Show HN: Countdown – Twitter bot which tweets answers to the Countdown TV show | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Countdown – Twitter bot which tweets answers to the Countdown TV show

github.com

67 pointsBambo23 comments

Awesome! I originally wrote the anagramica API so I could cheat at home while watching countdown, and then built a game on top of it. Always great to see a fellow hacker get inspired. The OCR is a fantastic addition.

Wow nice! Didn't realise this had been posted to HN, if you have any questions about how it works (although I have made a pretty descriptive readme.md) then just ask!

It was alot of fun making it!

When you mention that it responds at speed, what's kind of time is there between the word being shown and the answer?

Very impressive stuff :). Thanks for the detailed documentation too.

1-5s, according to the Twitter account bio for http://twitter.com/countdownanswer

it really depends on how fast you shove it into the application. Since TV can vary from region to region by upto 7 seconds. But from seeing it on the apps end, to sending the tweet less than 2 seconds.

That's rather neat! Although I'd suggest separating the roles into "countdown clues" and "countdown answers" bots. The former announcing the questions live on twitter, and the best answer being provided by Countdown answers when the timer ends. Turns Countdown into an interactive twitter game ;)

Being unfamiliar with Countdown, I was curious about the output format; looking around, I found the author's original announcement[1], which shows the following:

  "For 'EOEFPRCTSN' Word prefects is 8 letters long. Word perfectos is 9 letters long."

[1] http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1260790&p=42291145&vie... - also seen at http://twitter.com/countdownanswer

Both contestants in Countdown have 30 seconds to find the longest anagram that is also a valid entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. The one with the longer valid word wins, gaining equal points if there is a tie.

There is always an expert in "Dictionary Corner" who attempts to find the longest possible word, usually something obscure.

There are also two special rounds. One is mathematical (pick a combination of 6 large and small numbers -- large = {100,75,50,25}, small = {1..10} -- and attempt to make a randomly generated three-digit number using only addition, multiplication, subtraction and division. The other is a 9-letter handcrafted anagram which always has a 9-letter solution.

It would be interesting to have a bot that used information on word frequency in common vocabularies/usage to guess what the contestants were likely to find, vs. the expert with an open-book. I imagine few people would find 'perfectos' but many more would find 'prefects'.

Having said that, I'd imagine most people going on the show -- especially at this stage! -- would be armed with many more obscure words than the average reader. (I auditioned back when I was 16, in fact, but failed at the anagram round. Oh well! Growing up 'playing' Countdown certainly made for a fun childhood, and I was frequently called Carol at school because I was good with numbers. :))

I knew I had heard of Countdown before at some point in the past. I searched my bookmarks and found this video, which apparently really happened in one of their episodes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHhw_x-gHxI&feature=youtube_...

That was an episode of the IT Crowd[1] showing a character on Countdown, like a character from The Big Bang Theory appearing on Jeopardy in the storyline of the show. As for the actual show, I am partial to the BBC "mashups" mixing "8 out of 10 cats", a comedy panel show, with Countdown.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1676563/

Actual Countdown Episode:

http://youtu.be/d1L8uBzW6hQ?t=45s

8 out of 10 cats does Countdown:

http://youtu.be/cu4chThprVk?t=8m6s

This one wasn't actually real. TV shows in the United Kingdom have a tradition of creating crude and funny references to their show as a Christmas gift to executives or people that work on the show and this happened to leak out, a similar thing happened with the children's TV show Rainbow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgbcQIT7BMc

However, it is hilarious and deserving of attention.

This did happen the other day though: http://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2013/dec/18...

This is a really interesting project, and something I wish I had the capacity to think of. I watch Countdown, and the comedy mash-up 8 out of 10 cats does Countdown[0] and love the shows. And it's not entirely for Rachel Riley[1].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_Out_of_10_Cats#Countdown_mash... [1] http://i1.cdnds.net/13/38/618x348/rrcountdown.jpg

Hilarious and brilliant!

Now to only add the vowel/consonant choosing for optimal letter sets and solving the number puzzles.

I've been trying to come up with a comparison about it being a poor man's Watson, but failed.

If we're even coming close to Watson, should we also feed the Countdown bot the contents of Urban Dictionary [1]?

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/ibms-w...

Great, First Watson smokes us at Jeopardy, now this is going to prove computers are better than humans at one more thing. Our slow walk to being obsolete is hastened by our own efforts.

Cool project. Would be interesting to see how much effort it would take to do something similar for the Classic TV version of Scrabble.

Man, the project is a LOT cooler than I thought it was going to be. Nice change of pace to see some c#, too

I'd have thought [0] Moss was behind it if not for source being open! Great work.

[0] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49UakIHb1yI

See http://t411.linkstore.ru - a generic bot for Twitter

This is awesome!

Genius!

Wow, that's really neat!

Yeah! it has a great description in the Readme too.

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