I believe Strainger was referring to the fact that Ray Charles did not write Georgia on My Mind. He may have made it famous (or maybe it made him famous)by performing it, but it was in fact written by Hoagy Carmichael (music) and Stuart Gorrell (lyrics).
“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” contestant after having won around 15-20K or so -
Which of these characters in literature are based on a real person?
Dr. Livingston, Sherlock Homes or Tarzan?
Contestant: “Tarzan!”
I can’t remember what show it was on, but there was a question where you were supposed to answer the common last name of two famous people based on their occupation and first name.
The clues were patriot Benjamin and singer Aretha.
The player guessed Washington.
Not the stupidest, but kind of amusing:
I was watching Wheel of Fortune - it had gotten to the point where the puzzle obviously had the word “barbecue” in it, but not all the letters had been turned yet. The contestant spun, and rather than guess the puzzle, decided to ask for a letter to get a little more money before solving the puzzle. She said, “Give me a Q”, and promptly lost.
In this case, it wasn’t so much the answer as what the woman had said shortly before which made it dumb. The show was Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?. The contestant had already used one lifeline saying she wasn’t sure what the answer was because she was an “intellectual.” With no more than $1,000 on the line, the question is “In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, what was Juliet’s last name?” She used the 50-50 lifeline to take away two answers and was, of course, left with “Capulet” and “Montague”. After some deliberation, she picks “Montague,” saying among other things, Shakespeare would never name a character Juliet Capulet. I was watching with my family, and none of us could believe it. If it hadn’t been for that comment about being an intellectual, we would have shrugged it off, but I hate to think what it must have been like for her the following day. Murphy’s Law strikes again! If you call yourself an intellectual where enough people can hear you, you’re going to something incredibly stupid in the near future.
CJ
I can’t beleive the thread has made it this far and no one has mentioned Street Smarts, a show that thrives on stupid answers.
Frank: How many stars does the U.S. flag have.
Contestant: 32
Frank: And what do the stars mean?
Contestant: One for each state.
Frank: So there’s 32 states?
Contestant: Yes
The funny part was how confident she was through this whole conversation.
Similarly…
Frank: How many states are there in the United States?
Contestant: 50… no wait, Alaska and Hawaii make 52
More stupider than that?
Orienteering?
Ain’t that the sport where people get themselves
lost on purpose?
they survey a hundred people and ask them the following questions
On The $10,000 Pyramid, the word was “python.” The cluegiver said, “He’s a British rock singer, his first name is Marty.”
Private Eye’s Dumb Britain section is a regular spot dedicated to this stuff. This issue someone said that the commonest surname in the United Kingdom was “Patel”.
To be fair, I’ve read somewhere that Patel is the most common surname in Scotland (which has a larger Asian population than you might think).
That said, the Scottish General Registry Office website says that the most common surnames are actually Smith, Brown and Wilson (in that order), and that Smith has been number one since the early registers. How boring.
Match Game: Final question for the jackpot.
Gene Rayburn: “_____________ Tennessee.”
Dumb Girl: “Mississippi!”
Gene Rayburn: “I think it’s safe to say you won’t be winning.”
“Barbeque” is a rather common variant of barbecue, with about 643,000 hits on Google, so I wouldn’ t call that contestant stupid. They just spell things differently than the WoF staff. 
Last night(5-12) on Power Jeopardy, Maria something(Think she’s on CNN)
Something like this:
A: Moles feed on these that are global?
Maria answers a computer worm.
Real answer an earth worm!
Can’t think of the name of the show, jump in if you recognize it.
Husband and wife.
Husband has a word on a card that he tries to get the wife to say by using other words to give her clues.
This was a black couple with Southern roots. I say that because her accent made the whole incident funnier.
Husband, holding a card with the word DEER on it.
Husband…DOE.
Wife…KNOB.
Yes, it was on Urban Legend Game Show
Another Family Feud moment, this one I remember actually seeing.
It was the lightning round at the end, where one family member is asked 5 survey-questions, then they bring a second family member out and ask her the same 5 questions. (Duplicate answers receive a quick buzzer sound and Dawson asks them to try again.)
With the first family member:
“Name a state that begins with M.”
“Mexico.” (survey said: 0)
With the second family member:
“Name a state that begins with M.”
“Mexico.”
<bzzz><bzzz> “Try again.”
Well, if the question didn’t specify which country was meant, the response was perfectly valid.
eenerms posted:
In Maria Bartiromo’s defense, the newswoman was confused by the category title, and thought MOLES referred to the kind that work for the CIA, as opposed to the insectivores notorious for digging up gardens. I recall a celebrity episode of Rock & Roll Jeopardy! which featured Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s as one of the contestants. The category title was something like HEAVY METAL, and Jane was responding correctly to clues, but protesting that the songs were “not metal”. She didn’t realize that “metal” referred not to the style of music, but to the fact that the titles were “One Tin Soldier”, “Brass in Pocket”, etc.
That sounds like the right answer to me. Sherlock Holmes was purely fictional. Dr. Livingstone was a real person, and therefore not a character in literature. It seems to be I’ve heard both sides of whether Tarzan was based on a true story or not, but I can’t remember how it was settled … so the answer is either Tarzan or none of the above.
No, in fact Sherlock Holmes *was *based on a real person, Dr Joseph Bell .