a more sensible target.

OT; BTW we are on CECIL 2, as that's not the original one.

That's not possible - you'll always have to use at least two numbers for the Countdown numbers games because CECIL (or rather, CECIL 2 now according to the other poster) picks a number between 101 and 999 (so says ukgameshows.com anyway).

If only this ever came true......

http://www.russ-net.freeserve.co.uk/images/countdownpic.jpg