8pm, BBC1
New lottery vehicle for the ever popular Nick Knowles which Nasty Nigel Lythgoe has already bought the rights to for a US version. A couple answer questions and pick envelopes and try and win £100,000.
In my head, they keep picking pairs of envelopes answering a question and discarding the higher or lower amount depending if they get it right or wrong 24 times. I’m not convinced that’s going to be brilliant, but then I’ve probably got the format wrong. Anyway, we shall see.
I’m out this evening but please feel free to comment in my absence, I will watch and give my opinions after I’ve had a chance to watch it.
Edit: Right then.
- A couple come out, they’re guaranteed to win something but the question is what will it be?
- Nick Knowles produces 24 envelopes from *very swish* envelope dispensing table, with holders that rise up and down and everything. The contestants pick four.
- The distribution of cash in the envelopes is random, but the computer knows what is where and when it asks the four-choiced questions, applies the answers accordingly, the most correct answer being worth the most cash, the least correct answer being worth the lowest.
- Questions are of the highest/fastest/oldest/most types as favoured by The Million Pound Drop. The contestants select an answer by eliminating the other three. Knowles reveals the amounts in the eliminated envelopes and also reveals what the correct answer is. If they’ve picked the correct answer then it’s relatively easy for the couple to infer what’s in the envelope they have left. If they’re wrong it’s much more difficult as they aren’t shown where the answer they picked lies on the money scale. The chosen envelope is kept value unseen on the table in front of them.
- Repeat five more times until they have six envelopes in front of them.
- In the final round the six envelopes are whittled down to one in a method that’s quite difficult to get your head around. A question is asked with six answers (again in the same numerical style). Now the cash amounts are reversed, so the biggest amount is in the answer furthest away from the correct answer, and the lowest amount is the correct answer. The couple pick one answer of the six and the computer reveals which envelope that answer relates to. The couple hand it to Nick, Nick reveals the amount and it’s thrown in the bin. Repeat with one fewer answer each time.
- I was doing fine with this right up until the last question last night asking which had more people in it out of Spelbound and Diversity. Well, I had no clue what was going on and seemingly neither did Knowles or the girls who didn’t seem to know whether the answer they were picking was the one they wanted or the one they wanted to eliminate. It all seemed a bit messy.
- I think there’s quite a good quiz game here actually apart from right at the end. But the mystery regarding the Secret Fortune felt like a bit of a damp squib. If a couple go through the main game with no correct answers they’re certainly not going to have a certain envelope they will be rooting for during the end game. I think the disribution is a bit off, there should be more lower numbers to make the higher numbers look more exciting and add to the idea of jeopardy, there’s too many amounts grouped around the lovely but unexciting sorts of money which make for a lovely but unexciting show I think. But better than I had it in my head.
in Italy, Amadeus once said that he refused to host a game like this one beause it was “too evil for dinner time”
He went with 1vs100 instead.
There’s a lot of interesting information you can get from each question, but I’m not entirely sure there’s all that much you can *do* with that info. It depends on how the second section of the game’s going to play out, I guess.
Ok, he won that so ignore my comment, lol.
Apologies, wrong topic.
Anyone else whose first impression of Secret Fortune is that it’s very much a cross between MPD and DOND?
I’m liking the theory behind this, although I’m spending so much time thinking about it that I’m not sure I’m enjoying the *game*.
Presumably chances are very low that you’ll get the bottom few prizes because you’d have to think the worst answer is the best in a sorting question.
So we now know that envelope 15 contains £75k…
Haven’t got round to watching this yet but comments on Twitter overwhelmingly saying it’s too difficult to understand. Is it that way?
I’m assuming they can’t just pick an envelope, but if not, then I’m not sure all the interestingness about what the envelopes *could* theoretically contain is actually useful for forming strategies.
The questions are very trivia based like who is the tallest, who has received the most viewers on iPlayer etc… I do like the elimination method as it does have something to do with the format where shows like Eggheads, it’s simply to fill time. I also like the facts after each question.
