Thanks to Travis for alerting us to this, I was aware Stephen Mulhern’s Magic Numbers (it’s clever cos he’s a magician) got a six-week commission for later on in the year, but this bit is interesting:
“It works like this….across the show the outcome of every exhilarating stunt, game and challenge will give us a number between 0 and 9. Finally, as the show builds to a conclusion, we’ll have a total of five numbers. Together these make up Magic Numbers. And if two of the Magic Numbers match two of the last five digits of your telephone number – in any order. The lucky viewer who is chosen from all those who have qualified to take part, are playing live from home with the chance to win £250,000″
So Talking Telephone Numbers then, except in a brilliant twist, you’d have to be really unlucky not to be able to be allowed to ring a premium phone line to take part.
Meanwhile, you can now get tickets for the new series of Shooting Stars recording in April at TV Centre, although tickets will be allocated by random draw it’s so massively popular. Blimey. And also A Question of Sport, but evidently that’s not as popular despite demanding more viewers, presumably.
Details for the next BotherSOP game in two-and-a-half week’s time are now up on the BotherSOP page.
News from Mexico.
Mexico has become the latest country to air Millionaire for the first time in their country. Seriously, after nearly 12 years since the UK debut it has taken this long for them to produce and broadcast it, given Weakest Link has been produced over there for a good few years. To save production costs they are using the same studio as the Venezuelan verson. They are using the classic format with 15 questions, 3 lifelines with a bonus 4th lifeline.
Also I have learned Poker Face is still airing over there.
One episode of Danny Baker’s Win, Lose or Draw is now downloadable from that square type website.
Hmm, but exactly HOW likely is “really unlucky”. I hate perms and combs but I think you’ll be able to phone in on about 1 show in 5, by my number hacking.
I think we need to send for Mister Al.
Hello!
If the last five digits of your phone number are all different from each other, I calculate the probability that you’ll be eligible to phone in to be about 68%. If you have repeats in your phone number, it’ll be less.
I’d go into my methodology for you, but I’m just on my way out…
Thanks Mister Al! As a maths teacher, I will trust your judgement.
Actually, reading it again I notice (a) it’s better odds than that, and (b) that’s an extraordinarily cack-handed thing to explain. Why not just generate five numbers in the studio and both of your telephone’s last two digits must appear somewhere in there?
I don’t think it’s going to be that difficult to explain:
“We’re going to generate five digits, if any two of them match any two digits in the last five digits of your telephone number THEN YOU CAN WIN BIG CASH AND PRIZES BUT ACTUALLY EXCLUSIVELY CASH!”
Although I agree with some more rational thought, you can probably upgrade “really unlucky” to just “fairly unucky”. It certainly feels on first glance as though it should be easy to qualify, and maybe that’s the point.
Only Connect Conspiracy Theory Number 2
Why did a show featuring a team of Gamblers include questions about greyhound racing, roulette and playing cards.
There was no question on Bowls for the other team.
Isn’t that like asking “Why were there three questions about literature for the librarians, but no questions on particle physics for the nuclear scientists?”
There’s always going to be several questions about all the major subject categories in each show. Even so, the questions are written before the teams are even cast, and the question sets are allocated blind of the teams that turn up.
I think you were simply unlucky in that there seemed to be three questions/categories (Roulette, a question with something to do with racing, and ‘playing cards’) that looked like they were to there advantage (As opposed to just one for the chessmen during S2… Who promptly got it wrong).
What would you say are the major categories, I wonder? I mean, literature, pop-culture, recreation, numeric/word based puzzles, science and history seem to come up a lot, if you want to be broad about it…
(I also wonder how you distribute the questions blind, do you try and give each match in each stage of the competition the same average difficulty level (if so, mean, median, or something more exotic) as you guys rated the difficulty of the questions, or, something less weighted in your randomisation?)
The subject categories are outlined in the contestant handbook but I think the main ones are Literature, Science and Maths, Geography, People, Traditions, History, Entertainment, Sports, Words, and Various for cross-subject questions. And music, of course.
Minor categories include art, food, business, gardening, hobbies, medicine…
It’s not hard to grade the questions into heats, quarters etc. What’s harder is to get a good subject mix into each show within those levels, and also that there aren’t too many forms of similar questions on the same Greek board. So if one question is a list of four names, I’d try to get some places, quotations, numbers, etc. Into the other spots.
