The Cube: 9:15pm ITV1
Philip and The Body return for a new five episode run (so by my reckoning there will be three Olympic editions being held on to until July) of The Cube. Will this be the series someone beats The Cube? I have literally no idea, I’m also being facetious.
Ooh, a new game! I didn’t catch its name as I’m watching the Raab as well, but it involved rolling a silver ball along a table causing it to roll up a perspex incline and the player had to then catch the ball.
It was called Curvature. Looked harder than the guy made it look!
I caught it out of the corner of my eye, he made it look REALLY easy! 😀
They played it on the Spanish version. That guy had a LOT of trouble with it.
“Will this be the series someone beats The Cube? I have literally no idea, I’m also being facetious.”
Aren’t Mo Farah’s exploits already well-known? 😕 😉
Depends if Mo’s show was filmed before Phil made that comment.
Pointing out implied comedy is the new comedy! 🙂
Another new game – Repetition.
A 3×3 grid is on the floor of The Cube, and one by one, squares will flash red. As soon as the player sees a square repeat itself, they must press the button.
Another new game! I missed the name of this one this time, it’s “pin the tail on the donkey” but in the cube: a mark is placed on the floor of the cube and removed, then you must put the blindfold on and put a marker where the mark was.
ok, according to the post-break voiceover it’s called Locate.
You can forget about that battle between The Voice vs Britain’s Got Talent. The true battle last night was The Cube vs Million Pound Drop Live since they went head to head.
The Cube: 4.09m (17.5%) , +1: 152k (0.8%)
The Million Pound Drop Live: 1.12m (5.1%) . +1: 176k (1.1%)
Very good figures for The Cube. Shame it will drop next week to around sub 3 million when it’s up against The Voice.
How are those good figures for the Cube? The end of BGT was watched by over 12m. That is terrible retention and share.
Nice try/well done.
Oh, it’s been too long. I missed him.
Yep, you missed the obligatory “:)”.
Just caught up with The Cube. Lots of small visual tweaks mostly for the better. Very polished and well produced as usual.
Question: “Cube transfer” – this game has been played before, but I swear it had a different name. Has it been renamed?
Bonus question: Is “cube transfer” the only game with a two word title? I don’t like the fact that it has two words #cubepurist
Answer: The wikipedia article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cube_(game_show)#Games ) doesn’t appear to suggest it ever had another name.
Bonus answer: same source says there are quite a few two word games: Revolving Shot, Stop Zone, Time Freeze, Time-Split (using Pointless rules), Dead Stop, Rapid Fire, Blind Shot, Cube Transfer, Drop Zone, Dual Reflex, Mid-Point, Hit Rate, Memory Flash, Drop Shot, and Side-Track. There is also a game called Transferal, so you couldn’t name it just Transfer without confusion.
I’m an idiot. Turns out “I don’t like the name Cube Transfer”. Thanks Lewis!
Cube Transfer came up on Spanish Cube today, where it’s just called “Intercambio” … perhaps not the most accurate or distinctive title, but just one word.
Which according to Google Translate means “exchange”.
I wonder what they call the proper Exchange…
Perhaps it was merely the need to get two fairly high-scoring contestants within one show, but the overall pace of the episode seemed refreshingly brisk. Again, though, when Jodie got down to one life, you could look at the timer and know that she was going to make it with just enough airtime left to reveal the next not-to-be-played game.
And, yes, all of the “new” games have already been played on the Spanish version, although I don’t think we previously knew that Repetition had a half-second time limit when the repetition appeared. Given how long ago that UK Series 5 taped — and how short the Spanish taping window presumably is to accommodate their huge number of episodes (36 already, just so far!) — it’s reasonable to assume that the “new” games were actually played first in the UK but took longer to be broadcast.
I was surprised that many of the changes from the other international versions still didn’t make it to the UK. No steady on-screen trial run/simplify icons (Germany), no updated main theme (Spain), no quick one-screens of contestant background (Italy). (Conversely, the customized game-intro themes from the UK aren’t being used anywhere else that I know of.) Yes, the opening titles were updated somewhat, but it all felt … familiar, perhaps in a “comfortable” way.
And finally, one more time: Gosh darn it all to heck anyway, when are we going to get a U.S. version?? GSN could use a version of the top-heavy Spanish money tree and not bust its tiny budget.
Gah, why did they have to start using that cue after every single win? I used to love it, but it’s getting old really fast.
