Thrilled to see/hear that Bother’s Bar favourite The Answer Trap makes its triumphant return in the latest episode of the Here’s What You Do podcast with special guest star Bobby Seagull (it probably helps that one of the hosts used to be a writer on it).

You can find links to subscribe to the podcast and listen to the latest episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your provider of choice here.

It’s Christmas and that means games, so in a nod to old-skool Bother’s Bar before Discord came along and ruined everything I thought I’d give you some consumer advice for the Christmas holidays.

Game.city seem to be the online branch of Big Potato Games and offer many of their board game products in Jackbox-style form – you load the webpage up on your TV by whatever means and then you all sit around with your mobile phones and connect up using your phone’s web browser. However they’re increasingly broadening out into officially licenced TV show tie-ins that cost about a tenner each. About the same as a travel version of tie-in table games you might get from gift shops. But are they worth your hard earned cash?

We’ve covered Deal or No Deal previously and unfortunately we’d still find it difficult to recommend in it’s current form. It certainly has the look and feel (and Noel) of the original show, but the Banker’s algorithm remains terrible.

Catchphrase is a bit more successful and plays a decent enough elided ten-minute version of the show for up to eight players individually or in teams. Three rounds, but only four catchphrases (and Bonus catchphrases) a round. It seems to use actual catchphrases from the show, you buzz in and type filling in the boxes hangman style (so you know how many letters are in each word). It has an American voiceover doing all of Stephen Mulhern’s catchphrases. Which is weird! There’s an add-on pack with more catchphrases in it if you want.

More successful still Million Dollar Money Drop is a confusing melange of US and UK ideas and presentation – US set, graphics and voiceover, UK theme tune and questions. But it does actually play a pretty good version of Money Drop – you use sliders on your phones to deposit money on each drop, you get to see how much money people have put on each drop after each question (you all play simultaneously), try and last as long as you can or have the most money at the end to win. All the questions are voiced by US-non-Davina. Plays up to eight at once.

Which brings us to today’s release: The 1% Club. This plays an elided version of the show (90%, 70, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 and 1%) and you get three lives in lieu of passes, although once you reach the 10% question you’re instantly eliminated if you’re wrong. It certainly looks and feels like The 1% Club with the graphics and music present and correct. It does not have Lee Mack, it has someone who sounds like Kerry Godliman voicing all the questions, and you’ll have to do your own crowd work. I have to say I thought the questions I encountered felt a bit chestnutty (which of these lines are longer? Oh they’re both the same!) and it’s a pity there doesn’t seem to be much spelling leeway in the typed questions, although at least if it wants a number from you it will go straight to number input. My own feeling is that the questions are a bit easier than you’d expect at the difficulties you’d see on the show, although if your friends are basically normal I don’t know how much that would matter, and with three lives your friends would have to be complete thickos not to get quite far through each eight question stack.

Are they worth the money? At a tenner each I’m not sure I can confidently say they’re fully featured enough to definitively say yes. What I would say is that if you’re able to set them up easily on your TV, your mum is likely going to enjoy herself more than if you bought out Brass: Birmingham or whatever – that’s where these games are pitched really, gatherings of people who want to play a game but nothing too serious, and they already know how to play because they’ve watched it on telly.

This week’s big gameshow excitement is The 1% Club Rollover which doesn’t feel like it’s different enough to count as a spin-off like they’re constantly doing with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and the like (I say “and the like” – it’s mainly Millionaire) but feels like a noteworthy twist. If the 1% question isn’t answered correctly (or nobody goes for it) the prizemoney rollsover to the next night, but if you reach the 1% question you also come back whether you answer it correctly or not. Perhaps this makes the 1% question gamble more interesting, and if it’s rolled over a few times, the walk away decision more interesting, or perhaps it won’t we’ll see.

Last year they just had a load of unaired episodes to fill the post I’m a Celeb week gap and it seemed to go well enough that they’ve deliberately comissioned this special week this year. Are we at the point of 1% saturation?

Speaking of Millionaire spin-offs, last night was the inaugural Tournament Edition in Italy. It begins with 10 contestants answering three rounds of five questions at the fastest finger seats, with the three players who have the fewest cumulative correct answers (ties broken by time) being eliminated after each of the first two rounds, and one person eliminated after the third round leaving three people left who each win a small guranteed prize (€2k, €3k, €5k) and in turn attempt a 10-question ladder, with whoever getting highest (qualifying position breaking ties, and you can see how the previous contestants did) winning the money. Seemed to go down alright in Italy with the ever popular Gerry Scotti hosting, seems like a cheap-ish way to pad out an extended episode of Millionaire with only one main payout.

Ho, ho and indeed ho, it’s almost Christmas time and this proved quite interesting and useful last year so now the schedules are out, or will be out properly soon anyway, we can point you to things likely to be of interest during the festive fortnight. Right now this list is subject to change, nearer the time it will be pinned to the top so you’ll be able to find it easily.

The work-a-day stuff we’re probably not going to bother with, but if it’s a special or worthy of note I’ll include it.

This has been inspired by Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis’ Festive Forecaster, but thanks as ever to the Herodotus of Game Shows Daniel Hurst (play with his House of Games on X) for making the mental leap and coming up with the name. The list will be under a cut.

Sad to hear of the passing of Sandra Caron at the age of 89, The Crystal Maze was never the same without Mumsey. In lieu of a “best of Mumsey”, this video seems apposite.

In other news Dealvent starts tomorrow, at the bottom of that is a link to the Discord which will be worth your while joining as I’ve some tricks up my sleeve.