Don't Forget The Lyrics questions (technical and game theory, not about the art)

Factual Questions
1

On television, there is a game show called Don’t Forget The Lyrics. See the link provided for details on the show, but basically a person tries to sing a song karaoke style as the band plays, and when the band stops, they continue singing a prescribed number of words. The game becomes more difficult with each succeeding song (out of ten) by virtue of the number of words increasing. Typically, it starts with 3 words and by the time they reach the 6-figure payout level (top prize is a million), they must supply usually as many as 10 to 14 words.

(What they use as the arbiter of words, I don’t know. But they must be exact, so if you miss an “oh” in “oh baby”, you lose.)

Along the way, they have 3 “helps”, each to be used once. They can get a multiple choice, ABC, where one of the lines is correct. (The choices can be tough especially in the later stages because they are very close to being alike one another.) They can get 2 words of their choice as a gimme. For example, they can have the 4th and 8th words revealed. And they can use a personal friend or family member to help them come up with the words.

The players get 10 categories to choose from (like “Pop”, “Rock”, “Billy Joel”, “1980s”, etc.), and once they have selected a category, each category has two songs from which they may choose. They then sing with the words supplied on a large screen until, suddenly, the band stops and a number of blank lines is shown corresponding to the number of words they must supply.

It is important to note that the missing words practically always form a logical grouping. In other words, they’ll be a whole line, or the ending of a whole line. They won’t be the end of line one combined with the start of another.

Okay, the questions. Assume the song is “Piano Man”:

(1) Since the band is playing until it is time for the singer to supply the missing words, and the number of missing words varies from level to level, how can the band be cued as to when to stop? Because if only three words are needed, it may stop at “Sing us a song you’re the piano man. Sing us — — —”. But if six words are needed, it may stop at “Sing us a song you’re the piano man. Sing us a song tonight. Well we’re all — — — — — —”

Would the show have to contrive ten different stopping places for each song, and then have the conducter (band leader) signal them all somehow as to when to stop? If so, they have mastered this amazingly well. There has never been a lingering string pluck beyond the stopping point. Or would they mark each musician’s sheet, and each musician must calculate where the stop would be? That would also risk mistakes.

(2) Wouldn’t it be wiser, as a game strategy, to select the categories you are LEAST comfortable with first, since it is usually much easier to supply 3 words than 14? Especially given all the helps you get. Contestants tend to choose what they like best first.

Thanks.

2

That seems like a reasonable strategy.

3

What kind of band are we talking about? If the band is entirely electric, or if it’s offstage, the simplest thing would be to have a producer up in the booth whose job is to cut off the music at the appropriate time.

4

It is indeed offstage, but right beside the stage. It does appear to be all electric. So would it be that the producer (or director) would have a sheet with ten different cutoff points marked on it for each level? And wouldn’t he have to be a good sight-reader of sheet music? And which sheet would he use? The lead guitarist’s?

5

It does and it doesn’t. If you really think you can go all the way, then that’s the way to go. But, why risk blowing the first song and go home with nothing when you can nail the ones you know and if you lose with 20k, well then you’ll have to cry all the way to the bank.

6

As mentioned, there’s the $25K “guaranteed money” question to get to. Since most folks won’t get to the top prize of 1/2 million, (the game rules–like “Are you smarter than a 5th Grader”–basically make it a moronic move to even attempt the $1M song/question, so there will probably never be a million dollar winner) you may as well use them to get as high as you can, at least over the $25K.

But since the missing words always make a phrase (in my experience), I’m not convinced that fewer is necessarily easier. Just getting the musical phrase that you’re “guessing” to line up with the expected number of words is good evidence that you’re right when you’re up in the 6-14 word range. With three or four, it’s pretty easy to substitute a wrong phrase altogether (usually one from earlier or later in the song.)

The real strategy seems to be to learn the second verse to lots of top-20 songs of various eras and genres (although they’re heavily rock/R&B/pop – I’ve only seen “country” come up once, for example). The expected words always seem to be in the third or fourth line past the first chorus later in the game.

7

Regarding the “how do they know when to stop”, I thought I remembered seeing some of the band members looking at the sheet music on a monitor, rather than with actual paper (or it might’ve been just the band leader). Give each musician a 22" widescreen LCD, and they’d have pretty close to the 16"x11" viewing area you get with two sheets of paper side-by-side. And that way you could have a computer control which version of the song is fed to them with the different cut-off points. I’d think that’d also speed up the game’s flow, since you don’t have the band shuffling through a stack of songs after the contestent makes their selection.

As another question, I’m wondering if the songs within each category are set once for the entire game (changing only the “fill in the blanks” point at each difficulty), or if the two song choices are different at different difficulty levels. So if the category was “Billy Joel”, at the first level the songs presented could be “Piano Man” and “Still Rock & Roll to Me”, and at the $500k level maybe “Italian Restaraunt” and “The Downeaster Alexa”. You wouldn’t necessarily need a different set for every category (maybe every two or three), but it would give the producers more flexibility to make the higher levels harder by requiring more words in addition to using more obscure songs.

But since a contestent can never re-use a category, this could only be answered by someone in-the-know of the game. Or maybe it’s laid out in the official game rules, which don’t appear to be available online.