The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: SuperMatch93 on April 29, 2023, 02:07:03 PM
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Last night on a game show Discord I'm a member of, we were discussing the following hypothetical Millionaire question:
On what day of the week was John F. Kennedy assassinated?
A. Tuesday
B. Wednesday
C. Thursday
D. Friday
I asked them what dollar value they'd give to this question, and their responses varied. Some said they'd put it all the way at $1M, others said a few rungs down, and some made the good point that it would vary based on the era of the show (lower on Meredith's, for instance). Knowing that some members here are former contestants, I'm curious as to what you all think this would be worth. Feel free to specify era, if you'd like.
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I wouldn’t even put it on the board. It’s just too obscure to be worth it.
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I wouldn’t even put it on the board. It’s just too obscure to be worth it.
I was about to say the opposite. I don't think it's obscure at all. As a point of reference, the syndicated version once asked what *time* Kennedy died for $100,000.
There's a list of spooky parallels between Kennedy and Lincoln. Some are true and some are apocryphal, but the fact that they were both shot on a Friday is one of them.
I'd say no more than $30,000 value, so Q9 for Harrison, Q10 for Meredith, maybe Q11 for Reege.
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I’d say a buck ninety-eight?
Would I slot it in the games I run with Brian Henegar? No. Were it mine to do it’s probably either $8,000 or $16,000 given how well known 11/23/63 is.
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As Travis said, I think the date is fairly well known. Additionally, the assassination has never been related to Thanksgiving Day proper, so I think that takes it down to a 1:3 shot given the choices.
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I would put it at about $32,000. Depending on a contestant's age, it might be a little tough, but considering how often you see or hear the phrase "the long weekend" invoked in stories about the assassination, it's pretty gettable.
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and some made the good point that it would vary based on the era of the show (lower on Meredith's, for instance).
I think that brings to mind an activity that assists with this. Take all of the ladders from the different era and figure out where the difficulties line up, and make one larger ladder out of it.
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I wouldn’t even put it on the board. It’s just too obscure to be worth it.
The Kennedy assassination was a few years before I was born, but I knew immediately that this was a Thursday [editing my derp] Friday. First of all, it's not obscure to those who lived through it, just the same as those of us who remember 9/11 know that it was a Tuesday. (Maybe I'm assuming that is common knowledge, though.)
Part of my learning of the event was that it was a pall over the weekend, and the oft-told story of how the NFL forged ahead with its schedule, even though the games would not be televised due to unbroken continuous news coverage. I also specifically remember hearing the Oswald murder being on Day 3 and it was a Sunday.
Again, to draw in the NFL as the marker, one of the reasons I remember the Pearl Harbor attack was on a Sunday is that the military personnel in attendance for the Washington football team were paged to return to their command post. Weird that football factors into two events like that.
Beyond those three dates, I don't know if there is any other unscheduled national event that anyone would reasonably know the day of the week for.
tl;dr, I don't think the day of the week of the JFK assassination is an obscure question, but it might have a generational sliding scale of difficulty. (I also thought the president who appeared on Laugh-In was a slam dunk for a $1 million question, so maybe it's just the way my brain is wired.)
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I wouldn’t even put it on the board. It’s just too obscure to be worth it.
The Kennedy assassination was a few years before I was born, but I knew immediately that this was a Thursday.
...Except...it wasn't.
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Right. I fell right into that trap of saying final answer on the initial instinct without working it through and verifying. Of course it was over the weekend, as I said, Oswald was shot on the 3rd day (Sunday) after the assassination on Friday.
Misremembered in the moment, but the point was that I heard the historical account framed around that set of days.
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I’d put it at the 25/32K or 64K level. It’s something I somehow remember but I don’t think it’s common enough to most people, not even trivia buffs.
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The date is a decent bit in the past now, and your average person is atrociously bad at automatically knowing what date corresponds to which day of the week. As written, probably the 2nd milestone (25/32) or 64K.
but considering how often you see or hear the phrase "the long weekend" invoked in stories about the assassination
I genuinely can't recall the last time I heard that phrase.