They seem to be doing the Spanish thing of having SLIGHTLY different versions of it.
If I’ve got it right, the £100k win cue is going to be FANTASTIC.
New game featured on tonight’s show – Tremor.
The player has a tray of 15 cylinders in a 3×5 formation and must carry it from one corner of The Cube to the other without any of the cylinders falling over.
Another new game, Vertical Drop
A small red square scrolls along one side of the floor, with a larger target blue square one the other. Pressing the button “drops” the red square, which must fall entirely into the blue square.
And another new one – Vertical Drop.
The player stands in the lower-left corner of The Cube with a button. The first press starts a red square moving across the top of the floor. The second press drops the square down the floor towards a blue target situated to the right of the player, which the red square must hit to succeed.
And Multisphere’s gone back to having the player release the balls instead of using the nifty mechanism it used to have, and it used 20 balls at the £2k level.
Given some games have got difficulty levels. I suspect they’ll keep the original Multisphere “manual” technique for the lower amounts but use the “automatic” mechanism for the higher amounts.
Well Tremor looks like a horrible game, I suspect it’ll eat a lot of lives or be played perfectly when we see it in action proper.
Did they feel a little sorry for the guy on Quadrant? He won it just by placing one foot in the start zone, surely both feet should have had to be in it before winning?
New game – Collision.
The player is required to roll a large red ball along a narrow beam and knock over 9 tall thin cylinders in a 3×3 square.
I THOUGHT it was 9, as it showed 9 when The Body did her demo, but the player only had to knock down 4.
I’m guessing 9 pins is for higher amounts then, say £20k or £50k (then a simplify would reduce it to 4).
To be honest, just getting to the end is the challenge. If you play it straight down the middle, the ball’s big enough to knock them all down, regardless of how many are there.
And now, people. THAT is how you play Direction!
I always thought the easiest way to beat it would just be to go as fast as you could, less time to make errors.
Pretty relevant: If you don’t want spoilers, do not look on The Cube’s wikipedia page. I’ve been trying to keep myself clean of information but some twozzock has spoilt things for me -_-
If it’s the spoiler I’m thinking of, it was publicised in at least one tabloid paper after it happened.
In that case: Screw the tabloids.
Even worse, I tried to avoid looking and The Sun thought it was a great idea to put it on the bloody front page.
Only because some audience member leaked it…. no confidentiality form to sign like DOND has.
New game: Barrage.
There’s a ball launcher with ten tubes on the floor. After 5 seconds, all ten will launch a ball into the air, nine red, one white. Catch the white ball before it hits a surface of The Cube.
Oh, turns out there’s more than nine red balls. Lots of double-loading. Looks fantastic in Matrix-cam.
Oh, according to Wikipedia, The Cube China airs tomorrow.
Yes … any clue on how possibly to view and/or obtain it? My Chinese reading/searching ability is even worse than my Russian.
Here’s a promo that’s, well, bizarre. If not for the actual logo showing up (real tiny) at the end, I would have thought this was for a completely different show.
http://youtu.be/feHH6ibswpQ
And a second promo that’s more what we would expect. Interesting that the games all look like they’ll have both Chinese and English names.
It looks like there’s no audience? Interesting.
On rewatch it might just be me being silly, but when the cheering really sounds like just the contestants.
If the Google Translate boffins are accurate, it looks like Cube China might not have actually premiered Sunday night after all. No wonder I can’t find video anywhere.
http://ent.sina.com.cn/v/m/2012-05-08/12023624819.shtml
“Morning News last night, sitting in front of the TV waiting to watch Dragon TV (microblogging), the latest game pass through the program “Dream Cube” audience disappointed – “Dream Cube” did not wait to come to is the “Dance Forest Conference “replay of the finals. Reporter learned yesterday from the “Dream Cube” director Dai Zhongwei at the temporary layout adjustment, “Dream Cube” are not as about broadcast, the first phase of the program be postponed one week, change the broadcast on the evening of this week.”
Also: What’s with the new version of Barrier (yes, I know, everyone’s favourite game) with the side mounts that appear to be much more difficult to dislodge? Even the demo sequence with The Body was re-recorded.
Barrier? Everyone’s sarcastic-favourite-game? Oh dear.
(still nobody will remember I said this when the time comes to know why. unless you’ve thought of it by now)
If everyone had a sarcastic second-favourite game, would it be Construction?
