Brilliant.

Was just gonna post this

Could of just taken the easy way:

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

= 952

Almost, theneb -- but your answer gives 9952

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

That's Numberwang, let's rotate the board!

Seriously, is this the show that Numberwang is spoofing? I've never seen this before.

Dag - Countdown was the first ever programme to be aired on Channel 4, it's pretty much a national treasure.

Another great Countdown moment...

http://www.videosift.com/video/Classic-Gameshow-Moment-Countdown-1991

Wiki -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(game_show)

I played this game with some friends once, only you had to take your phone number, change the dash to an equals sign and then insert only mathematical operators to create an equivalence, preferrably zero.

About the clip, here's another potentially great and spontaneous TV moment ruined by "oh my god this is so funny I can't even compose myself to speak despite my years of broadcast training" fake manipulative crap from a TV host.

That guy is a fart smeller.

good old richard whiteley, r.i.p.

I don't even understand how he thought to try that.

Isn't that Carol Vorderman? The sudoku lady in the UK?

THAT'S NUMBERWANG!

Hmm...this is a very common game given to us Asian kids to play when we were in school., except we had to find the correct answer. It was quite fun and challenging and doing something like in this video was a quite common way to solve the problems. From personal experience, he probably started with the 25. Genius, did it in such a short time. People good at this can be so scary sometimes.

Great vid.

^-- (Crazy asians...)

^--Agreed, all work, no creativity. ><

that is indeed the original numberwang and the original carol vorderman. that music is commonly used in conversation in the UK, when you ask someone a question they can't answer, they say hmmmm........... and you say "diddle, diddle, diddley dum, POW" while making a big clock hand in front of your face. Oh yeah. People do that all the time. Seriously.

carol vorderman is evil btw.

i'd never seen countdown, but i'm currently living in france and there is version of it here. it's called "lettres et chiffres" (letters and numbers) and i watch it pretty regularly. nothing quite that interesting has ever happened though. the part that really gets me is when he asks her to multiply 318 by 75. he doesn't know the answer, he just says "i hope this works." like in his head he had some weird shortcut that got him to 952 without actually doing the math. amazing!

He didn't need to know what 318 times 75 was. He had 318, from (100 + 6) x 3. He could see he could get 954 by multiplying by 3 again by using 75 divided by 25. Now he needed to shave 2 off of 954. He might have noticed that 50 divided by 25 is 2, and that's when he may have noticed that by multiplying by 75, subtracting 50, then dividing by 25, he would basically be doing 318 x 3 - 2.

Was simple really, but clever to do it in so short a time, and it sure looked impressive.

well sure, when you go and explain it doesn't seem nearly as cool. scratch that, still cool.

*dead

Working copy at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfa3MHLLSWI.

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by Skeeve.

*quality

In America im pretty sure there is a no dick policy on tv. I guess not so much in England https://youtu.be/peLXmKePK-Q

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by eric3579.

Countdown doesn't mess around.

8 years late, but 100*100 != 1000.

What are the rules? Can each number only be used once, and do you have to use all the numbers?
If you can use numbers more than once, and don't need to use them all, then (3+6)*100+50+(6/3)


and @sirex....100*100 >1000....9000 greater. You seemingly made the same mistake @theneb did....or is != your way of writing 'not equal to'?

Yup, != not equal (in programming) sometimes written as <> but less people know that one.

Rules are you don't have to use all numbers but you can't reuse numbers and it has to be just * / + - (I think square root isn't allowed)