What it is: a character-level CNN with 80,804 parameters. The weights are a 1.79 MB JSON file and inference is about 100 lines of Python standard library — no PyTorch, no NumPy. It runs on a Pi Zero. It accepts digits, number words in eleven languages, arithmetic ("96 divided by 2", "deux fois trois"), Roman numerals, ordinals, clock times, currency, and fictional numbers ("shinty-six"). Anything with no numeric content is correctly ruled out as never able to be Numberwang. Whatever comes to 1 or 44 is Wangernumb and you rotate the board.
Held-out accuracy is 88.9% on 486 probes reserved from training by construction. The ceiling is ~98%, because roughly 2% of training labels are inverted at compilation time, in accordance with long-standing adjudication practice.
For comparison I ran Qwen3-1.7B on the same suite with the four verdicts as a constrained multiple choice: 51.9%, which is 2.3 points above answering "Numberwang" to everything. It answers "Numberwang" to 93% of inputs and never once identifies a Wangernumb. So the accuracy table has a verdict-distribution column, since one number can't tell a model that decides from one that agrees.
Honest weak spot: arithmetic is memorised, not computed. A conv net can't add. On operands reserved from training it gets 60% on symbolic expressions and 44% on foreign-language ones.
Dataset (185k adjudicated utterances), training script, evaluation harness and benchmark are all in the repo and reproduce from a fixed seed. Model card on HF: https://huggingface.co/graafhenk/numberwang
I think that series came out slightly after that era ended, I remember as a child (so years earlier) realising that snooker players at the time were often tipsy if not actually drunk, and also darts players, but by the time I was an adult the professionalism really changed that, turns out that if you're very good you probably are better at snooker when sober. I think the commentators, being often a previous generation of players, lagged that slightly.
"WATCH THE FOOTBALL! WATCH IT! IT'S GONNA MOVE!!"
"This tree smells like cum."
Mitchell and Webb had so many legendary lines.
... And forever to play it in!"
“I asked someone how the stock market works, and they sent me this link. I should feel duped or trolled, but I think I actually learned something.”
So I think as it stands right now this model can only determine whether a number would be Numberwang as the first number of a sequence, but even for that I still wouldn't rely on this in the actual game show.
> A NumberWang "board game in a box" was produced in 2008, including the board, numbers, two 400-sided dice, special hosting accessories and all 37 volumes of the rules so that you can say "That's NumberWang!" with confidence. For everyone from ages 8 to 88.
So even the true fan may falter in his or her judgement.
With All Due Love,
Sir Digby Chicken Caesar, Esq.
You reckless fool
I feel like this has only been Numberwang once when I've played with friends. Am I playing it wrong?
Then I watched that show and learned about Numberwang.
In the UK we watched it on the Beeb when it was aired.
I'm glad that someone has stepped up to revive the legacy of numberwang.
The “Usage” section doesn’t involve installing any dependencies, for example: https://github.com/GraafHenk/numberwang#usage