QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Tuesday 27 November 2007

WMESB™: Just me as usual. I feel like I have my own bus.
Driver: After yesterday’s rip-off £5.70 single, I buy a 12-journey ticket for £23. The driver, the same one as yesterday, informs me that his new ticket machine was £36 down yesterday!! What was he doing? Helping himself?

I got an e-mail back from the Promotions and Marketing Executive, Oona McGinnis, at Forth One who insisted that the presenter “executed the quiz correctly” yesterday. She asked me to call her so she could go over the rules.

In my e-mail yesterday I also, rather cheekily, suggested that they could do worse that employ someone like me to avoid these kind of problems. I also suggested, however, that they probably couldn’t afford me.

I didn’t call Oona but e-mailed the following reply:

“I still believe that the quiz wasn’t executed properly because player A was disadvantaged.

The phrase ”sudden death” is a misnomer because if you have two players being asked questions independently then they need to be asked an equal number of questions. If they were “on the buzzer” or had to shout out, directly against each other, then it would be appropriate to have a one-off “sudden death” situation. If Player A gets his first question wrong do you declare Player B the winner without a question? No you don’t. So why should it be any different in a subsequent round of questions?

Player A is disadvantaged because Player A has got his question wrong and he hasn’t had the chance to see if Player B will get their question wrong too. In a football penalty shoot out that goes to “sudden death” if Team A misses Team B still have to score their penalty to win. I don’t see how this is any different. The player going first in your quiz is disadvantaged.

I appreciate that you might not want a quiz to “drag on” but you prevent that happening by making the questions progressively harder.

If memory serves me correctly, I’m pretty sure that if you listen to recordings of Grant doing the quiz you’ll hear him doing it the correct/fair way.

Cheers

Paul

P.S. Got any jobs? ;)”

I also e-mailed Edwin Mutton at the Institute of Sales Promotions for his opinion of the fairness of the quiz. He’s out the office until Monday but hopefully he’ll get back to me next week.

Fact: Quizzes should be written and run by quiz people.

It was a slow afternoon in the office and for a reason I'm still not entirely sure about the four of us drew round our hands and then decorated them. I think it was a competition for a Women's cause/charity thing. I did mine on red paper and alternated yellow and orange highlighters in stripes across it. Then I wrote HANDS at the tips of the fingers and OFF at the wrist. I thought it was subtly coloured whilst still getting the message across, whatever it's supposed to be! Tony Hart would've been proud. Oh, and apparently I have fat fingers. You know what they say about men with big fingers? That's right, they wear big gloves!

I'll get my coat. And scarf. And big gloves.