That’s right. On this most Easter of all Sundays it’s seems fitting to resurrect something we did only just last week for another episode. It’s the Russian show What? Where? When?, the lateral thinking quiz show which is normally set in a dining club but we’re using Google Hangout and Powerpoint. Will the team foil the dastardly David J Bodycombe and the even dastardlier audience’s questions or will they (once again) come out on top?
If you have a question you think would be suitable for future episodes then David would like to hear from you. There’s a bit more of an art to it than your standard general knowledge, so have a watch and see if you get a feel for them. We’re hoping to bring you more if interest holds up.
On Britain’s Got More Talent (if you haven’t seen it before) there is a segment where Stephen and Ant & Dec play a short version of a game show. It has always been something well known in the UK like Bullseye or Catchphrase. However, yesterday they played To Tell the Truth.
I thought this was interesting because whilst it have a few short spells in the UK in the 50s and 80s, it’s never been well known over here and they used the logo from the current American version with Anthony Anderson.
I’ve always found it quite interesting that it’s normally known as just “Tell the Truth” over here.
Perhaps they’re floating it round for a revival, although it’d basically be Odd One In all over again.
You know two things about University Challenge that are more exciting than Eric Monkman?
1. Gail Trimble (even eight years on, I still get a thrill out of watching her performances…)
2. The fact that Sean Blanchflower has tracked down some fixtures and results from the Bamber Era – including all of the results from the last two series in 1986 and 1987, featuring those baton thingies:
http://www.blanchflower.org/uc/uc86.html
http://www.blanchflower.org/uc/uc87.html
It must be said, the tournament structure in these series was only slightly less convoluted than the batons: the six weekly winners being joined in the quarter-finals by the highest *averaging* loser and the winner of a play-off between the second- and third-highest averaging losers.
Not the highest *scoring*, but the highest *averaging* – University Oxford went straight to the QFs in ’87 despite scoring fewer points in their weekly final than Aberystwyth did in theirs, while Gonville & Caius Cambridge in ’86 and Exeter in ’87 both made the play-off despite not reaching the weekly final. (Bradford in the latter year had reason to feel hard done by, having beaten Exeter in their head-to-head but finishing four points behind them on average after losing the weekly final heavily.)
Carrying over the previous day’s scores into the baton games resulted in some rather obscene scorelines, too – particularly the one between University Oxford and Reading.
Disappointingly, there don’t appear to be any clips anywhere of the batons in action (besides a very short one in the Story So Far documentary, although of course it’s been cropped to fit the widescreen frame and Caroline Quentin talks over it). There is, however, this YouTube clip featuring the first 40 seconds or so of the ’86 series, during which Bamber mentions the “one team really above the other” set (used only for this series) as well as the new game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGyhhH0v9Ec
Dailymotion, meanwhile, has the second half of the weekly final between Queen’s Belfast and Imperial from the same series (in three parts). Not only do *these* clips confirm that averages and not high scores determined which losing teams progressed to the QFs and the play-off – but they also reveal that at this late stage of the Bamber Era, an incorrect interruption deducted five points from the offending team’s score, as it does today (whereas for much of the era it gave five points to the other team, and indeed still did so only two years earlier, in ’84).
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3y5ae_university-challenge-1985-part-1_shortfilms
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3y5nf_university-challenge-1985-part-2_shortfilms
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3y6lh_university-challenge-1985-part-3_shortfilms
Really nice production David & all. The questions are entertaining when you know them and still fun when you don’t (I have no idea how they compare to the ‘original’), and a refreshing alternative to conventional GK. The team also have really good dynamics and always manage to fill the time with good discussion.
It’s funny, with the amount of information you have put into some questions, I was starting to think this could work as a QI-like show with non-serious competition. Just a thought.
The run of Million Dollar Mind Game is all on Youtube. Yes that is Vernon Kay hosting.
The Russian original has been running since 1975.
And here’s what the Russian show looks like these days:
https://youtu.be/4-7PnG3JgPw
I do think episode three should have jazz playing between questions.
I was quite surprised you don’t see them visually.
Here’s five minutes of the Russian show with subs.
https://youtu.be/2OhAJxMZI4s
And here’s an episode from 1980, complete with awesome disco version of Thus Spake Zarathrustra:
https://youtu.be/zUEpP-sEtwY
I’ve tried reading some of the questions in Russian on forums and they are really quite esoteric to their culture.
I did watch a show at the Golden Rose of Montreux festival (as it was then) that had English subtitles – it was the show’s 25th anniversary special. The only question I remember was sent in by someone in the Middle East or maybe the south-west of Russia and they asked “Here is a metal bar that was installed next to my front door in historic times… for what purpose?” and the answer was (from my hazy memory) “To tie your (Jewish?) slave to”.
I think the best questions have an element of debate about them that several answers seem possible yet the correct answer is deductible. I think the main issue I had with MDMG was that it was too easy to know for sure when they had cracked the answer because they were more riddle-based formats.
While I’m here, I’ve had a nice flurry of useable questions from viewers but we can always use more. If you want to contribute to keep the show going, please watch the video first to get an idea of the question style then send your ideas to thelab@qwertyuiop.co.uk – thanks!