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I'd say $32,000 or $64,000 level. I, being a novice US Presidential historian, would have gotten that right away, even though it happened 3 years before I was even born.
Indeed a great many eerie parallels with Lincoln and Kennedy. One that's seldom mentioned is they both died on a Friday before a major holiday. In President Lincoln's case it was Easter Sunday, and with President Kennedy it was 6 days before Thanksgiving.
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Indeed a great many eerie parallels with Lincoln and Kennedy. One that's seldom mentioned is they both died on a Friday before a major holiday. In President Lincoln's case it was Easter Sunday, and with President Kennedy it was 6 days before Thanksgiving.
I would imagine the reason it's seldom mentioned is that it isn't really very interesting.
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Indeed a great many eerie parallels with Lincoln and Kennedy. One that's seldom mentioned is they both died on a Friday before a major holiday. In President Lincoln's case it was Easter Sunday, and with President Kennedy it was 6 days before Thanksgiving.
I would imagine the reason it's seldom mentioned is that it isn't really very interesting.
Well, maybe not necessarily to you or to me, but presidential trivia buffs always at least pique my interest because of the sheer randomness of the factoids that they possess knowledge of.
(If this came off like a swipe, I apologize because I wasn’t intending on that)
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An even tougher question would ask on what day of the week was JFK's funeral.
I was 8 years old at the time (you do the math) and we were glued to the TV that entire weekend. I was watching NBC when Jack Ruby pumped a bullet into Oswald's abdomen live on national TV. The reporter was Tom Pettit. Then JFK's casket laid in state in the Capitol rotunda like forever, then there was a funeral procession which also took forever, all covered live on national TV.
Airchecks of the networks' live coverage can be found on YouTube, as well as the local Dallas station's coverage. They are all definitely worth watching.
AFAIK the first bulletin was read on the air by none other than Don Pardo who was on his shift at NBC at the time.
More OB game shows: the real mystery attached to the JFK assassination is the fate of Dorothy Kilgallen, who was covering the trial of Jack Ruby when she died. Somebody felt Dorothy had to be silenced. It's quite a coincidence that John Daly's father in law was Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Warren Commission. I'm sure Daly, who saw Dorothy every Sunday night, kept his father in law well informed about Dorothy's activities. Dorothy's homicide was never fully investigated.
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It's quite a coincidence that John Daly's father in law was Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Warren Commission. I'm sure Daly, who saw Dorothy every Sunday night, kept his father in law well informed about Dorothy's activities. Dorothy's homicide was never fully investigated.
I do seem to remember reading that Daly and Kilgallen had a falling out over her investigations, seeing how she was openly challenging the Warren Commission's findings.
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I do seem to remember reading that Daly and Kilgallen had a falling out over her investigations, seeing how she was openly challenging the Warren Commission's findings.
Did you read that in Gil's book?
ISTR Gil mentioned something about two WML? principals not speaking to each other except to play the game, but I forget the details. I haven't read through his book since 1978.
Had the Warren report been released when Dorothy died? I'm a bit fuzzy on the chronology.
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The Warren Commission's report was first released to the public on September 27, 1964, having been presented to LBJ three days earlier. Kilgallen was found dead over a year later, November 8/65.
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ISTR Gil mentioned something about two WML? principals not speaking to each other except to play the game, but I forget the details. I haven't read through his book since 1978.
John stopped speaking to Dorothy for a period (other than to play the game) after he discovered that she was reporting their backstage chit-chat in her column.
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Indeed a great many eerie parallels with Lincoln and Kennedy. One that's seldom mentioned is they both died on a Friday before a major holiday. In President Lincoln's case it was Easter Sunday, and with President Kennedy it was 6 days before Thanksgiving.
And then there's the whole thing about Lincoln spending a good amount of time in Monroe, Maryland...
