I’m impressed, 32k pounds (not sure about the dollar equivalent) is really great!
And I’ve totta agree about the questions. It was funny, watching them tape so many episodes back-to-back, it makes you realize that it’s just the luck of the draw. The guy right before me had questions I’d’ve killed on.
OTOH, I watched many times as people nailed questions that would’ve stopped me cold.
[QUOTE=jsc1953]
Fun times on today’s show. The contestant – big-haired woman from Connecticut – was facing the question, "which university’s mascot is a bulldog named “Uga” – Duke, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, University of Georgia.
She phoned her friend, who said “well, ‘Uga’ has got be short for U of GA, right?”
Contestant said, “Oh, Jeezus Christ!!”, and they bleeped her. Hilarity ensued.
[/QUOTE]
Heh. I never watch Millionaire, but this one happened to be on while I was getting dressed. They gave the four choices, and I said to myself “duh. University of Georgia!”. And I know nothing about universities, college sports, etc. But then the contestant started to call a friend and I had to change the channel. I don’t like watching people embarrass themselves on television.
[QUOTE=davenportavenger]
There was this one episode of Golden Girls where Dorothy tries out for Jeopardy and studies real hard and gets every question right and is all super psyched about it. She is roundly rejected by the judges and her spot goes to Rose, who is sweet, lovable, and dumb as a post.
You are Bea Arthur.
[/QUOTE]
Rose didn’t really get on Jeopardy; it was a dream of Dorothy’s.
[QUOTE=fessie]
[QUOTE=RickJay]
The first $1 million winner on the U.S. show still had the phone-a-friend lifeline when he was on the last question. He used it to call his Dad to tell him he was about to win a million bucks, and then answered it himself. It was a nice touch.
[/QUOTE]
I was there. I was a contestant on the show, and everyone who’s waiting to tape sits in the green room (basement full of old couches), watching on closed-circuit. Best thing about the whole experience, watching the show w/a bunch of other trivia geeks, there were about 15 of us waiting for our turn.
That particular contestant, Kevin (forget his last name) got on the show that day because he’d made it through the selection process a while back but then bombed at the end - I can’t remember for sure, but I think he might’ve been on during the “Fastest Finger” configuration, and not made it to the chair. At any rate, he wrote the producers every single week for something like a year, and they finally gave in and put him on.
The producers were SO thrilled that Kevin won, they’d been desperate for a winner, and he was a really neat guy, a truck driver who said he was going to give the money to his Mom. That show taped on one of their last days that season (they aired it out of order for ratings sweep).
[/QUOTE]
The first person to win the million on the US show was John Carpenter. He was an IRS agent, not a truck driver.
We were referring to the syndicated daytime program, with Meredith Vieira as the hostess, not the earlier Regis Philbin show that aired in the evenings. In the new format, they eliminated the “fastest-finger” portion of the show.
[QUOTE=Shoshana]
Yikes! And he’s an attorney??
[/QUOTE]
Hopefully not a trial lawyer.
[QUOTE=neuroman]
Hopefully not a trial lawyer.
[/QUOTE]
All right, that’s the last stick!
Don’t forget the classic $100 flub from the Regis days- you may not know what animal Hannibal used to cross the Alps at first, but you probably know it sure as hell ain’t llamas.
[QUOTE=Eyebrows 0f Doom]
The first person to win the million on the US show was John Carpenter. He was an IRS agent, not a truck driver.
[/QUOTE]
What infuriated me was the final question: How far is the Earth from the Sun? This was something we learned in third grade, yet the show’s writers thought it was difficult enough to be a million-dollar question.
And there was also someone in the original series who missed the very first question. It had something to do with fruit, and was something “everyone” knows.
[QUOTE=panache45]
What infuriated me was the final question: How far is the Earth from the Sun? This was something we learned in third grade, yet the show’s writers thought it was difficult enough to be a million-dollar question.
[/QUOTE]
Except, of course, that that was not Carpenter’s final question.
The final question was “Which of these U.S. Presidents appeared on the TV show `Laugh-In’?”
And who learns the distance from the Earth to the Sun in third grade? Can you provide some evidence that that’s a regular part of any third grade curriculum? I happen to know it myself, but I happen to be an amateur astronomer. If I wasn’t into that stuff I wouldn’t know that answer.
I was a contestant on the Meredith version of the show, and they show a warm-up tape before the day’s taping to get the crowd excited. It’s a highlight reel (with some lowlights) - one is a woman answering the $100 dollar with certainty - something really obvious that most people know - and getting sent home with NOTHING. I think it was something like a line from “New York, New York.” Suck-o-rama!