After all, it was played so many times in the last series… 😉
Going over the list of games, I’m surprised to see so many I’d completely forgotten about that they haven’t used in forever.
They used to have a few water-based games: Precision, Drop Zone, Drift… You would think given that water would look sick-as in a Matrix shot, they’d play about a bit more with a larger quantity of it.
Off this list, I feel like I don’t remember when they last played Laser, Mid-Point, Quantity, Recall, Vault, Void, Spike, Transferal or Elevation.
If you’re reading this, Adam, one of those please every time you want to do Barrier 🙂
Here’s the premiere of Cube China.
Many thanks!
Thanks for posting. You can see why this show has gone around the world, it translates perfectly thanks to the awesome presentation.
(spoiler) The decision on playing game 6 took forever, it was obvious he needed the money – but pinpoint with 2 lives? No thanks!
Interestingly enough, this version of The Cube (which is apparently called “Dream Cube”) is played for prizes, not cash. That’s why the “money tree” looked different for each of the two games on this week’s show.
Apparently, the “jackpot” is “to achieve the contestant’s dream.” In the first contestant’s case, that dream was apparently to become a good football player (hence his jersey); a footnote on Wikipedia says, “For example, the prize of the first 5 games for the very first contestant were football boots, complete set of freestyle football equipments, freestyle football party, replacement of old home appliances and a freestyle football studio respectively.”
But yes, even with this change, the game format works the same … and can be appreciated even without knowing the local language.
I’m curious about what appeared to be the interactive component of the game. It looked like viewers were being invited to use SMS to participate somehow (and was that a list of winners at the end?), apparently for an increasing fee or reward, on their “Andriod” (sic) devices. Can someone explain more about this?
Thanks for the link!
A couple oddities and bits of trivia I noticed:
* The Body is called roughly “The Person of Dreams”.
* The host still calls them “lives”, but the voice says “You still have X chances left”.
* The display on the lower left that comes up before each game seems to give statistics about each game. For Tower, it says “[something something] number of people: 1440 / average 1.65 lives lost”. Then it seems to advertise the Android (or should I say, “Andriod”) game app with what I think is a 5-digit SMS short code to text for it. I’m not 100% sure on this, since a couple characters were too blurry for me to make out. But I presume these are play statistics for the Android game, especially since on Rebound, the counter increased from 2002 people to 2008 people then to 2024 people while it was still on-screen.
* The decision on Pinpoint was because he was seriously considering going on – he said if he left, he would feel like a failure for just giving up and will never know if he could do it, while his parents were trying to argue him out of it. The host asked the audience which of them thought he should play on, to scattered cheers and applause. Then he asked the player if he wanted to hear those who think he shouldn’t keep playing. He nodded, and got a lot more applause in response. The host even gives him 30 seconds to make a decision, counts down from 10 (although only 13 seconds had passed – probably 7 seconds of silence were edited out), and he still took another 10 seconds after the host finished and asked him for a final decision.
That video seemed to be full of errors, didn’t it? I noticed on the first game when those statistics came up, it called the game REPONSE instead of Response.
And some more:
* The Simplify on Dual Reflex increased the delay before the second ball was fired. Previously it was fired 0.75s after the first, it was increased to 1 second. I don’t think we’ve ever seen this Simplify before. (The contestant was spooked by the popping sound those launchers made, and when asked how she hoped it would be simplified, she said “Can it not emit that sound?”)
* The host said he lost 6 lives himself on Dual Reflex – presumably this means the host also play-tested the games.
Thanks for the link.
Objective really do have format, games and show presentation rights nailed down when selling the show overseas don’t they?
Pretty much every other version of The Cube I’ve seen could have been recorded at Fountain in Wembley (apart from the Saudi Arabian version – which was), such is how similar the audience seating, the cube, stage and lighting actually is.
But are ‘the body’ game explanation vt’s the same as the uk? They do seem pretty non-territory specific no matter where you use them.
I think they’re all filmed in London. I’d imagine the high-speed camera setups are probably so expensive that it’d be much cheaper just to fly everyone out to London.
Nope, I think some broadcasters around the world film their own version in their own territory – Spain and the Ukraine at least I believe.
OK, did anybody else see the celeb special with Sally Gunnell in it?