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I do seem to remember reading that Daly and Kilgallen had a falling out over her investigations, seeing how she was openly challenging the Warren Commission's findings.
Did you read that in Gil's book?
I haven't read his book, but whoever I read that from probably did.
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Gil's book is a fascinating and worthwhile read. Try to get a copy.
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ISTR Gil mentioned something about two WML? principals not speaking to each other except to play the game, but I forget the details. I haven't read through his book since 1978.
John stopped speaking to Dorothy for a period (other than to play the game) after he discovered that she was reporting their backstage chit-chat in her column.
There was also a 1957 incident when Daly kiboshed Mike Wallace as a mystery guest. (Daly was head of ABC News at the time and objected to Wallace being hired for a new interview show. In particular, Wallace’s interview with crime figure Mickey Cohen the prior week had resulted in the airing of possibly libelous statements about the LA chief of police.) Anyway, Daly threatened to no-show, and Sammy Davis Jr. was substituted. Daly probably regarded the whole thing as a private backstage matter, but the next day’s Journal-American carried a front-page item about the mystery guest swap. I think Fates said there was no byline, but it didn’t take much guesswork to determine who might’ve written it, and Daly avoided speaking to Kilgallen for several weeks, other than gameplay.
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ISTR Gil mentioned something about two WML? principals not speaking to each other except to play the game, but I forget the details. I haven't read through his book since 1978.
John stopped speaking to Dorothy for a period (other than to play the game) after he discovered that she was reporting their backstage chit-chat in her column.
There was also a 1957 incident when Daly kiboshed Mike Wallace as a mystery guest. (Daly was head of ABC News at the time and objected to Wallace being hired for a new interview show. In particular, Wallace’s interview with crime figure Mickey Cohen the prior week had resulted in the airing of possibly libelous statements about the LA chief of police.) Anyway, Daly threatened to no-show, and Sammy Davis Jr. was substituted. Daly probably regarded the whole thing as a private backstage matter, but the next day’s Journal-American carried a front-page item about the mystery guest swap. I think Fates said there was no byline, but it didn’t take much guesswork to determine who might’ve written it, and Daly avoided speaking to Kilgallen for several weeks, other than gameplay.
IIRC, Bennett Cerf also relayed similar details in an audio interview he did in the late 60s. It taught John and the rest of the panel a valuable lesson and, presumably, changed how relaxed they'd be in her presence.
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I do seem to remember reading that Daly and Kilgallen had a falling out over her investigations, seeing how she was openly challenging the Warren Commission's findings.
Did you read that in Gil's book?
I haven't read his book, but whoever I read that from probably did.
There is nothing about the JFK thing in Fates' book. He simply said that John stopped speaking to her for a year outside the program because of the flap over her reporting Daly's blacklisting Mike Wallace from being a Mystery Guest in 1957.
Be wary of much that is written about Dorothy and the JFK investigation because a lot of it has been written by sensationalist seeking opportunists aided by some truly weird people. I think Matt and a few others might remember from the atgs days a wacko named David Henschel who frequently trolled the place. He was the ultimate weirdo regarding the whole Kilgallen-JFK think (even though in one of the days when he was sane he was the one who first got a copy of the tribute program with ads from the archives back in the mid-90s).
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Be wary of much that is written about Dorothy and the JFK investigation because a lot of it has been written by sensationalist seeking opportunists aided by some truly weird people. I think Matt and a few others might remember from the atgs days a wacko named David Henschel who frequently trolled the place. He was the ultimate weirdo regarding the whole Kilgallen-JFK think (even though in one of the days when he was sane he was the one who first got a copy of the tribute program with ads from the archives back in the mid-90s).
Is that the guy whose alter ego was "Lisa Pease" or am I thinking of someone else?
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That's the one. That was one of many fake ID's he took over the years. He even stole my name when trolling at other boards in a deliberate attempt to make me look like a crazy person when it was just him pretending to be me acting crazy on purpose. He even posted spam book reviews on Amazon stealing my mother's name.