‘Countdown’ Quiz Crowns First Female Champion For 26 Years After Incredibly Tense Final Round

deadline.com:

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.