{{Use dmy dates, date=July 2014 ''Puzzle Panel'' was a light-hearted, though cerebral

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panel game A panel show or panel game is a radio or television game show in which a panel of celebrities participates. Celebrity panelists may compete with each other, such as on ''The News Quiz''; facilitate play by non-celebrity contestants, such as on ' ...

that was broadcast between 1998 and 2005. An additional series was broadcast over the winter-spring of 2011, and a further series was broadcast during the same period in 2012. It has been written and presented by puzzle columnist for ''

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'', Chris Maslanka. In each half-hour programme, the panellists brought along one puzzle with which to test the mental mettle of the other two panellists and their host. Essentially, it was just for fun and no points were scored. Another puzzle, the Panel Beater, was contributed by a listener. A prize was available for solving a competition puzzle.

Programme format

During the opening introduction, Chris Maslanka would present a few short puzzles for the listeners and panellists to work on during the course of the programme. He would then introduce the three panellists, and invite each in turn to present a puzzle to the others. Each panellist would present a different type of puzzle. In general, one would be a numerical puzzle, one would be literal (i.e. a word puzzle) and one would be a logic puzzle. Interwoven between these puzzles, Chris would invite the panellists to solve the puzzles from the introduction, present the Panel Beater puzzle, and read out correspondence from the listeners. The Listener's Puzzle would be set at the end of the programme. On some occasions, this would involve a short play with the parts played by the members of the panel. A frequent theme for these plays centred on Chris playing the role of

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. Occasionally, Chris would play the piano, with him and the panellists singing a song, sometimes using some awful (but very well crafted) puns.

Panellists

Regular panellists included: * David J. Bodycombe, puzzle devisor *Victor Bryant, mathematician *

Geoffrey Durham Geoffrey Durham (born 22 July 1949) is a British comedy magician and actor who was known for many years as "the Great Soprendo". Early life Durham was born in East Molesey, Surrey, England. At the age of ten, he developed an interest in ma ...

, magician * Rob Eastaway, author and lecturer *Val Gilbert, Daily Telegraph

crossword A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to th ...

editor *

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, newspaper columnist *

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champion and writer * Don Manley, crossword writer *Prof. Angela Newing, research scientist *Prof.

David Singmaster David Breyer Singmaster (born 1938) is an emeritus professor of mathematics at London South Bank University, England. A self-described metagrobologist, he has a huge personal collection of mechanical puzzles and books of brain teasers. He is m ...

, mathematician and puzzle collector Other panellists included: *

Johnny Ball Johnny Ball (born Graham Thalben Ball; 23 May 1938) is an English television personality, a populariser of mathematics and the father of BBC Radio 2 DJ Zoe Ball. Early life Ball was born in Bristol and attended Kingswood Primary School on t ...

, TV presenter and maths populariser *Philip Carter, prolific author of IQ puzzle books *Prof.

Marcus du Sautoy Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (; born 26 August 1965) is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and pop ...

, mathematician and presenter of

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Mind Games Playing mind games (also power games or head games) is the largely conscious struggle for psychological one-upmanship, often employing passive–aggressive behavior to specifically demoralize or dis-empower the thinking subject, making the ...

* Richard Vranch PhD., performer In the last two programmes of the 2005 series, a couple of listeners were invited to join the panel. Programme five's guest, Stephen Buxton, was a regular Panel Beater contributor, and programme six's guest, Jenny Murray, was a member of the public who regularly answered the Listener's Puzzle correctly.

Producers

The original producer was Harry Parker.

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produced a few series, and the 2005 series was produced by Harry Parker once more.

External links

''Puzzle Panel'' page on BBC website
– includes some puzzles from early series BBC Radio 4 programmes British radio game shows 1990s British game shows 2000s British game shows 1998 radio programme debuts 2005 radio programme endings