{"id":20218908,"url":"https://github.com/juliannicholls/countdown","last_synced_at":"2026-06-08T15:33:01.594Z","repository":{"id":10490166,"uuid":"12670952","full_name":"JulianNicholls/Countdown","owner":"JulianNicholls","description":"Ace the Countdown letters rounds with this","archived":false,"fork":false,"pushed_at":"2024-02-29T07:29:43.000Z","size":3260,"stargazers_count":0,"open_issues_count":0,"forks_count":0,"subscribers_count":3,"default_branch":"master","last_synced_at":"2025-03-03T11:43:35.424Z","etag":null,"topics":["ruby","sinatra"],"latest_commit_sha":null,"homepage":null,"language":"Ruby","has_issues":true,"has_wiki":null,"has_pages":null,"mirror_url":null,"source_name":null,"license":"other","status":null,"scm":"git","pull_requests_enabled":true,"icon_url":"https://github.com/JulianNicholls.png","metadata":{"files":{"readme":"README.md","changelog":null,"contributing":null,"funding":null,"license":null,"code_of_conduct":null,"threat_model":null,"audit":null,"citation":null,"codeowners":null,"security":null,"support":null,"governance":null,"roadmap":null,"authors":null,"dei":null,"publiccode":null,"codemeta":null}},"created_at":"2013-09-07T20:19:11.000Z","updated_at":"2022-05-04T06:27:13.000Z","dependencies_parsed_at":"2024-02-29T08:44:45.006Z","dependency_job_id":null,"html_url":"https://github.com/JulianNicholls/Countdown","commit_stats":null,"previous_names":[],"tags_count":1,"template":false,"template_full_name":null,"purl":"pkg:github/JulianNicholls/Countdown","repository_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/JulianNicholls%2FCountdown","tags_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/JulianNicholls%2FCountdown/tags","releases_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/JulianNicholls%2FCountdown/releases","manifests_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/JulianNicholls%2FCountdown/manifests","owner_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners/JulianNicholls","download_url":"https://codeload.github.com/JulianNicholls/Countdown/tar.gz/refs/heads/master","sbom_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/JulianNicholls%2FCountdown/sbom","scorecard":null,"host":{"name":"GitHub","url":"https://github.com","kind":"github","repositories_count":286080680,"owners_count":34069491,"icon_url":"https://github.com/github.png","version":null,"created_at":"2022-05-30T11:31:42.601Z","updated_at":"2026-05-26T15:22:16.424Z","status":"online","status_checked_at":"2026-06-08T02:00:07.615Z","response_time":111,"last_error":null,"robots_txt_status":"success","robots_txt_updated_at":"2025-07-24T06:49:26.215Z","robots_txt_url":"https://github.com/robots.txt","online":true,"can_crawl_api":true,"host_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub","repositories_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories","repository_names_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repository_names","owners_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners"}},"keywords":["ruby","sinatra"],"created_at":"2024-11-14T06:40:22.345Z","updated_at":"2026-06-08T15:33:01.574Z","avatar_url":"https://github.com/JulianNicholls.png","language":"Ruby","funding_links":[],"categories":[],"sub_categories":[],"readme":"# Countdown\n\nThis is a word finder for the UK (originally French) TV gameshow\n[Countdown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_%28game_show%29).\n\n## Word list\n\nIt uses a word list constructed from Kevin Atkinson's\n[wordlist page](http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/).\nI have included the whole copyright file that comes with the download, since\nall the component word lists have ultimately been placed in the public domain,\nbut there are a number of different statements of copyright contained. Clearly,\nI am deeply in Kevin's debt for the word list and acknowledge the sterling work\nthat he has done.\n\nThe word list that I have chosen to construct from his files is:\n\n- Level 80, with...\n- English and British up to variant 1.\n- No possessives ('s), abbreviations, proper names, Roman numerals, or hacker words.\n- Word lengths 5 to 9.\n\nI'd say that the word list seems to be at about the right level, because\nwhen Susie Dent uses the pen camera on the dictionary, the word has so far\nbeen found by this program as one of the longest words.\n\n## Bonuses\n\nIt works just as well for:\n\n- The teatime teasers at the end of each segment.\n- The final conundrum round.\n\nIt will also work for crossword anagrams, as long as the solution is one word\nof 9 letters, at most.\n\n## Sinatra\n\nThere is now a web version using [Sinatra](http://sinatrarb.com),\n[Slim](http://slim-lang.com/), and [Sass / SCSS](http://sass-lang.com/). The words\nare returned via AJAX using [jQuery](http://jquery.com) in JSON format.\n\nIt is available online [here](http://immense-countdown.herokuapp.com/).\n\n## Responsive Display\n\nThe web version is now much more responsive to screen sizes, down to a mobile\nscreen in portrait orientation.\n\n### Operator \u003c=\u003e overloading\n\nThe definition for the \u003c=\u003e operator in built-in classes explicitly states that\nit returns -1, 0, and +1 for the three comparison possibilities.\n\nIt seems that overriding the operator only requires that the return value is \\\u003c0, 0, or \\\u003e0.\nI couldn't find this documented anywhere on the net after much searching, but\nI tried it in the end and it seems to work for sort().\n\nSubsequently, I looked at the source code for ruby_qsort() and the comparisons\nmade are all against 0, so a negative, zero, or positive quantity is fine.\n\n","project_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fjuliannicholls%2Fcountdown","html_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/projects/github.com%2Fjuliannicholls%2Fcountdown","lists_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fjuliannicholls%2Fcountdown/lists"}