Stadium Countdown

As soon as I wake up, I stretch my right arm out from under the quilt and turn on the television. Nice one! Just in time for Countdown.

For those of you that don’t know, Countdown is a game show in which contestants are to find words in a nine-letter jumble. There is also a bonus round in which contestants are to make one big number out of six smaller numbers by use of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

The show is filmed in front of a polite studio audience, accentuating the show’s quaint charm. But what if it were filmed in a giant stadium in front of a capacity audience?

When the letters have been drawn out and the time starts, the crowd shout and scream possible anagrams and combinations of the nine-letter jumble, their yells becoming a cacophonous soup that serves only to distract the contestants.

Likewise the math problems – just as a football fan would yell a bunch of useless tactics at one of the players on the pitch in the belief that the player will actually carry out their half-arsed instruction and score a goal, the countdown audience screams possible solutions to the problem: “Multiply it by the big number! Carry the one! Don’t you know your bloody seventy-five times table?” The time runs out, and neither contestant has reached the exact target. The crowd jeer and hiss, blaming it on the contestants’ failure to carry out their instructions.

Solving of the countdown conundrum results in a pitch invasion.