What is apterous?

apterous is a UK-based puzzle game where players compete to solve word and number puzzles. You can play in British English, French, German, Welsh, global English and a variety of other languages.

Register here, or log in if you already have an account.

Current Duel Leaders

#PlayerScore
1Ross Allatt—  

Format: 3 rounds of 60 seconds.
[Vote for the next Duel's format]

Discussions

2Up votes 3Down votes 5Replies

how many letters has the opponent delcared

Brainstorm by Anan Nathan. Status: Unconfirmed.

many a times, the other player tells me h0w many letters I have declared, but I never seems to know this myself--is there something I need to turn on to know the other player's declaration? [Read more] [More miscellany]

19Up votes 1Down votes 5Replies

Show creation date on tickets in the front page's "Discussions" pane

Website feature request by Graeme Cole. Status: Unconfirmed.

Sometimes, recent comments or voting activity on a very old ticket can cause it to resurface and end up back on the front page. But it isn't always obvious to a user looking at the front page that this ... [Read more] [More feature requests]

15Up votes 0Down votes 7Replies

Calling all Irish Apterites Countdown in Dublin Saturday September 28th.

Brainstorm by Ed Byrne. Status: Unconfirmed.

I was trawling the pro rankings this morning and I noticed that quite a few users are Irish. I want to make you all aware of an in person Countdown Tournament I am running on Saturday 28th September. It ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

9Up votes 0Down votes 3Replies

Only Connect - The Apterites?

Brainstorm by Sean D. Status: Unconfirmed.

It's probably fair to say the Apterous community is on the nerdy scale. And what could be nerdier than playing endless games of online Countdown? Well having a crack at Only Connect, for one thing. So, ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

34Up votes 0Down votes 27Replies

August 2024 word list update -- it's the big one

Announcement by Charlie Reams. Status: Unconfirmed.

As many of you will have picked up from other threads, Oxford made a huge update recently including a huge number of deletions (nearly 100K!) and a few hundred new words too. It's been an epic effort by ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

104Up votes 0Down votes 46Replies

Spoon of Awesome for Callum Todd

Brainstorm by Fiona T. Status: Unconfirmed.

I'd like to nominate Callum Todd for a spoon of awesome. The epitome of awesomeness, I can't think of a better way to acknowledge Callum's massive contribution to the Countdown community. I probably ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

31Up votes 8Down votes 25Replies

Only One News Announcement When Conor Travers Ties The Record Blitz Maxes 9 Times

Website feature request by Richard Brittain. Status: Unconfirmed.

I feel that the News feed on the main page has been unduly cluttered by this. I feel that one line could suffice, rather than nine. In addition, Jono's 3 comments on them could, debatably, be compressed ... [Read more] [More feature requests]

15Up votes 0Down votes 10Replies

Ratings and new players

Brainstorm by Fiona T. Status: Unconfirmed.

AIUI you have to play 11(?) games in a variant to cement a rating in that variant. While you're provisionally rated, you can see swings of several hundred in your rating but it should pan out by the ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

23Up votes 0Down votes 9Replies

Consolidate front page high score announcments

Website feature request by Fiona T. Status: Unconfirmed.

Suggestion is that instead of 20 announcements that "Player X tied the high score for Junior Conundrum Attack with 200 points, and tied the record number of maximums with 20 maxes." there is just one ... [Read more] [More feature requests]

5Up votes 3Down votes 12Replies

Resources for unlearning

Miscellaneous topic by M S R. Status: Unconfirmed.

I'm sharing this so I've got some more motivation to get the bloody thing finished. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12mRogu3C8-m7e0wtSCaqlcNsM5M9kt3LpLdMfU3-TqY/edit?usp=sharing ^Have nicked the ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

32Up votes 0Down votes 10Replies

Amalgamate multiple instances of max records by one person on the front page

Website feature request by Matty Artell. Status: Unconfirmed.

Currently, when one of the top players goes through ascension (or anything similar, such as repeatedly doing touch jnr conundrum attacks for no reason), the front page ends up looking like this; http://i.imgur.com/Iz6KHaD.jpg ... [Read more] [More feature requests]

4Up votes 9Down votes 32Replies

Clear button on numbers

Game feature request by Matt Fife. Status: Unconfirmed.

As I often play on my phone it is a very annoying when I accidentally hit the wrong number/function and it is impossible to change it, which usually happens as I’m rushing to beat the time bar before ... [Read more] [More feature requests]

15Up votes 0Down votes 3Replies

Add OED search to the lexplorer links

Website feature request by Fiona T. Status: Unconfirmed.

Since the demise of lexico, there hasn't been a good source for definitions. OED do a definition preview which isn't paywalled. e.g. https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=APTEROUS ... [Read more] [More feature requests]

17Up votes 1Down votes 7Replies

Calling all parkrunners!

Announcement by Fiona T. Status: Unconfirmed.

I've created a Countdowner parkrunners group on Strava - if you're an apto parkrunner, and on Strava, please join up! https://www.strava.com/clubs/c4cparkrunners You might also be interested in the ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

3Up votes 1Down votes 10Replies

How do I improve at the game?

Brainstorm by Dashan Delany. Status: On-going.

Firstly sorry if this is the wrong place to ask such a question. I've just made an account and it's unusual to have a web forum handle its bug reports and public discussions via the same front-end ticket ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

11Up votes 11Down votes 9Replies

96,000+ words removed from the game! (full list of deletions)

Announcement by Eoin Jackson. Status: Unconfirmed.

Oxford Dictionaries dropped a nuclear bomb on the game we love. It was to undo a silly change implemented in 2015, so ultimately is a good thing, however much of a pain it is in the short term. If you ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

26Up votes 0Down votes 8Replies

Words by Usefulness - January 2024

Announcement by Rob Foster. Status: Unconfirmed.

The latest version of the Words by Usefulness Doc is out. Special mentions go to ANTIPOSE and ANTIPOLE for being among the most useful additions. As for UNDERBOOB - must try harder. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DAcyuWyoLBx6T32mlw0eYWPmvl3PoNWL/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=102346750340488444279&rtpof=true&sd=true ... [Read more] [More miscellany]

46Up votes 1Down votes 2Replies

Report user button

Website feature request by Fiona T. Status: Unconfirmed.

For those hopefully very rare situations where it is necessary to report a user, it would be useful to have a 'report' button against a profile, which would raise a private ticket linking to that profile ... [Read more] [More feature requests]

18Up votes 0Down votes 7Replies

Better indication of deadline for tourney games

Website feature request by Thomas Carey. Status: Unconfirmed.

At the moment, I have a lot of tourney games clogging up the purple front page box. Most of these are human games with a long deadline, which happens in some large round robin tourneys (most notably EC). ... [Read more] [More feature requests]

News

5 October 2024

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