She beat a game with 4 lives remaining and then this appeared on screen for just a moment: http://www.timhalbert.com/others/vlcsnap-2012-05-19-00h41m05s71.png
WTF? Is there any possible rational explanation for this? Is this an accidental pre-production shot that leaked into the final VT or something? Unbelievably poor editing if so. Not even the right number of lives, let alone graphics package!
I’m sure a TV person can explain.
It ‘looks’ (someone with slightly more practical knowledge hopefully will come along and confirm, or clip me around the ear for being so stupid) like it’s a basic reference caption for that stage in the game put on during recording, and then this should have been removed and replaced with the correct style of show graphics later in final post.
Normally, these things if they do make the final edit, are due to it being a rush job because of the tight timescale between recording, the edit and then transmission.
Endemol (or BBC Post Prod) make a right balls-up on the Jimmy Carr Deal or No Deal, in the first or second offer, showing the wrong amounts left caption which was taking from a far more advanced stage of the game, which meant the eagle-eyed knew he was going to have a stinker of a round very soon.
Cue the DOND thread on Digital Spy and the Bankers Twitter feed going into meltdown…
But hey, these things happen. Everyone can make mistakes under pressure, and no-one gets hurt or killed if a wrong caption is shoved on the screen.
Of course, no physical harm done, and it’s more insightful than anything else.
Next thing you know, BBC3 will be making a new series “Britain’s worst gameshow bloopers”
As done by a sneering Robert Webb.
Another new game tonight: Block.
7 oblong blocks on a table, and a square area to fit them all in within the time limit. It’s a tangram, but with just rectangles instead of triangles.
(played at game 2, though I can imagine it being game 1)
I’ve added that game to the Wikipedia page, and as I was looking through the game list, I saw some I’d never heard of before.
Aquatica – In the Cube there is a large tank filled with water. The player must hold their breath in the water for 40 seconds. The timer starts when the players’s nose and mouth are completely in the water. The Simplify reduced the timer to 30 seconds.
Identification – In the Cube there is a large table with tiles numbered 1 to 20 on it but they are in a non- chronoligical order and are tilted to the side. The player has 15 seconds to identify which square is which and place each numbered block in it’s correct position.
Ball Rush – A ball will be dropped somewhere from the ceiling of the Cube. The player then has 0.75 seconds to run from their starting zone and pick up the ball.
Connection – A complex track fills the Cube. There are seven missing pieces of track. They are each placed somewhere in the Cube. At any given moment the ball will be released from a tunnel and onto the track travelling very quickly. It will complete the track in 5 seconds. Picking up one piece of track at a time the player must connect the pieces to the track so the ball remains in contact with the track and drops into the golden container at the end of the track.
Limbo – Whilst wearing a blindfolded helmet, the player msut walk to a low pole and pass under it without any part of their body dislodging it. The Simplify raised the pole by 30cm.
Mousetrap – In the Cube there is a large glass box square dome and inside the dome is a maze. In the maze there are holes. The player must move the beam around using the handles so the ball makes it way around the maze without dropping through any of the holes and lands in a golden container at the end of the maze. The Simplify reduced the size of the holes.
Were these games played on OUR version, or are people just adding games from other countries’ versions of the show?
If not Ball Rush, I’ve seen something similar where a button is pressed to release a ball on the other side of the cube.
The others I have no idea. Maybe it’s some joker putting their own ideas for games on there!
(Mousetrap sounds very similar to a game I recall on TCM actually, in future zone, with planets and black holes…)
Incidentally, on April 15th above I listed every 2 word game on the wikipedia page at the time, and it appears Ball Rush wasn’t there then. So unless it’s been on this series and I haven’t seen it (not unlikely, to be honest) then it’s not from our version.
Very strange, I was a little bit worried that I’d missed an episode or two, but the last show before the one that’s on now was the one with Sally Gunnell on, wasn’t it?
That’s certainly the last one I saw. Can’t guarantee it’s the last there was at all, as I said I’m liable to miss these things.
Aquatica is a load of baloney. Not sure about ball rush, but connection is definitley a game. The contestant who did was actually defeated. Never heard of Limbo but Mousetrap is a game. Contestsnat did a trial run and the ball dropped into the first hole!
Oh, those wacky Wikipedia “editors.” At least it made me laugh! But they forgot at least two that I’m aware of:
Compression: At the start of the game, the top of the cube begins to slowly drop toward the contestant. Meanwhile, the contestant must build a tower of nine large white blocks that, when complete and in a sufficiently sturdy construction, will stop the top of the cube from making contact with the contestant’s head. When played for £100,000, the speed increases significantly.
