The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: Skynet74 on November 03, 2003, 12:11:35 PM
-
Name a Game Show past or present that even dumb people can play?
Make me Laugh
The Dating Game
Someone else mentioned any Chuck Barris Show.
John
-
[quote name=\'Skynet74\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 12:11 PM\'] Name a Game Show past or present that even dumb people can play?
Make me Laugh
The Dating Game
Someone else mentioned any Chuck Barris Show.
John [/quote]
Wheel of Fortune...they pull in at least one dumb person a night! (rimshot)
-
Name a Game Show past or present that even dumb people can play?
Card Sharks doesn't require a whole lot of cranial exertion. It's just a guessing game.
ITSBRY
itsbry@juno.com
-
TPIR, the audience can help you out a lot of the time.
-
Let's Make a Deal
Hollywood Squares
Match Game (which doesn't mean they play well, as we know from various examples)
Truth or Consequences
Beat the Clock
Queen for a Day
Strike It Rich (Warren Hull)
-
The dividing line here is going to be fuzzy. A dumb person can play Jeopardy!--it's just very unlikely that they'll win.
Anyway, Press Your Luck.
-
High Rollers: Even though there is Q&A, the luck factor outweighs any smarts
Concentration: I think this goes along with Wheel in that you don't necessarilly have to know what you're talking about, just say what you see
Weakest Link: By "dumb" I'm assuming that does not mean "could never answer a question correctly". Getting some answers wrong may allow a player to win simply because the others are too smart and knock each other off.
Double Dare (of the super sloppy or family variety): So long as you can complete the physical challenges and the other team doesn't steal control through a Dare or failed challenge, a team could win, albeit quite sloppily.
-
I don't agree with the notion of PYL being okay for dummies. Besides the Q & A segments, there are a few angles to consider when you're at the big board. If you manage to rack up $10,000 or more, then go again and hit Double Your $$ and a spin, it takes a bit of common sense to know that you'd be better off passing whatever spins you have left to someone else. But what if you're the type who tries to break the bank and wants to add more, more, more to that total? There's a Whammy waiting to happen. And if you're in that position with $20,000 or more, and you've got three Whammies and don't have any spins passed to you, you'd be NUTS to spin again. But...
...if the opponent who's in line to receive those passed spins has enough on his/her own to conceivably catch up and pass your score, that's something else to consider. Also, when it comes down to that last crucial spin in the game, if you've had bad luck with the Whammies and need to repeatedly get something with an extra spin to stay in the game so your score of $2750 so far can hopefully be upped to pass your opponent's score of $15,850, do you spin and hope for the best, or pass to the opponent in hope they get a Whammy and *you* win?
And of course, Michael Larsen was certainly no dummy when he came along and exposed the board's Achilles Heel. What he did took nerves of steel and a keen sense of timing.
The ultimate game any dummy can win is Treasure Hunt. Pick a box and hope for the best, or take the envelope. Either way you win something.
-
treasure hunt and LMAD certainly dont take much intellegence.
Neither does WOF its hangman, a 4th grade level game.
I agree somewhat that there is some more thought to PYL than meets the eye but not much, as is shown by some of the contestants there.
Match game doesnt take intellegence, just a good sense of humor, which well does make it so that a total fool cant play it too well.
Ill leave kids game out of this, however kids games for adults less so...STYD is definatly on this list. As would be BTC.
-
[quote name=\'Mike Tennant\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 01:23 PM\']Strike It Rich (Warren Hull)[/quote]
From the episode I viewed at the Museum of Television and Radio some time ago, four of the five questions in the quiz were pretty easy--and Hull was coming close to giving you the answer on a silver platter for *those* questions. The last question seemed to be the most difficult and could be missed, and I noted that while every contestant on the episode I saw bet their entire bankrolls for the first four questions, they all held back on the last one, so that they would leave with some money.
Of course, even if the contestant muffed the quiz, he/she could still have someone call in on the Heartline and offer who-knows-what after being touched by their "heartwarming" story, so I guess that you didn't have to be smart to come off with a good haul on the show in the first place--and that's why the streets around the theater got clogged with people who came to New York for no other purpose but to get on "Strike It Rich"--and what the New York State government made the producers register as a charity.
-
well if we are to bring 50s game shows into it i think you could be dumber than britney and win a bundle on twenty one if you were able to kiss enright's ass enough ;)
-
[quote name=\'ITSBRY\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 12:56 PM\']
Card Sharks doesn't require a whole lot of cranial exertion. It's just a guessing game.
