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Start at normal Countdown difficulty, then push the letters round beyond the TV format.
This page is for players who already find normal Countdown comfortable and want a harder online practice round.
The lowest setting is the familiar nine-letter game. Higher levels add more letters, making it easier to miss long words and harder to spot the best answer under the clock.
Normal Countdown gives you nine letters. This extreme version starts there and then raises the ceiling, so strong players can practise with ten, eleven, twelve, or thirteen letters while keeping the same clock pressure and answer tools.
Longer selections make the letters round feel less familiar. There are more possible word shapes, more near-misses, and more chances for a hidden long word to sit inside a rack that looks harmless at first glance.
Use the extreme letters game when the usual nine-letter round has stopped feeling sharp enough. The higher levels are good for training anagram scanning, checking unusual prefixes and suffixes, and forcing yourself to keep searching after the first decent word appears.
There is a short survey about what is useful, confusing, or missing.