I think the average viewer will criticise show on the basis that they’re getting through six questions inside thirty minutes where In It to Win It can get through twenty in the same time. Ironically, when IItWI first aired in 2002 viewers were criticising the fact it was too slow.
Oof… just five years covered the releases of Operation, Twister, Kerplunk and Buckaroo…
MPD comes to mind again. 😉 🙄
Meanwhile, they just HAD to bring in Myleene Klass for this first appearance of Dream Number’s replacement, didn’t they? 🙄 🙄
Hadn’t they, I should have said there.
I think, to its credit, the questions are quite well thought-out, without simple giveaways. Then again, I thought much the same of 101 Ways To Leave A Game Show…
I don’t think it’s overcomplicated for my tastes.
Great game, genuinely interesting twist, I’m not sure why the twitterverse believes it’s too complicated??
However as Des confirmed – and the contestants themselves – the massive flaw in the format is that we know where the big prize lies before the final round’s even begun. Don’t we?
Ok this is total pants. No point playing the rest of the quiz whatsoever, then.
Wish not granted, ladies… 😆
There was a William IV.
I wonder if they’ve gone to the trouble to do all the relevant calculations behind the scenes for the red button version to actually give a prize amount rather than simply “You got X right”. Would add a nice touch, at least.
Nope, it’s just “You got x right”. Disappointing, given the whole point of the game is *how* right you are.
But first… back to Myleene for this new draw…
I’ve got to admit, though, the draws really do not work as well with two presenters as they do with one.
Just lost the 75k oops
Had to be Spellbound and Diversity, didn’t it?
So there must be cheques inside all 24 envelopes, then.
A lot of criticism for this show on Twitter, with people calling it “boring”.
Most people said In It to Win It was boring and slow when it first aired in 2002 but it’s still airing after nearly nine years on air. I find it ironic that they can get through more questions (20+) than other shows we’ve seen come and go (1 Vs 100, Smarter Than a 10 Year Old etc…).
I can see where Nigel Lythgoe is coming from, the format can work in America since the format can be wrapped up inside 44 mins. Simply X10 the amounts and have $1 million as the top prize and they love dragging tension out.
Overall, it’s like Push the Button last year. It’s not brilliant but it’s not crap either. Simply it’s a bit meh. Definitely not like the crap lottery shows we’ve had in the past.
Well, it’s definitely better than This Time Tomorrow, and just about better than Guesstimation too.
Not as good as Who Dares Wins (I’m quoting all of Kernick’s shows here) or IItWI, though.
I was thinking more along the lines of Millionaire Mansion and The Peoples Quiz which was doomed from the start.
Like David B has stated, it’s bareable and I like how they use an elimination process that does work with the format but I have seen better but I have seen worse.
Why didn’t they call the show National Lottery: Elimination rather than Secret Fortune.
I really enjoyed Secret Fortune, the game does contain a lot of strategy, even more so when you add in the end game. Like tonights contestents, you can work out where some of the money is with right answers, however winning that cash is little to do with luck and a lot to do with getting the right answers.
I was entertained lets hope PTB was just as entertaining when i get round to watching that.
Doesn’t the theme use the same chord sequence as 101 Ways?
Anyway, thought this was alright, as shows go.
Now there’s something – the production company behind this show is not Endemol, or 12 Yard, or Talkback Thames, or even RDF…
It is, in fact, a local Belfast company.
Same production company behind Panic Attack.
No, that was Green Inc., another NI company. Wild Rover did the UK version of Just For Laughs.
That’s probably where I got mixed up.
It’s still quite a change from one of the big names, isn’t it?
I rather liked it. It’s quite elegant and there’s a clear link between knowledge and performance.
The font design is a bit mish-mash in places, though.
Of course, they couldn’t help themselves with the “You’re Secret Fortune business won’t be…” business and the looming closeups, but at least it was bareable.
Even Kernick was tolerable. I don’t think it’s a format one can love, but it passed the time well enough.
I quite liked it. Took me a while to work out how they were doing it when the amounts were obviously in the envelopes pre-game (just changing the order of the answers on screen).