[/quote]
But as Randy Amasia reported several years back, and Jim Perry even mentioned in passing on the show one time, CS producers were looking for contestants who could give good, thought out answers to the survey questions, and were tested on that when they auditioned.
-
[quote name=\'Little Big Brother\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 03:34 PM\'] High Rollers: Even though there is Q&A, the luck factor outweighs any smarts
Concentration: I think this goes along with Wheel in that you don't necessarilly have to know what you're talking about, just say what you see
[/quote]
As for High Rollers, it was reported a few years back that some contestants who auditioned for that show ended up on Squares or another H-Q show, and vice versa.
Al Martella's site a couple of years back did mention that Classic Concentration did have prospective contestants take a rebus test with partially revealed Steve Ryan-created rebuses, and had to get a certain percentage right as part of the audition. There was no memory test in the audition, however.
-
[quote name=\'zachhoran\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 06:50 PM\'] [quote name=\'ITSBRY\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 12:56 PM\']
Card Sharks doesn't require a whole lot of cranial exertion. It's just a guessing game.
[/quote]
But as Randy Amasia reported several years back, and Jim Perry even mentioned in passing on the show one time, CS producers were looking for contestants who could give good, thought out answers to the survey questions, and were tested on that when they auditioned. [/quote]
But it still led to a lot of people saying, "Well, I think A...so I'll go with a guess that completely contradicts my reasoning"
Of course, this was a highlight of the show for me.
-
[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 04:11 PM\']I don't agree with the notion of PYL being okay for dummies. [/quote]
Well, see, that's what I meant by a fuzzy line. I was interpreting the question as "Given a person who is dumb, which game shows would he have the best chance winning on?" Yes, a smart player has an advantage over a dumb player on Press Your Luck, but it's a much smaller advantage when compared to Jeopardy! Basically, the games we're listing are either A) easy, B) dependent largely on luck, C) involve lots of audience assistance, or D) some combination of A, B, and C.
But, while we're at it, I'll put in my two cents defending Wheel of Fortune as a show that rewards smart players much much much more than dumb players. If you can figure out puzzles quickly, do a rough count of the letters not yet picked that are in the puzzle, and have at least some idea of where your spins are landing you on the wheel, you'll be breaking five digits on Wheel in no time flat.
("Pick the H before you solve! There are two of them! . . . No, all right, throw away 900 dollars. Idiot . . .")
-
[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 04:11 PM\'] I don't agree with the notion of PYL being okay for dummies.
... [/quote]
Facts are facts, regardless if you like the show or not.
PYL had a huge share of idiots.
-
[quote name=\'Dsmith\' date=\'Nov 4 2003, 02:36 AM\'] [quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 04:11 PM\'] I don't agree with the notion of PYL being okay for dummies.
... [/quote]
Facts are facts, regardless if you like the show or not.
PYL had a huge share of idiots. [/quote]
...and we've seen this one proven over and over at The Palace, right Don?
Whammy seems even easier for dummies than PYL was, as it seems like there's even more softball questions. Though most of the questions on that show are a difficulty ranking of about 3 or 4 out of 10, the Big Bank questions rank about in the 5-6 range, and the dummies almost always miss them.
Hollywood Squares is certainly a lightweight, as is Match Game, WoF, CS.
TPiR contestants can be dumb and rely on the audience, who is normally, pretty good.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Funny Money yet. DUH. Oh yeah, maybe nobody's watching it.
Cram is a game of memory rather than intelligence. If you have a photographic memory, but are stupid, you can still win.
Hard to explain, but it seems like I've seen quite a few dumb teams take it all on Lingo... Anyone else noticed that?
-
[quote name=\'nWo_Whammy\' date=\'Nov 4 2003, 02:01 AM\'] Cram is a game of memory rather than intelligence. If you have a photographic memory, but are stupid, you can still win.
Hard to explain, but it seems like I've seen quite a few dumb teams take it all on Lingo... Anyone else noticed that? [/quote]
Your observation about Cram brings to mind the difficulty of defining intelligence (and its opposite, stupidity). Mozart is routinely described as a genius. I would say the same of Mark Goodson, and most intelligence tests include some memorization and some language skills.
Probably the best definition we could use for "dumb" for the purpose of this thread is, lacking the skills that would normally be useful on the show in question. Then we could say that the shows we're looking to list rank low on the best-player-wins scale. (You could further refine this scale and look either at shows where the best player usually does win or shows where the rules give the advantage to the best player, regardless of whether it turns out that way.)
WoF is low, but far from the worst, because two of the necessary skills are (1) remembering which letters are vowels and which are consonants and (2) paying attention to the used-letter board or else remembering which letters were called. We have all seen plenty of people win who lacked one or both of these. In the latter case, contestants in the bonus round have called letters that they were already given.
