Puzzling

Synopsis

Puzzling had an interesting life. There was a civilian version from 2023, but a second series was not made. The producers made a celebrity series in 2025. We have reviews of both shows.

Original civilian Puzzling

After applying as individuals, top puzzlers are randomly assigned to teams of three. They play a number of rounds, before the best team goes head-to-head-to-head to find one winner.

The host is Lucy Worsley, familiar from a great many history documentaries, often related to her day job as head curator of Historic Royal Palaces, though hitherto she's always been very much a BBC face.

In Other Words is the first round. It's explained like this: "For each puzzle, you'll be given a category and some words. You must find a synonym for each of the highlighted words to uncover a famous title, name, or phrase."

Five questions for each team, two points for a correct answer; the other team can steal errors for a bonus point.

Pressure Points comes next. Players see two similar images, and an instruction, which should lead to a number. This is a timed event, the player on the left starts, and will keep playing until they get a question right. Two points for the team for a correct answer, one point off for an error or a pass. The question in play when time expires just dies, no points gained or lost.

We note, with interest, that Pressure Points doesn't use figures. This is a brave choice, and may help to depress scores from people who are really good at maths.

Rule Breakers comes next. A clue and four answers appear on the screen. Individually, the team select the answer that breaks a rule. One point for each player who gets the odd one out, and there's a further point if the team can identify what is the rule being broken. Questions don't go to the other team.

Picture This. A round to test visual intelligence. "Every picture puzzle has a question attached to it." It's another timed round – two points for a right answer, and play passes to the next person. One point away for an error, and play stays with you.

Prior to this round, the show has been slow and a bit ponderous. By comparison, this round is fast and furious, questions come thick and fast, and the scores can really go up.

Memory Bank is the final competitive round. The teams are shown 15 words, and then given clues that can be solved with one or more of the words. Buzz in with the correct number(s), and it's one point per word; an error costs a point but the question won't be thrown over.

Whichever team has the fewer points at the end of this round is the night's losers, and those three players leave with our thanks and nothing more.

The winning team go back to the individual podia we saw in "Rule Breakers" to play Divide & Conquer. It covers everything the players have seen tonight – synonyms, sums, the many sorts of visual puzzles, and back to the memory bank to name some of the words from their number.

Each member of the winning team starts with the number of points they'd scored in the main game. One point for a correct answer, one away for an error – and the erring player is also wallied out of the next question. Winning scores determined presence in the play-off; the five highest scoring winners went straight through to the final, while the remaining six played off.

There was a little bit of first episode weirdness, as pictures in the show as a whole (and this round in particular) were too small to see. Different timeslot, too: the premiere was delayed by fifteen minutes to 8.15pm for coverage of a news story about a submersible missing on a trip to the wreck of the Titanic, and more specifically the announcement that the submersible had been found destroyed with the loss of five lives. (By a rather macabre coincidence, Lucy's introduction to one of the rounds in that episode was a story about the original sinking of the Titanic.) They fixed the picture issue in later episodes, and let us play along at home.

Inevitably, Puzzling attracted comparisons to Only Connect, BBC2's behemoth of a quiz. Intellectual show, hosted by an upper-class blonde woman, drawing from the same contestant pool. But while Only Connect is a show of lateral thinking, Puzzling tests very orthogonal skills - you might be great at the memory round, but struggle on the sums. The winner of each episode has to prove their worth in some very different challenges.

We were impressed with the way Puzzling chose to foreground women and LGBTQIA+ folk, many shows had a majority of women and even more gay men. While the balance of the show could use some fine-tuning, the format was basically sound. This version was not renewed.

Celebrity Puzzling

But you can't keep a good show down, and Channel 5 revived the show as Celebrity Puzzling. This version was hosted by Jeremy Vine, familiar to 5's viewers from his morning debate show and Eggheads.

The show featured pairs of celebrities captained by Carol Vorderman and Sally Lindsay. Only the Memory Bank round remained from the original civilian series, though In Other Words evolved into two-word phrases with multiple synonyms for each word.

Thirdle has a block of five-letter, with the third letter missing. Fill in the missing letter from the words across, and they'll reveal a word going down. Starts with a block of three words, finishes with a block of five words.

Cinema Cypher and Song Cypher. Letters are replaced by all sorts of symbols, and doesn't tell us what each letter means. So we might see "horse-butterfly-squirrel-snake", but what does it mean? Jeremy will let the teams see some of the letters, but will reduce the number of points.

Word Blocks – given some letters on a three-by-three grid, players are asked to complete the three-letter words. The correct letters are given on tiles they can slide around; as the round progresses, more distractor tiles are included. Complete the grids against fairly tight time limits to score points.

Heat Map – a keyboard is shown, with some letters highlighted. They're colour coded, so only the letters used in the answer are highlighted, and the more they're used the darker they appear. What's the word or short phrase?

Intervenntion – a rather clever round, where we're looking for up to three things fitting into two categories. For instance, cakes and cities in the UK. Jeremy may provide an example like Bath Bun, two or three further answers can be offered.

Shape Shifters – our team sees a grid of possible answers, quite a few of which fit into a category. The aim is to pick the correct answers that also match the shape displayed. Jeremy tried to make "...and you can't rotate the shape" into a catchphrase from the first time we saw this game.

Join the Dots – a dazzling array of dots are shown. When joined, the dots form into letters, and as the animation plays we see that happen. What word or phrase will the dots make when the animation completes? This one's played on the buzzers, and is the only game that can be passed over to the other side.

Pathwords – three rows of five letters, with a lot of tiles that can be moved – and some letters that had to stay in place. The tiles were always in the correct column, so if the "G" was in the fourth column, it is the fourth letter of one of the words. Three grids to solve, with the initial letters and a decreasing number of other letters.

Funnundrum – anagrams of five, six, and seven letters, played with those Perspex tiles we saw earlier. Points for each word solved, and a bonus two points for the faster team.

Celebrity Puzzling was stripped at 7pm for two weeks (but see #Trivia). We reckon it's a lot like House of Games, with its difficult questions and celebrities figuring it out, and plenty of chances for us to shout along and feel clever than the celebs.

Champion

The civilian series was won by Peter.

The subsequent celebrity series consisted of standalone episodes with no series winner.

Inventor

Developed by Jack Borgeat, Matt Floyd, and Nick Mather; the celebrity version also credited Ryan Davies and I Literally Just Told You co-host Emy Adamson.

Theme music

According to the credits, original music by Possessed Music Box and Sitting Duck

Trivia

The civilian series was filmed at the Riverside Studios in London and aired on Thursdays, while the celebrity series was filmed at Enfys Studios in Cardiff. During the second week of the latter, no episode aired on Monday or Friday as Channel 5 preferred to carry men's football. By an unfortunate coincidence, Vine's version happened to premiere on the day his Eggheads predecessor Dermot Murnaghan announced that he had stage 4 prostate cancer.

Web links

My5 programme page (2023 civilian series)

My5 programme page (2025 celebrity series)

See also

Weaver's Week reviews: 2023 civilian series and 2025 celebrity series

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