How to Solve the Countdown Conundrum: Tips for Nine-Letter Anagrams

The Conundrum is the last round of Countdown and often the most dramatic: nine scrambled letters, one hidden word, and the first contestant to buzz in with the right answer takes 10 points. It can turn a game around in a few seconds. Solving it quickly is a skill you can practise, and it uses the same techniques that work for any long anagram.

Most nine-letter words have only one answer

We checked the 4,309 everyday nine-letter words in our dictionary of about 168,000 English words. For 3,774 of them, nearly nine in ten, the letters make no other word at all. So when you find a nine-letter word in a jumble, you can usually be confident it is the answer. Conundrums on the show are generally chosen to have a single answer too.

The exceptions are fun to know. STATEMENT and TESTAMENT use the same letters, as do DOWNLOADS and WOODLANDS, and EDUCATION, CAUTIONED and AUCTIONED.

1. Look for the ending first

Among everyday nine-letter words in our dictionary, the most common endings are -ED and -ING, each found on about one word in nine. They are followed by -ER, -ERS and -LY. Before anything else, check whether your letters contain I, N and G, or E and D. If they do, set them aside and work on the remaining six or seven letters.

2. Then try common beginnings

Once you have an ending, try RE-, UN-, IN-, DIS-, OVER- or PRE- at the front. A nine-letter word with both a prefix and a suffix often has only three or four letters in the middle to work out.

3. Ignore the decoy

Conundrums are usually presented as something that looks like real words, or almost real words, to send you down the wrong path. Try not to read the jumble. Instead, see it as a set of letters: count the vowels, note the double letters, and spot the awkward ones such as J, Q, X, Z, V and W.

4. Use the awkward letters as anchors

Unusual letters have fewer places they can go. A Q almost always needs a U after it; a K often follows C; a W often sits before H, R or after S. Placing the awkward letters first narrows down where everything else can go.

5. Write the letters in a circle

At home, writing the nine letters in a circle rather than a line breaks the order you were given and helps new combinations jump out. Many good players also try swapping the first and last letters of whatever they have, since endings are so predictable.

6. Practise with real nine-letter words

The best practice is volume. Take any nine-letter word, scramble it, and try to solve it in 30 seconds. Our Countdown solver lets you check any set of letters, and its everyday-words setting keeps the answers to words likely to be accepted on the show.

For the letters and numbers rounds, see our Countdown strategy guide.

EasyUnscramble is independent and not affiliated with Channel 4, ITV Studios or the Countdown programme. Countdown uses the Oxford Dictionary of English; our figures come from our own word list.

Related reading: Countdown strategy guide · How to unscramble words · Countdown numbers strategy

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