Cram is, as you said, a memorization test. Other than adding in the physical tasks, the game itself is based solely on memorization, so I would put it high on the best-player-wins scale.
Most straight quizzers are high on the BPW scale. J! is probably the highest, not because it has the most difficult material, but because it has the fewest things to help weaker players.
If J! and 21 are straight quizzers, Password (pre-puzzle), Pyramid and Show-Offs could be called straight communication games. (For the unfamiliar, Show-Offs was a charade game.) They would rank high on the BPW scale. WLD, when it didn't have puzzles, would too. Adding the puzzles put it lower on the BPW scale, alongside Super Password/Password Plus and Body Language.
TPIR is actually high on the BPW scale: It is difficult to win much if you can't accurately guess prices. However, it loses points for the spin-off, because that has nothing to do with prices. (It is still an interesting game of intelligence, though! For years, off and on, I've been trying to figure out the precise point at which the first player should stop on his first spin.)
Then, you brought up Lingo. I would say that the skills necessary here are word recognition, obviously, and the ability to work with both the correct letters and the incorrect letters from previous guesses. If, as you believe, a lot of "stupid" people walk away, it's probably because there is nothing in place to penalize people who lack the second skill noted. (We've had a discussion on another thread as to whether there should be some sort of penalty.)
-
[quote name=\'Jay Temple\' date=\'Nov 4 2003, 09:27 AM\']For years, off and on, I've been trying to figure out the precise point at which the first player should stop on his first spin.[/quote]
70 cents, and the second should stop on 60, given the option. Of course, the third has a 50/50 chance if given the choice on 50, so I'd go for the spin-off, just to give the other player a chance at some money (and very slightly better my chance at money via the possibility of multiple spin-offs).
-
[quote name=\'Skynet74\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 12:11 PM\'] Name a Game Show past or present that even dumb people can play?
The Dating Game
[/quote]
It always struck me you had to be kind of quick on your feet to be a bachelor on the Dating Game. You never saw a lot of guys staring into camera saying, "duhhhhhh."
Now Treasure Hunt, that's just luck.
Concentration takes memory--that's skill. Lingo is skill tempered by luck.
On High Rollers, the questions were pretty darned easy, most are multiple choice, none involve philosophy and ancient history, and there are always the dice to save you. Whammy and PYL are the same way but have more interesting decisions to make.
Family Feud wasn't a game for brain surgeons, but it wasn't luck based, either. Maybe that's why it was so popular.
-
[quote name=\'Jay Temple\' date=\'Nov 4 2003, 12:27 PM\'] [quote name=\'nWo_Whammy\' date=\'Nov 4 2003, 02:01 AM\'] Cram is a game of memory rather than intelligence. If you have a photographic memory, but are stupid, you can still win.
Hard to explain, but it seems like I've seen quite a few dumb teams take it all on Lingo... Anyone else noticed that? [/quote]
WoF is low, but far from the worst, because two of the necessary skills are (1) remembering which letters are vowels and which are consonants [/quote]
Remembering which letters and vowels constitutes intellegence?
Yes, and I'm a 4.0 student at Harvard....
-
i agree about different types of intellegence being the main part of this thread and why I rejected alot of shows in this thread and added some of my own. For example TPIR involves math in many of its games and estimation is the core value of the show (even back on the cullen version) folks it takes a rare breed to really be good at estimation and ordering products. It also requires an aquired knowledge in most cases, that is the knowledge of prices of items, especally the grocery games.
Of course one thing thats asked for may not be recieved if the contestants are dumb enough as evidenced by LMAD's pricing games that useally ended up with the contestant missing the last price by more than 3 miles and either bailing or losing.
Memory is indeed a form of intellegence, I think shows like cram and concentration do indeed involve alot of intellegence, cram in fact I think has one of the more difficult games in the genre for intellegence in the double trouble stunt round trying to answer two different subsets of questions at the same time is very hard let alone doing it with no sleep.
Feud requires a very unique skill albeit one that is easy to master. that is decephiring the trends of a greater population, and while it is a skill that is quick to master to the point where kids have come onto the show and carried their teams on more than one occasion, it certainly is a you have it or you dont skill as evidenced by the plethora of rotten answers that flood MOGSM specials ;)
MG i thought took some intellegence (wit is a by product of intellegence) to decipher the joke and add a quick, witty punchline in a short period of time, however after seeing last night's MGPM rerun and some other eps of its ilk i balk a little since the fact is that its the luck of a celebs that determines the quality of an answer, the answer of "jewish" as per why the wolf wouldnt eat the pigs only matched fannie (the more mundane answer of vegeteran won out) despite Jewish being much more clever and thought out IMHO, so in the end MG is more about luck than wit. (and mind you that contestand was no einstien, she skunked the super match!!!)
