Concept
The idea to construct a board for the co-events came after Countdown in Brighton 2022, as this was the first "Lincoln"-style tournament I attended. Under the "Lincoln" style, everyone is separated into groups of three in each round and uses card sets, typically from an edition of the Countdown board game. With individual matches being carried out on the tables, I saw this as the perfect opportunity to enhance the aesthetics for the people on my table by mirroring the appearance of the show's production elements.
──────────
Purpose
The original board debuted at Countdown in Edinburgh 2022, held in the October of that year, intended for use in the preliminary games. However, since January 2023's double-header of events in Lincoln, it's additionally been used for the grand final match between the top two competitors, held at the conclusion of the heat games. For this, the board is mounted upright on a tablet stand in order for everyone in the room to see the selections. Prior to the board, the members involved in the final — host, adjudicator(s) and two contestants — would be stationed at a single table, with the cards being dealt for only them to see without any obstructions. Although this setup worked for those involved in the game, it resulted in everyone else having to huddle around the table in order to see the selections if they wanted to play along. Now, with the board facilitating an upright position, that issue has been solved: others playing along can sit at the surrounding tables with equal viewership to the contestants, allowing for more inclusion as opposed to the game focusing solely on the two finalists.
──────────
Appearance
The board was designed as a miniature replica of that seen on the show but, for logistical reasons, without the boxes for the vowels and consonants on the letters side and the large whiteboard on the numbers side. The inclusion of these would have required the game host to stand in front of the board to put up the cards, taking up more space.
──────────
Materials and specifications
The board is made up of five 3mm-thick MDF sheets, with the necessary cutouts on each piece achieved by laser cutting. During the construction process, these were primed and sanded, then spray-painted in the appropriate colours before being glued down. The outer section consists of MDF strips and is currently lined with blue-coloured faux leather (felt on the original board). Dimensions wise, it's 750mm long and 230mm tall, with each of the pockets measuring 75×80mm (length by height) to comfortably fit the 70mm² cards whilst including a 10mm "finger space" at the top for quick removal. In comparison to the board on the show, mine is approximately two-thirds of its length, a quarter of the height of the letters face due to the absence of the vowel and consonant boxes, and roughly a fifth of the height of the numbers face due to the omission of the whiteboard underneath the pockets.
──────────
Later enhancements
Unsurprisingly with me, it didn't take long before the original board underwent its first lot of changes:
▸ November 2022: the first change, made just two weeks after the board was completed, involved the section for the target number on the numbers side being repainted into a lighter blue shade to match the background of the cards more closely.
▸ February 2023: because of the dividers between the pockets not sticking down properly, the pockets themselves had to be repainted to match the dividers in order to conceal the residue left over from the glue. At the same time, the felt around the border was stripped and replaced due to fraying.
▸ August 2023: as of the London 2023 tournament, the board has included covers to conceal the conundrum scramble in the grand final more effectively. Previously, the board was lifted from the tablet stand and rotated downwards to face the contestants, and the answer was revealed by having the scrambled letters on the top row rearranged onto the bottom row. Now, with the covers in place, the scramble and answer can be loaded beforehand, in the same fashion as the mechanical board used on the show until 2020. The covers sit in the board's pockets without interfering with the cards behind them, and are lifted out in sync with the clock starting to show the letters.
▸ September 2023: Blackpool 2023 (the event after London) introduced a separate set of cards for the conundrum(s) in the final. Using the separate deck, the scramble and answer are now arranged into the appropriate order and slipped into a sleeve before the game starts, meaning they can be instantly put up on the board for the conundrum round. Before this, the conundrum scramble had to be set gradually by taking the required letters from the pile of discarded vowels and consonants at the end of each round. If any of the letters needed for the scramble hadn't come out in those rounds, the hosts had to sift through the remainder of the decks until it/they were found. As well as causing delays, it suggested a rare letter (e.g. J, Q and/or X) was going to be included in the answer.