There’s nothing wrong with using a lifeline early on… I am woefully ignorant of candy and what’s what in that world - and I even said this to the other contestants backstage before my taping. My $400 question was - wait for it - “What flavor are Red-Hots candy?” I was fairly certain from all of the responses that it had to be cinnamon… but to be 100 percent certain I asked the audience. About 98% responded “Cinnamon, dumbass.”
With trivia it really is about hitting the sweet spot… everyone has areas which they’re ridiculously knowledgeable, and areas that they’re clueless about. The woman before me got booted because she thought Fresca was a pineapple-flavored soda… sad, really. I think she was pretty sure but wanted to save her lifelines… I’d argue that this is a losing strategy - if you’re not dead certain that you know the answer why gamble? Better to leave with $2000 than to get sent home with a t-shirt…
[QUOTE=RickJay]
And who learns the distance from the Earth to the Sun in third grade? Can you provide some evidence that that’s a regular part of any third grade curriculum? I happen to know it myself, but I happen to be an amateur astronomer. If I wasn’t into that stuff I wouldn’t know that answer.
[/QUOTE]
Back in 1953 we studied, among other things, astronomy. We made papier-mache models of the planets (we used a huge beach ball for Jupiter), and learned things like distance to the sun and number of moons (At that time, Jupiter had only 12 moons, and Saturn had 9, plus 3 rings).
Could you be a smart-ass and say “one astronomical unit?”
I’m going to side with RickJay here. I doubt most people know that we’re 93 million miles from the Big Heater.
I learned that in elementary school.
Oh, man…priceless links. Priceless. I really oughta search YouTube for this kind of stuff more often.
Re. Paul “The Last Stick” Galm, you can tell almost the instant he gave the wrong answer that he screwed up. I think that he simply bought way too much into the early questions being super-duper easy and being able to blitz through them, forgetting that you still have to pay attention to the friggin’ answers. Not idiocy, just a lapse of concentration at the worst possible time. Hey, I saw Michael Jordan clank a breakaway dunk with my own eyes. It happens.
But man, I feel sorry for him. I don’t know if he’ll ever hear the end of it. At least Jordan has all those championship rings.
Hatch, much less forgivable. Okay, never mind that he got question wrong that he never should have gotten wrong, never mind that it took him so long to come up with 110 + 22 (and 120 + 12 would’ve been even simpler), never mind that it never occurred to him to pick the only even number among the choices…what the freak was he doing talking and thinking through the question AFTER COMMITTING TO AN ANSWER??? Good lord…for someone who won Survivor in large part by knowing exactly what moves to make and when, completely bass-ackwarding this is unfathomable.
Lesson in either case: Priority 1 is make sure you’re right. Make sure, make sure, make sure. It’s okay to stumble and look awkard and look dumb, as long as you freaking get the freaking answer to the freaking answer correct.
Oh, and as for learning something in elementary school. Yeah, sure, you learned it ages ago…question is, do you remember? (I sure as hell didn’t.) Chez Guevara already pointed out the difference. For another illustration of this, read the Snopes article about that supposed old high school final exam.
panache45 - I read about that on this board once. I think it had to do with the nursery rhyme Little Jack Horner. I’ll try to look it up sometime. The consensus seems to be that this was an unusually hard $100 question (still no excuse for missing it, though).
Question. Answer to the question.
See? Case in point. 
[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]
I’m going to side with RickJay here. I doubt most people know that we’re 93 million miles from the Big Heater.
[/QUOTE]
I learned it in elementary school, and still remember. Which is why I’m good at trivia games…I remember stuff.
[QUOTE=St. Urho]
I learned that in elementary school.
[/QUOTE]
So did I, but I sure as heck don’t remember (unless you could 1 AU as an acceptable answer).
[QUOTE=Hampshire]
You do know that they recruit for “personality”,“looks”,“charisma”,“drama” and not “intelligence” don’t you?
I don’t think they really care how smart the people are. As long as they can look good on camera and be overdramatic with their reactions/conversation.
Look at the dolts they put on “Deal or No Deal”.
[/QUOTE]
When I tried out for the college edition several years ago that’s exactly what they told me - they wanted “personality”, “screen presence”, and something else, I forget. I got stuck in my dorm room on a holiday weekend for four hours waiting for a call and they didn’t. Surely I have more personality than some of these people!
[QUOTE=garygnu]
No, no. It was Charles Dikkens, the well-known Dutch author.
[/QUOTE]
Didn’t he write “Rarnaby Budge”?