Heatter's agree disagree games (squares battlestars AS biltz) I think rank down there, even if the contestant has zero clue they can guess and have a 50/50 shot of being correct. ive seen guys wing it on luck and do quite well (especally on the marshall PM eps where there were no DCs)
Word games often require intellegence enough to identify a word with a high synapse speed (like scrabble esp the sprint round) or a vast knowledge of the dictionary (like lingo) WOF has none of these, its just pick a letter and study what it creates for as long as you need (and as long as you can keep picking letters)
With all this being said ill now re list my ten easiest game shows to win. In order 1-10 easiest to hardest (note: lottery games dont count but well you dont need much of anything besides a rabbits foot to win big on the big spin ;) )
1. Treasure hunt
2. National lampoon's funny money
3. PYL
4. Shop til You Drop
5. WOF
6. LMAD (only this low because they did frequently play tpir style pricing games)
7. Match game (7x-on)
8. Newlywed game
9. Squares
10. High Rollers
-
[quote name=\'Starkman\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 06:34 PM\'] treasure hunt and LMAD certainly dont take much intellegence.
Neither does WOF its hangman, a 4th grade level game.
I agree somewhat that there is some more thought to PYL than meets the eye but not much, as is shown by some of the contestants there.
Match game doesnt take intellegence, just a good sense of humor, which well does make it so that a total fool cant play it too well.
Ill leave kids game out of this, however kids games for adults less so...STYD is definatly on this list. As would be BTC. [/quote]
In my opinion, about 99% of those Match Game front game questions were hard. Match-Up for MG '90 and the Super/Audience Match to me are easier.
-
[quote name=\'Dsmith\' date=\'Nov 4 2003, 02:36 AM\'] [quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 04:11 PM\'] I don't agree with the notion of PYL being okay for dummies.
... [/quote]
Facts are facts, regardless if you like the show or not.
PYL had a huge share of idiots. [/quote]
Let's see you take that argument to Randy West. ;)
Tyshaun
BTW, hardly anyone on PYL I would request for brain surgery, but they had several smart players on the show. The rest were perfect fodder for Peter Tomarken.
-
[quote name=\'gsnstooge\' date=\'Apr 22 2004, 05:33 PM\'] [quote name=\'Starkman\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 06:34 PM\'] treasure hunt and LMAD certainly dont take much intellegence.
Neither does WOF its hangman, a 4th grade level game.
I agree somewhat that there is some more thought to PYL than meets the eye but not much, as is shown by some of the contestants there.
Match game doesnt take intellegence, just a good sense of humor, which well does make it so that a total fool cant play it too well.
Ill leave kids game out of this, however kids games for adults less so...STYD is definatly on this list. As would be BTC. [/quote]
In my opinion, about 99% of those Match Game front game questions were hard. Match-Up for MG '90 and the Super/Audience Match to me are easier. [/quote]
A thread that hadn't been posted on for 5 months got revived for *this*?
-
[quote name=\'Dsmith\' date=\'Apr 22 2004, 08:28 PM\'] A thread that hadn't been posted on for 5 months got revived for *this*? [/quote]
What a revoltin' development this is, huh?
Treasure Hunt is easily the best game for dummies. Lucky box, another lucky box, you pick one of thirty boxes, then you decide between the box and the small cash prize. Couldn't be simpler.
Other games that didn't take a lot of brains to win some dough:
- Eye Guess
- Break the Bank '76
- The Magnificent Marble Machine
- Tattletales
-
[quote name=\'Neumms\' date=\'Nov 4 2003, 10:33 PM\'] [quote name=\'Skynet74\' date=\'Nov 3 2003, 12:11 PM\'] Name a Game Show past or present that even dumb people can play?
The Dating Game
[/quote]
That's what I was thinking too.
-
As said Peter Tomarken when interviewed in TV Guide in Summer 1987 re Bargain "piece of crap" Hunters: "We have contestants(on Bargain Hunters) who are not normally seen on game shows, as they don't have to take tests beforehand to see how well they score". I guess Peter forgot about TPIR when doing this interview....
-
And let's not forget every 'dating' and/or 'relationship' game show starting with Love Connection, and going downhill from there.
Cordially,
Tammy Warner--the 'Barbara Stuart of the Big Board!'