LETTERS AND NUMBERS
Every weeknight on SBS, you can catch Letters and Numbers at 6pm. Based on the cult success of Countdown in the UK, the show is built around nine brainteasers, where making long words and dead-eye equations will see you prevail.
In case you haven’t guessed, my role on the show is all about the Letters. (Just as well, since my skill with Numbers pretty much sputtered around the day I could spell SHELL OIL on my upside-down calculator.)
As the Dictionary Guy, I play both umpire and in-house player when the words need finding among the nine random letters. Richard Morecroft is our debonair ringmaster, and Lily Serna, our smokin’ master of maths. If you can’t tune in at six, you can always catch previous episodes, or join the Facebook conversation.
As you’ll see, part of the show’s fun, when not celebrating what words contestants uncover, is a regular segment looking at a new cranny of language. Cocktails and protégée – I’ve covered plenty of curious stories already – pakapoo and cappuccino. The secret links of water and rumour, or borzoi and bistro… Tune in to hear more.
Or visit this page now and then to enjoy a word story you may have missed, as appears below. Or better yet, watch the show, getting down and dirty with some letters and numbers.
To help you get a feel of the letter-crunching, you can try your hand at the three sample mixes I’ve also posted here. Each random batch is drawn from the actual show, with a new trio scheduled to appear here every week. What’s the longest word you can find per batch? (Within the 30-second time limit, of course!) See how you fare, then click to see what we managed when the heat was on.
Maybe you’ll flourish. In which case, get in touch through the SBS website and become a contestant. Be great to have you on set.
LETTER MIXES
What are the longest words you can find in the blends below?
- TUPLANOMI
- MANTERDSE
- LEPICNETX
- HAEIPROND
WORD STORY
ORRERY is a mechanical device that recreates the motions and phases of the planets. You see them occasionally in museums, much like a wind-up planetarium. But where did it get such an unusual name?
Follow this cruel logic: the apparatus was designed by an English engineer named George Graham in 1704, then built from the blueprint by an instrument maker John Rowley. Then given to a man called Charles Boyle, the 4th Earl of Orrery. So the name honours not the inventor, not the constructor, but the end user, or blue-blood who received it. Like Kev’s cube, if Rubik bestowed his maiden gizmo to our Foreign Affairs Minister. Enough to make the blood boil. Or see stars.
Show solution?