The classic letters and numbers game, built for the whiteboard. In the Letters game, pick nine vowels and consonants and race the clock to make the longest word. In the Numbers game, choose six tiles and use +, −, × and ÷ to reach the target. A quick, addictive vocabulary and mental-maths starter.
I use it as a plenary, and it is the one I can always rely on. Two things make it work. The first is that the children think they are being rewarded, when what they are actually doing is a solid stretch of hard mental arithmetic — they will not do that on a worksheet at ten to three, and they will do it here without noticing. The second is that I play too. Beating the teacher, or beating the teacher and the teaching assistant together, is the whole game as far as they are concerned. And they do beat me, more often than I would like.
Because it needs no setting up and no explaining. By the end of a lesson you have neither the time nor the appetite to introduce an activity, and a class that has been working for an hour will not take on anything new. This goes on the board in seconds, everybody knows the rules by the second time they have played, and it finishes on a clock rather than trailing off.
It also turns the last ten minutes into something. That slot is usually tidying up and waiting, and this fills it with genuine arithmetic or genuine vocabulary work without anyone feeling they have been given more work.
Reward getting within 100 of the target, not just hitting it exactly.
That one rule changes who plays. Landing exactly on the target is a small number of children in any class, and the rest work that out within two rounds and stop trying. A second tier at 100 away — or 50, or 10, whatever suits your class — means everybody still has something to aim at when the exact answer is beyond them, and it keeps thirty children working instead of five.
It is also the honest reflection of the maths. Getting to within 100 takes real number sense; it is only the last step that is brutal.
Because it takes the timekeeping away from you. A countdown everybody can see means no child asks how long is left, and you are not glancing at the wall clock and calling out times while trying to watch the room. The class paces itself against something visible, which is the entire point of a countdown — thirty seconds feels very different when you can watch it go.
The numbers round is mental arithmetic under time pressure across all four operations, and the order of operations does real work: children discover that multiplying first and adjusting is faster than adding their way towards the target. The letters round is vocabulary retrieval and spelling together, because a word only scores if it is spelled correctly — a more honest test than recognising a word on a page.
Neither feels like practice, which is the point. A class that groans at arithmetic will ask for another round of this.
Play in teams rather than as individuals if the class is wide-ranging, so nobody sits out for the whole thing. Have everybody write their answer down before anything is revealed, so the quickest children cannot call out and end the round for the rest. And join in properly — playing against them, not demonstrating. Losing to them occasionally is worth more than any amount of encouragement.
How do you play the Countdown game?
Pick your letters or numbers, start the countdown clock, then reveal the best answers — the longest word or the closest total.
Is there a letters round and a numbers round?
Yes — choose the Letters game to make the longest word, or the Numbers game to hit the target.
Can I use it on the whiteboard?
Yes — big tiles and a countdown clock, built for the class board.
Is the Countdown game free?
Yes — it is free to try.
What is it good for?
A quick vocabulary or mental-maths starter, a brain break, or an end-of-lesson challenge.
More word starters: Scrambler and Anagram Smash. Quick maths practice: Times Tables Blitz.
Written by a practising primary school teacher, and part of the free-to-try classroom tools on Sage Teachers. Last checked August 2026.