Only Connect’s Missing Vowels Puzzle Left Viewers Completely Stumped — And One Of The Answers Was Hiding In Plain Sight

Only Connect has built its reputation on puzzles that can make even experienced quiz fans question their own intelligence, but one Missing Vowels round delivered an especially devious twist.

Contestants were presented with four strings of apparently meaningless consonants and asked to restore the missing vowels. All four answers belonged to the category “Happening right now.”

The first three required players to think about the era, century and wider world around them.

The fourth was much closer to home.

In fact, the answer described exactly what the contestants were doing at that very moment.

Four Clues, No Vowels

Victoria Coren Mitchell’s BBC Two quiz is deliberately different from conventional trivia shows.

Contestants are regularly asked to identify obscure connections, complete sequences and decipher words or phrases after crucial information has been removed.

The Missing Vowels round strips every vowel from a series of related answers before changing the spacing between the remaining consonants.

That can turn an otherwise familiar phrase into something almost unrecognizable.

During Series 15, Episode 5, the category was “Happening right now.”

The four clues were:

C NZC R

TW NTYF RS TCNT RY

CL MTC HNG

MS SN GV WL SR ND

Without the category, the combinations could represent almost anything. Even knowing all four answers related to the present moment did not immediately make them obvious.

Can You Decode Them Before Seeing The Answers?

The first clue, C NZC R, becomes:

Cenozoic Era

The Cenozoic is the geological era in which we currently live.

The second, TW NTYF RS TCNT RY, translates to:

Twenty-First Century

The third clue, CL MTC HNG, is:

Climate Change

But the fourth clue contained the round’s cheekiest piece of misdirection.

MS SN GV WL SR ND becomes:

Missing Vowels Round

The contestants were literally participating in the answer while attempting to identify it.

It was the kind of self-referential trick perfectly suited to Only Connect — obvious once revealed but remarkably difficult to see while the clock is running.

Another Missing Vowels Challenge Was Even More Chaotic

That was far from the only time the format has transformed simple words into intimidating walls of consonants.

In Episode 37 of Series 12, contestants faced the category “five words in alphabetical order.”

One clue appeared as:

BGB GBGB GBG

The answer was a sequence of five three-letter words in alphabetical order:

BAG — BEG — BIG — BOG — BUG

Another intimidating string read:

PTTN GPTT NGPT TNGPT TNGP TTNG

Restoring the vowels produced:

PATTING — PETTING — PITTING — POTTING — PUTTING

The third was:

MSS SMS SSM SS SMS SSM SSS

That became:

MASSES — MESSES — MISSES — MOSSES — MUSSES

And finally:

LS TL ST LST LS TL ST

The answer was:

LAST — LEST — LIST — LOST — LUST

The challenge comes from more than simply adding vowels. Contestants also have to reconstruct where each word begins and ends while simultaneously identifying the connection tying the answers together.

Victoria Coren Mitchell Once Called Another Puzzle ‘Ungettable’

Missing vowels are not the only Only Connect puzzles capable of causing headaches.

Another episode featuring The Golfers and The Jukeboxers produced a connection question so difficult that Coren Mitchell herself openly criticized it.

Contestants initially saw two mathematical equations whose answers amounted to 20 acres and 43 acres.

The third clue was a photograph of a combine harvester.

The Jukeboxers eventually identified what should appear as the fourth clue: a key.

The connection was The Wurzels’ No. 1 hit “The Combine Harvester.”

The clues represented elements from the song’s lyrics: 20 acres, 43 acres, a brand new combine harvester and the key.

Even though one team managed to solve it, Coren Mitchell made her feelings about the puzzle unmistakably clear.

“This is my least favourite question in the whole series,” she said. “I think it’s ungettable. I hate almost everything about it.”

Coming from the host of a programme famous for extraordinarily difficult questions, that was quite an assessment.

Why Only Connect’s Simplest-Looking Rounds Can Be So Difficult

Part of the show’s appeal is that knowing more facts does not necessarily guarantee success.

The Missing Vowels round demonstrates that perfectly.

“Climate Change” and “Twenty-First Century” are hardly obscure phrases. “Missing Vowels Round” is even written into the structure of the programme itself.

But remove the vowels, erase the natural spacing and introduce a countdown, and familiar language can suddenly look completely alien.

That transformation has helped make Only Connect one of television’s most distinctive quizzes.

Sometimes the answer requires obscure cultural knowledge or a complicated connection.

Other times, as MS SN GV WL SR ND proved, the answer is sitting directly in front of the contestants.

They just have to see it.

Only Connect airs on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer.