Channel 4’s ‘Countdown’ Quiz Crowns First Female Champion In 26 Years

Channel 4’s long-running Countdown quiz has crowned its first female champion in an astonishing 26 years.

The show, which has been on almost every day of Channel 4’s 42-year history, has not had a female champion since 1998.

Fiona Wood, from Kinross in Scotland, won the series final Friday with a nine-letter anagram, which she identified as being “lassitude.” She and fellow contestant Chris Kirby were neck and neck until that last round, in an incredibly tense final marking the conclusion of the 90th series of the show. She finally triumphed with a score of 96 to Kirby’s 89.

The Guardian newspaper reports that Wood responded to her win, afterwards revealing that she almost didn’t enter her application to take part: “I just can’t believe it. I’m not known for being decisive, and I thought long and hard before I decided to apply, and I’m just so glad that I did.”

And she added that she was responding to the host Colin Murray’s call for older contestants and more women to take part. The Guardian reports that applications from these social groups have soared in response.

Only five of the many winners of the show have been women prior to Wood’s victory. The show, which made its debut on the day of Channel 4’s launch in 1982, is adapted from the French TV series Des Chiffres et Des Lettres (‘Numbers and Letters’). In a pleasingly simple and never-changing format, contestants have to make the longest words they can think of from a choice of nine letters chosen at random, complete two mathematical puzzles and finally complete a nine-letter anagram.