Gas: An air jet mounted at the bottom of the cube begins to release a debilitating but non-lethal gas into the cube. A large rope is hanging from the top of the cube. The contestant must climb the rope to get above the gas cloud and stay there for five seconds (10 seconds when played for £50,000).
They could even create a game based on their competition across at the Beeb :
Voice Chair
The contestant must sit in a chair within The Cube facing 180 degrees away from Philip Schofield. When the floor of The Cube flashes red, the contestant must press their button within 0.5 seconds to rotate their chair.
BUT…could you put up with Will.I.Am…FOR £10,000?!
I’m fairly confident someone is taking the piss here.
Well that was a first- Contestant retired hurt…
I suppose it says something that we’re now almost 24 hours after the Series 6 premiere and this is apparently the extent of the discussion here so far.
+: likeable contestants, one of whom had long swooshy hair that looked great in the bullet-time shots. More long-haired contestants please.
-: zero new games AFAICT. More new games please.
I only caught the last twenty minutes. Quite enjoyed it, but it’s not really a show I go out of my to watch these days.
I believe they played Chase yesterday which is a new game, and just come out on the iThing version.
It was a good enough premiere, assuming they pulled out one of the “better” episodes to lead things off.
Chase was new to the UK, but I’m fairly certain it showed up some time ago in one of the other versions — Ukraine, I think.
And speaking of Ukraine, I was surprised that some of the visual changes that popped up in the recent Ukraine series didn’t make it here — especially the fake-projected-on-side-of-cube status display that doesn’t really accomplish much but looks pretty darn cool.
What everyone wants to know is: If you break a nail playing Expulsion and start to bleed, do they have to run all 500 balls through the sanitizer? Is the player allowed to apply a Band-Aid before trying again? These are the Things That Matter.
Ah! Maybe that is why Chase did not feel like a new game to me.
I just finally got around to watching the last two weeks of episodes. Am I the only one who cringed every time Nicky’s boyfriend told her to throw the ball hard? It was painfully obvious neither of them possessed even the most rudimentary understanding of rotational kinematics. (Or have I spent way too much time hanging out with engineers and scientists?)
Does anyone have a list of which games debuted in which seasons? I’m trying to write a guide to reality TV/physical game show challenges and want to add The Cube, but need to be able to sort the huge list by season to fit the format I have and can’t work out which games debuted when.
I could have a very good stab at each game, but it’d all be off the top of my head.
Anything would help – between the Australian broadcaster’s haphazard airings and only being able to find a few episodes online, all I have records of are the first five episodes of season one, the celebrity specials from season two, Jamie and Dean’s episode from season four, and episodes two through eight from season five. It’s a fair bit, but there’s still some big gaps. I don’t necessarily need the exact episodes (I’ll probably sort each season’s games from A to Z), but I want to try and avoid having to do one full alphabetical list of every game if possible.
I think I’m going to try and do it at the end of the series so I can go through the Wiki and flush out all the games in there that don’t exist.
😮 There’s a bloody carryover contestant!
Much better tension when
a)They have carry over contestants
and
b)They don’t ruin it by having a bloody spoiler trailer before the credits!
Although I do keep forgetting this is on Saturday as I’m usually out, preferred the Sunday time slot.
has anyone got some good ideas for new games involving a ball? Cos my 12 yera old brother is obsessed with the show and he palys it at home. Seriosusly, he uses buckets and columns and stuff. He likes the ball games the best though espically Drop Zone, Reversal and Drift. So anyone got any new agme ideas involving a ball?
really impressed with tonight’s episode. Two new games- Asssemble and Cycle. Someone was playing to beat the STATS. And vault was back! Long time no see! It’s been changed actaully, with a a beam like the one they use in Drop Shot.
Are the editing suite mucking up the music progression as the game levels increase?
For example yesterday the second contestant appeared to have the same ‘Du da de du de da dummm’ for all the games even though he reached £50k (and was shown the £100k game), earlier in the series I seem to remember another contestant getting the higher level ‘DA DA DE DA DA DE DE DU DU DUM’ music at something like the £10k game!
yeah I noticed that too. It also happened earlier in the series and BOTH contesdtants had that smae music all the way through. I think it was the episode where the ballet dancer was on.