I’m sure it was just bad luck and in fact that the Roulette question wasn’t originally there. As we watched it I said I bet there’ll be a “Poker Hands” round in Missing Vowels and then “Types of Playing Cards” appeared although that round did feature Happy Families and Tarot – not staples of any of the gambling sites I frequent.
How’s the ratings holding up for this series? ANy chance of a BBC2 repeat?
Help wanted: There exists (or existed) a French game show based on a board game called “A to Z” (or vise versa). To Brig (or anyone who paid close attention to Brig’s favorited videos on YouTube way back when): I know a few clips from the show were used in the “100 grande jeux” whatever list with a bunch of game show bloopers in it. Main premise of the show: A category was given, and players had to come up with items that fit the category that started with as many letters of the alphabet that they could, first to knock off the whole alphabet (over several rounds, of course) won. Does anyone know the name of the show? For some reason, my mind keeps going toward “Double Gagnant” or something like that, but I’m not finding any matches.
If it’s something like a French version of Passaparabla, it might be that En Toutes Lettres that Barry uploaded a while back.
Is the 100 Grande jeux thing still up? I’m at work so I can’t look at it. I don’t think it will be En Toutes Lettres as that’s a very recent show.
It wasn’t En Toutes Lettres/Pasapalabra. I think this one had only two players instead of six. And no, the 100 Grande Jeux thing was removed quite a long time ago.
Unrelatedly: a radio station in Australia has at some point “done” competitive two-player The Bong Game, under the name “Chicken”. It is unclear whether or not there comes a point at which both players lose, but it would seem likely.
Not to be confused with “Chicken Chicken”, the farmyard-themed reversioning of The Weakest Link hosted by Rowland Rivron. IN OUR DREAMS.
A new episode of Survivor aired last night instead of tonight, and is well worth watching for one of the best moves in Survivor history
LOL at the latest Digiguide update.
Saturday 3rd April 17:20 – All New Total Wipeout.
So, what are they trying to say then???
It gets better. Turns out they are going to continue to show repeats on the CBBC channel of all places.
I’ve always been a bit nonplussed by advertising things as “all new”. Surely to be “all new” it would need different hosts, rules, titles, channel etc? “Here’s the four Big Balls… oh cock, these aren’t all new, it’s the same as every edition since we started (except the urgencifier*)”
On a related note, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultimate-Red-Ball-Challenge-Wipeout/dp/B002G9TWXY surely has to be terrible, doesn’t it?
* I can’t remember the real name, but still.
Remember that this is on the same channel that did The Kids Are Quite Frequently Wrong, Actually. And look at th fun times we had with that name.
All New Total Wipeout…
…That would be S1 repeats, then, presumably, since they seem to have lost S3 down the back of the BBC couch.
(And it’s the Motivator)
Who wants to sponsor The Cube?
http://www.itvmedia.co.uk/brand-activation/sponsorship/sponsorship-opportunities/the-cube-sponsorship
If ITV are correct with quarter 4 then it looks like it will start around October, rather than late summer. This would mean a lead in to The X Factor live shows.
Also hasn’t the Cube’s size increased now? I thought it was originally 3x3x3.
No, I’ve read and it’s actually 4x4x4 all along. Hmm.
French news !
France 2 is really having some strong winners – En Toutes Lettres/Pasapalabra champion’s winnings are over 112,000€ with 31 consecutive wins (still far from The Vault’ record-jackpot win of 170K€ , but that was an at-home phone caller win) and in the same time , TLMVPSP champion is currently on its 56th win , for 74,200€ .
And if this wasn’t enough , “N’oubliez pas les paroles !” (Lyrics !) had today its first jackpot winner (and apparently the first one ever worldwide according to Nagui) – 100K€ heading towards AIDS research , as this was a special charity edition
http://programmes.france2.fr/n-oubliez-pas-les-paroles/emission_jeudi.php
Interesting note – people playing were NOT celebrities , but former big winners – that’s the way it should be instead of choosing not-so-smart celebrities.
As a thank you for reading me today , some “Win, Lose or Draw” – with everybody’s favourite , Patrice Laffont !
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ic6i_charlotte-valandrey-dessinez-c-est_fun