A four-year-old boy is gunning for the top job on Countdown after dazzling the internet by solving puzzles in seconds as he watches from his living room.
Acer Gibson went viral after his father filmed him standing in front of the TV as host Rachel Riley presented the Channel 4 show’s number game – and beating contestants to the answer.
He completed the round in as little as 15 seconds from his home in Shepshed, near Loughborough, with footage of his exploits clocking more than 30 million views.
His father, entrepreneur Liam, 36, has since been contacted by Riley, the maths whizz who oversees the show’s puzzles, to pass on a special challenge for Acer.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he solved all of them within 30 seconds.
Riley is already aware that this pre-school prodigy could one day be coming for her job, telling The Sunday Times: ‘I’ll have to watch my back in a few years.’
Mr Gibson has now revealed his son’s talents were obvious from an early age, as by the age of one he could count from one to 10 and back down again.
By the age of two he could recite his parents’ phone numbers and his parents began to introduce him to times tables using toy vegetables.
‘We started with simple additions: one plus one, one plus two, and I stopped at ten and he wanted to carry on,’ Mr Gibson told the newspaper.
His trajectory continued at pace and by the age of three he was writing down the square root of numbers such as 196.
Mr Gibson said he was driven in part by the fact that he dropped out of school at 16 to earn a living making bricks, but had always possessed an aptitude for mental arithmetic himself.
Little Acer was filmed standing in front of the TV as Channel 4 host Rachel Riley drew the cards for the famous numerical challenge
The little boy’s beaming father could be seen congratulating his son and instructing him to clap his hands to celebrate the achievement
‘I guess after never having that kind of relationship and someone to encourage this kind of passion when I was at school, I wanted to give Acer the chance to get ahead before he starts school,’ he told The Sunday Times.
Impressively, Acer’s proficiency at Countdown puzzles emerged barely two weeks ago when his father spotted him standing in front of the TV doing the numbers and decided to film it.
Asked what he would like to be when he grows up, the boy replied: ‘Actually I want to do the numbers on the Countdown show. Yeah, I want Rachel Riley’s job.’
His talents were also spotted by Jase Cullen, a Countdown Octochamp, a player who wins eight heats and is then invited back to play in the series finals.
He has contacted the family and told Mr Gibson that Acer could be a future champion, even offering to provide age-appropriate tips for the letters game.
In the clip that went viral earlier this month, Acer can be seen repeating each number as it was selected before listing a complicated sequence of sums and eventually arriving at the target of 622 – all before the chiming of the clock.
Mr Gibson could be seen congratulating his son and instructing him to clap his hands to celebrate the achievement.
‘You clever, clever boy,’ his father told him.
There was no such maths prowess on show from the contestants themselves, however, as neither managed to solve the puzzle in time.
