Numberwang

[luckykaa]

Once upon a time this happened on Countdown.

Clever isn't it!

My dad is a fan of this show, and hyper competitive when it comes to the numbers game. When I visit I rtend to watch with him. There's actually some tricks to these, that James Martin used here.

The first trick is a simple one. When you have all 4 large numbers (for those not familiar with the show the large ones are always 25, 50, 75, and 100)  you can combine these to make 2 (50/25 or 100/50), 3 (75/25), 4 (100/25), 5 ((50+75)/25) and a number of other small numbers. The problem with this is you end up using up your big numbers.

What Mr. Martin did here was realise he had 954 from (100+6)*3*(75/25). Not a terrible score, but not perfect. There are the numbers to get the remaining 2 (50/25) but he's already used the 25. Still, we can use that as a start.

952 = (100+6)*3*(75/25)-50/25
or slightly more conveniently
952 = ((100+6)*3*75)/25-50/25

Those who do a lot of manipluating equations will spot something we can do here. We can factor out the 25

952 - ((3*75(100+6) ) - 50 ) / 25

And there you have it. James Martin had no idea what the intermediate number was. He didn't need to. People actually use this sort of trick all the time. It's unusual to do it with such a huge number, but the rules are no different. The real trick is spotting that under the pressure of a 30 second time limit.

For those who prefer the letters game, there's this: