Only Connect’s Ultimate Fan Puzzle Looked Like Complete Nonsense — Until the Beaks Spotted the Hidden Trick Almost Instantly

Three strange phrases appeared on the Only Connect board:

Phone driver

Ed Towers

Loin

To most viewers, they looked completely unrelated.

But the Beaks barely needed time to think.

Rob Cromarty suddenly hit the buzzer and told Victoria Coren Mitchell that the phrases were anagrams of the hieroglyphs used on Only Connect itself.

He was absolutely right.

And once the trick was revealed, an already difficult connection became a wonderfully self-referential puzzle made specifically for people who know the programme inside out.

Can You See the Anagrams?

Rob was playing alongside Dan Sproat-Clements and Aidan Sproat-Clements when the team was confronted with the sequence.

The key was ignoring what the phrases appeared to mean and instead rearranging their letters.

Phone driver → Horned viper

Ed Towers → Two reeds

Loin → Lion

Victoria confirmed the connection before giving the Beaks the final clue:

ET war

The team immediately completed the set.

ET war → Water

All four answers were names of the Egyptian-style hieroglyphs used by Only Connect to identify its questions.

It was a puzzle about Only Connect hidden inside Only Connect.

Victoria Had Some More Anagrams Ready

With the connection solved, Victoria wasn’t finished.

She revealed that “horned viper” could produce some rather more entertaining alternatives.

One was:

No perv hired

That prompted Victoria to joke, “If only, if only.”

She also offered “hide porn rev” and “hen provider” as further anagrams.

But the Beaks had already done the important work.

They hadn’t needed the fourth clue to identify the connection.

A Puzzle Built for Only Connect Fans

The challenge captured exactly why the programme can be so difficult.

Nothing about “Phone driver,” “Ed Towers” or “Loin” immediately suggests a meaningful connection.

Trying to link the meanings of those phrases sends the brain in completely the wrong direction.

Instead, contestants had to realize that the letters themselves mattered.

And even spotting that they were anagrams wasn’t necessarily enough. Players also needed enough familiarity with the programme to recognize horned viper, two reeds, lion and water as its familiar question symbols.

The Beaks managed both steps at remarkable speed.

A Fitting Teaser for the Show’s Return

The BBC released the 44-second puzzle clip ahead of the show’s 17th series, which was scheduled to begin on July 12 with 28 episodes.

The opening contest would see three NHS medics face a team of librarians in a battle billed as the Scrubs versus the Librarians.

But for longtime viewers, the Beaks’ puzzle offered an especially fitting warm-up.

Phone driver. Ed Towers. Loin.

Three phrases that looked like nonsense, one brilliantly hidden connection — and a team that saw through the trick before Victoria even needed to reveal the fourth clue.