I’ve been appearing in dictionary corner on Countdown this week. The shows were actually recorded back in March. As you can see from my blog at the time, Doing Countdown and getting a rude word to boot, I had a fun time.
It was yesterday’s (Wed) episode that was supposed to contain the rude word, and while I haven’t seen it myself I’ve been told it wasn’t broadcast.
So I can now reveal (if you didn’t guess from the blog title) the word was “stiffies”. Now there’s no doubt it’s a word, and is in the dictionary; the problem is there’s only one definition, which isn’t that easy for mid-afternoon telly. Luckily for Countdown, as it was from dictionary corner not the contestants, it’s possible to edit it out without impacting the result of the game.
As it wasn’t broadcast I can tell you the full story now. Once we realised what the word was, as the clock was ticking down, I wrestled with whether to say it or not and tried to come up with a way round it saying something like (from memory from two months ago so give or take):
“Well we do indeed have an eight letter word here. Now it’s an interesting one for this time in the afternoon, and so to make it easier I thought I would explain how to think about it.
When you walk past a shop they often have mannequins in the window. Some of these are flexible and can be positioned any way you want, while others are rigid and unmoving. So if you had a collection of these you could call them “stiffies”.