I quite liked this idea – a gradiated sort of reward for knowledge. I did get confused with the second round of questions, I saw no reason for asking for the least. Aside from the pacing which I thought was a bit slow, I watched it mostly at x2, I enjoyed the show.
I think the point of the end game was that they would pick an envelope to get rid of on each question so they actually wanted to pick the most wrong answer each time so for the final question they wanted to choose the wrong answer to leave the envelope with the highest amount left.
Can someone explain the final question to me?
The question was:
Which of these Britain’s Got Talent acts has the FEWEST members?
Spelbound or Diversity?
The chose to get rid of Diversity, which was envelope 16.
Envelope 12 (presumably the correct answer) contained £16,000.
Envelope 16 (the one they ditched i.e. Diversity) contained £2,000.
Yet Spelbound had 13 members and Diversity had 11, therefore, Diversity was the correct answer therefore envelope 16 should have contained £16,000, not envelope 12.
For each question in the second round they had to choose the answer with the lowest value compared to the others. So with the final 50/50 question they had to choose the WRONG answer. They eliminated Diversity which was envelope 16, so they kept Spellbound which represented envelope 12.
I think they really should call it National Lottery: Elimination rather than Secret Fortune.
TOTAL COCK UP!!!
The girls discarded Diversity and chose Spellbound INCORRECTLY! This CLEARLY DEMONSTRATES that the format is too confusing – even Nick didn’t work it out.
Who pays the £16,000 the girls won when they should have only got £2,000.
That said, one girl did seem to know the answer!
What a total cock up!!
The way I saw it was that in the second part of the show, the more correct you are, the lower the value of envelope you eliminate (for example, in the Beatles question, ‘Hey Jude’ sold the fewest copies which the question asked, so that answer would get rid of the £1,000). The girls picked Diversity as their answer because it was the correct answer to the question (having the fewest members), thus eliminating the £2,000 and winning the £16,000.
Hope that makes sense.
I thought it was OK, if not spectacular- I do wonder if it would work a little better if they used opinion/survey questions instead of ranking questions. It’s a solid B in my book…
I actually really liked Secret Fortune. I completely agree that for a couple questions I was entirely lost and then it made sense.
The endgame in my opinion worked very well. I thought that it had levels of tension up there with MDP and The Cube, despite offering a fraction of the prize.
The set was strange. It was like someone took the Lottery Draws set and made it rounder.
I don’t like how their gameboard just used plain text for the totals. How hard would it have been to just jazz it up in some way?
A US version of “Secret Fortune?” Gosh, I never would have guessed. Would it be something like Cash Explosion?
Having now read the rules (but still not having seen it yet), do you think this show would benefit from a Goldenballs-esque cash distribution system, possibly where the top prize (100k) is the only sure value, and everything else below that is random? That’d make it harder to infer values, if you don’t know what they are ahead of time.
Now I’ve seen a full show:
Sometimes we know that channels rush out spoiler shows for other channels’ forthcoming high-profile shows. This has very much the feeling of being a DoND spoiler, but about five years too late. It’s definitely a show that’s more to my taste – the questions are reasonably fresh, and I like the mathematics at play behind the scenes of the show – and I think you can make a case that it’s a better show, but it feels… spurious and obviated by Deal, somehow.
I think the disribution is a bit off, there should be more lower numbers to make the higher numbers look more exciting and add to the idea of jeopardy, there’s too many amounts grouped around the lovely but unexciting sorts of money which make for a lovely but unexciting show I think.
Very much this, and that’s a concerning conclusion to reach. It may be a better show for some other channel which can offer more of the bigger prizes and more of the smaller ones as well – because, as so nearly happened yesterday, when the final two questions will determine whether the players will win £12k, £18k or £20k then while that would have been brilliant TV ten years ago it does feel… not so much “twentieth century” as “mid-’90s”. It’s almost as if the show could do with some of Deal’s confidence to play with its own format and throw in the occasional Ganker’s Bamble from time to time, or similar, but that doesn’t feel very fair-play BBC, somehow.