▸ November 2024: the final change made to the original board involved painting the pockets into a lighter shade of blue to reinstate the two-colour scheme it initially, albeit briefly, carried. The two-colour scheme reflected the board's appearance on the "original" blue set, which is what I intended to achieve from the get-go.
──────────
Gallery (original board)
Layered parts prior to decorating (letters face).
Primed middle piece (letters face).
Primed pockets (letters face).
Primed pockets (numbers face).
Painted middle piece (numbers face).
Painted letters pockets.
Painted letters grid.
Painted layers of the letters face.
Painted numbers grid.
Painted layers of the numbers face.
Target number section (repainted soon after).
Final outcome, complete with cards, prior to the Edinburgh 2022 event.
The original board's development (August–September 2022).
Braintree 2022 (05/11/2022)
The shabby-looking pockets in May 2024.
The board with a cuppa at Birmingham 2024 (02/08/2024).
Durham 2024 (06/07/2024)
2024 FOCAL finals (30/11/2024), featuring the repainted pockets.
Lincoln 2025: The Predrinks (24/01/2025)
Lincoln 2025 (25/01/2025)
Rugby 2025 (22/03/2025)
Display for London 2025 (12/04/2025).
The original board at various tournaments between November 2022 and March 2025.
Letters face with the border stripped off.
Numbers top piece.
Numbers face, including the original colour of the target section.
Torn-up pieces prior to being scrapped.
The original board being dismantled in July 2025.
──────────
Rebuild
By May 2024, the condition of the original board had significantly deteriorated, evident from the photos above. The felt around the edges was peeling at the corners, and the paint within the pockets had been heavily scratched.
▸ Attempts: admittedly, it took an embarrassing eight goes before the rebuild was actually finalised. To begin with, the first attempt at the new version repeated the original board's process of brush-painting the pieces. However, because the strokes were still visible (even after sanding) they prevented the desired outcome. Once the pieces became unsalvageable from endless sanding, they were scrapped.
What followed the first attempt was the conceived "solution" of spray-painting in order to accomplish more of a professional finish. Unfortunately for me, with the second lot of pieces, I ended up disliking my initial colour choice of Rust-Oleum's "Spa Blue", as it looked too saturated. With the pieces having received four coats before this decision was made, they couldn't be reverted or even painted over.
Attempt three, in November 2024, involved masking over the parts and dividing them into sections as a way of testing multiple spray colours. Eventually, the three I settled on were "Lenor", "Blue Lagoon" and "Knock Out Blue" from Montana Cans' BLACK range, which are of a close proximity to the three Wilko emulsion colours used on the original board: "Moody Blue", "Surf" and "Midnight Hour". The process went smoothly to begin with, but the cold weather prolonged the drying time and repeatedly wrinkled the paint. Even the coarsest grit of sandpaper was of no benefit in removing it all, so this lot of parts also headed for the scrapheap. The four following attempts went wrong for similar reasons, the most ridiculous being one of the pieces getting knocked off the table immediately after it was sprayed.
Once I overcame the spray-painting hurdle, the pieces were left to cure for a week before being wet-sanded to provide them with a gloss finish. Following this, the strips were lined with faux leather and fixed around the edges. Finally, three '0' stickers was stuck over the pockets in the target number section of the numbers board.
▸ Completion: the successful version was finished in June 2025 and was introduced at my Countdown in Durham tournament on 5th July.
──────────
Gallery (current board)
Primed numbers top piece.
Painted middle piece (numbers face).
Glossy top piece of the numbers face.
Completed board prior to being lined with leather.
Lining the leather along the side face.
Development of the rebuild.
Letters face of the new board.
Numbers face of the new board.
Board with new conundrum covers in place.
Display for the FOCAL Countdown organisation.
Prize table at Durham 2025 (05/07/2025).
Board display for Edinburgh 2025 (18/10/2025).
The completed version of the rebuilt board.