You are not logged in.
Happenings
Dale Levell celebrated his 5100th win! 5 minutes ago.
Ryan Taylor beat Innis Carson 57-50, overturning a 595-point rating gap! 39 minutes ago.
Ian Dent's 83-99 game with Mark Tournoff received a nomination for Game of the Week. 2 hours ago.
The Daily Duel was won by Kirk Bevins with a score of 112 from 114. 2 hours ago.- Ali Brookman played his first game. 2 hours ago.
Ian Dent commented on Darren Carter's game with Darren Carter. 2 hours ago.- Ian Dent beat Josh Hurst 77-64, overturning a 421-point rating gap! 2 hours ago.
- Martin May commented on Darren Carter's game with Darren Carter. 2 hours ago.
- Ian Dent's 83-99 game with Mark Tournoff received a self-nomination for Game of the Week. 3 hours ago.
- Ian Dent commented on his game with Mark Tournoff. 3 hours ago.
- Ian Dent's 83-99 game with Mark Tournoff received a self-nomination for Game of the Week. 3 hours ago.
- Henry Meier's 61-124 game with Jack Hurst received a nomination for Game of the Week. 4 hours ago.
- Henry Meier's 61-124 game with Jack Hurst received a nomination for Game of the Week. 4 hours ago.
- James Robinson commented on his game with Ian Dent. 5 hours ago.
- Henry Meier's 61-124 game with Jack Hurst received a self-nomination for Game of the Week. 5 hours ago.
- Jack Hurst commented on Henry Meier's game with him. 5 hours ago.
- Henry Meier commented on his game with Jack Hurst. 5 hours ago.
- Ian Dent commented on James Robinson's game with him. 5 hours ago.
- Henry Meier celebrated his 2400th win! 6 hours ago.
- Ben Wilson commented on his game with Apterous Prune. 7 hours ago.
What is apterous?
The first thing to say is that apterous is definitely not Countdown. It is not endorsed by Countdown, Channel 4 or anyone important at all. However, it is a game with rounds including numbers, letters and conundrums. This may sound familiar. You can play against your friends over the Internet, or other people's friends if you don't have any of your own. To play, just register and then log in. If you're having problems, head over to our FAQ and, if that doesn't work, please do email me and I'll do my best to help.
Special message: This site costs me a little money and a lot of time to maintain. If you'd like to give something back, why not subscribe get a bunch of cool extras too?
News
8 February 2010
- Fixed: Normal and Duel games counted the wrong way round on Superstats (no idea how that happened, thanks Ian).
- Fixed: Obscure database deadlock which caused Friday's crash.
- Fixed: Many classic games now load properly (thanks Neb).
7 February 2010
- New: 1000 new Classic Games. New Editor's Picks coming soon.
4 February 2010
- New: Classic games now link to the relevant episode on the wiki.
3 February 2010
- New: Classic Games can now be played at a time control of your choice.
- New: Russian and Greek lexicons added and work properly.
- Improved: Plurals in item announcements are now correct. Really really this time.
- Improved: Migrated to the lovely Fam Fam flag icons (thanks Matt).
- Fixed: Resumed Classic Games now work properly (thanks Sid, Ian et al).
2 February 2010
- New: Classic Games can now generate a list of random classics you haven't played before.
- New: Create private chat rooms (at last!)
31 January 2010
- New: Chat mute button.
- Improved: Tweak to conundrum difficulty balancer: very mismatched games will no longer lead to very easy conundrums.
- Improved: Migration of miscellany to "More Stuff" tab completed.
- Improved: Names in chat are now always given in full (thanks Gevin).
- Fixed: No more duplicate names in player roster.
28 January 2010
- New: Players now have 50 free games to decide if they like the site.
25 January 2010
- News: Thanks to everyone who donated to our Haiti appeal, we raised £50 which I'll match to make a nice round £100. This might well make us the most generous word game website in the world. Woo!
24 January 2010
- Improved: Small-screen players can now access the smaller version of the game via the brilliantly named "Play (small)" link on the left.
- Improved: Prettier buttons on user pages.
23 January 2010
- New: Trialling new larger, prettier client for a lucky subset of users. Feedback to charlie@apterous.org welcome.
22 January 2010
- New: Superstats now shows list of users' pencils (thanks Matt Bayfield).
21 January 2010
- New: User duel history.
- Improved: Tweak to conundrum balancing; we now compute player positions and average those, rather than averaging the ratings.
- Fixed: German Conundrums now work again (thanks Bob).
20 January 2010
- New: Personal Bests announced in chat.
- Improved: Better info in chat about games which are starting etc.
- Fixed: Bash Room fixed. Again. FML.
19 January 2010
- News: Sorry for the downtime today, I pressed some buttons wrong on my computron an' that.
- New: Bash Room now gives out a new puzzle as soon as everyone in the room has solved the current one (thanks everyone in the world).
- Improved: Conundrums are now scaled somewhat to the skill of the players. Please read the explanation of the system before complaining about the conundrums you receive.
- Fixed: Weirdness on front page news box (thanks Matt "Heroic" Morrison).
18 January 2010
- New: Apterous Sponge, dubbed "the beginning of Skynet", learns words only as he sees them. Players may receive special sexy items for helping him learn.
- Improved: Bash Room tells you who else is in there.
- Improved: 10% reduction in the size of the download.
- Improved: Bash Room now includes 9s, and a sprinkling of 5s and 6s.
17 January 2010
- News: Until 24 January, all money received from apterous subscriptions will be passed on to Doctors Without Borders to support their work in disaster relief in Haiti. See above for details.
16 January 2010
- New: Double click on a noted word to move it to the top of your preferences (thanks Jack).
- New: The Bash Room (thanks Kirk).
- Improved: DC no longer announce more than 30 maxes (Touch Jnr was getting a bit silly).
- Improved: CSW presets games now available under Miscellany.
- Improved: Ratings for players with all wins or all losses have been moderated slightly.
- Improved: Much larger Italian lexicon.
- Improved: Major memory leak fixed. Performance and reliability should be greatly improved on low-end machines.
- Fixed: Maxes in non-standard alphabets are now highlighted correctly.
15 January 2010
- Fixed: New records are now correctly shown in red on the high scores page.
14 January 2010
- New: Italian and Spanish lexicons.
- New: Touch Jnr variant (Touchdown + Junior).
- New: Front page Duel summary now specifies variant (thanks Gevin).
- Improved: Bronze pencils shown in bold on the front page (thanks Kirk).
- Improved: Backspace now works in letters box during "extra time", except for the first character (thanks Gevin).
- Fixed: Greek Touchdown now works.
- Fixed: Game pages now show blank buzzes (thanks Corby).
13 January 2010
- Improved: Max games are now shown in bold in players' recent games lists.
10 January 2010
- Fixed: Inline user/Lexplorer bars no longer pop up obnoxious AJAX error messages.
Screenshots
This website is not endorsed by or affiliated with Channel 4, the makers of Countdown, or any person associated with the aforementioned in any way whatsoever at all, never has been, never will be, and moreover is proud not to be. Yep.
Page generated in 2.4123 seconds. Design and all good stuff copyright © Charles Reams 2008 - 2009. Some graphical and aesthetic elements by Matt Morrison and Jon O'Neill.