~~Excitement Music~~

Rumour has it that there will be New Crystal Maze.

Below is a reading of Sata's official position on the possibility of a revival of the best gameshow ever of all time ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFp_GHDLKaA

In which the Author remains convinced that ITV know nothing about primetime quizzes

As Dan Peake remarked ITV haven't made a successful primetime quiz since...
[insert your own punchline here].

ITV have, in fact, shown two good quizzes in this author's memory: Duel (2008) and The Exit List (2012). That neither was successful we wholly blame on ITV's decision not to renew.

Let's Duel.

In fact, if we discount instances of friendly fire, we think ITV has only made one good quiz at all in recent memory; that being Jenny Ryan's programme. Tipping Point, by the way, does not count because it is an arcade game (not a quiz), and 1000 Heartbeats does not count because it is a multidisciplinary challenge (and/or: we forgot it). That said, we hear Rebound is being afforded a second series - if so then we might afford it a review.

This is not a picture of Revolution.

A lot of the demand to create new primetime gameshow things has been absorbed by The Cube, which is a great show, but not a quiz, and is getting a bit old. Perhaps 500Q was ITV's one attempt to find a quiz replacement before reverting to the safer territory of physical games - perhaps it was their attempt to copy the success of The Million Pound Drop Bank Job. We know something called Revolution was worked on for a while, but never good enough to be shown to us.

#givethatmanapodium

We're not actually going to pour very much over 500Q itself, mainly because there's not that much which is both interesting and not obvious to the naked eye. The Challengers are a bit redundant. The questions are (slightly) too hard, and there aren't 500 of them. The catchphrase (can you remember what it is? Exactly.) doesn't work. The set's too big. The lack of a destination has been patched, but at the cost of making the game overtly asymmetric. Position in the queue is everything.

Three wrong and you're... eliminated?

The problem is, turning our eyes upward, Sata's author knew that 500Q would be a disaster. We've already seen it fail in America - few people watched it and even fewer thought it any good. We've heard that it failed to shine in Germany, and even on paper, it seems obvious to us that 500Q is a weak format: it's just questions, not five hundred of them, not particularly fast, and with no real destination.

Some of the not 500 Questions.

What bamboozles us is that heavy resources have gone into producing 500 Questions. They've got (borrowed) an expensive set, the questions are of an ok quality, the editing is tight, and we (subjectively) like Giles. It's not going to set the world alight, but, it is watchable; Sata comfortably sat for an hour. The programme produced could (with some numbers changed) fit comfortably into the 5pm daily position.

And ITV are actually great at this. We haven't bothered writing about many of them, but over the last 2 years we've seen ITV create 4 or 5 middling-to-competent teatime alternatives. (And Freeze Out.) This one just happens to have escaped into a slightly bigger studio, and a slightly later transmission. But we can't just wrap things up there: 500 Questions as a format demands to be primetime, demands to be eventful, demands to be Big. For it to be a mediocre hour, is, due to its own nature, a failure.

We think everything wrong with the Format 500 Questions is endemic; no amount of work could save it. We cite the programme produced by ITV as evidence. What we find most annoying is that this wasn't an easy mistake to make. We think any ITV exec could and should have noticed that 500Q was a lacking format, and we think the same work done on a blank slate would probably produce something adequate; maybe even another Exit List or Duel, (which the channel could then inappropriately cancel, obviously).

We ranted last summer that BBC4 had had one successful gameshow and then given up trying. We might contrast ITV, who have almost given up on primetime quizzes, and who we doubt have the insight to ever get one right.

Hunted has been recomissioned

Oh yes.

We don't need to remind you, dear audience, that Sata strongly endorses Channel 4's recent docugame Hunted. 

The only new news we have about series 2 is that there is a £100k prize fund to be divided between any winners. We have to say, this news surprises us - we wonder whether the show will be taking a more gamey tone, we wonder whether the prize will be emphasised as part of the programme, and we wonder whether that will actually improve the programme.

We certainly think Hunted As A Game has more longevity than Hunted As A Statement About Modern Britain, and probably more international appeal. We fear Hunted might go the way of the Million Pound Drop, and gradually decline in interestingness and depth as it grows in popularity. 

Regardless, we are very, very pleased to know more Hunted is on the way in 2016. And we shudder at the thought of how much more pressure the fugitives will be under with thousands of pounds on the line.

We never got a chance to use this picture in the review.

Joining the chase.

A quick remark that this blog would like to be able to say "I told you so", as the first mentioned on our shortlist, Gambler and Only Connect Champion, Jenny Ryan, is announced as ITV's 5th Chaser, but to be totally honest, after compiling the shortlist, the author had begun privately predicting it would be Daisy Christodoulou. Ah well. 

A much sounder prediction seems to be that Jenny Ryan will do excellently in the role, there's certainly no lack of evidence of her general knowledge, nor, if you follow her twitter, her sense of humour. 

(2 minutes of 'proper' research actually yielded an enormous list of quiz appearances which the author poorly neglected to mention last time; including the impressive trio of University Challenge, Mastermind and 15 to 1).

They were all adopted.

There is no news yet of when Ryan will begin appearing on ITV, but given the rather long turnaround of the 'big two', it is probably unlikely to be very soon. In the meantime, one can sample Jenny's excellent writing on Feminism and quizzes here, and, this author imagines, learn more about her from a number of the more conventional media outlets when they get round to it. A longer conversation about in what ways each of teatime-rivals Pointless and The Chase can refresh themselves, and what effect Ryan may have on the two shows' fortunes is almost certainly due, but not today.

The number thinking, idea made more simple thinking,...

The number thinking, idea made more simple thinking, is a part of number thinking that has in it the human made ideas of: move happen caused by other move happen expression, adding of very many very small things which are not totally known, ways to say how much of something there is when you have not all of it but some weird part, where slower and slower things end up after a very long time, what things will do after a very long time when you are adding them, and facts about the relationships which we use to match parts of the real and imagined space which can be thought of as very very soft to touch even when you look really close and in weird ways.


This is the first line from 'Mathematical' 'analysis' on 'wikipedia'.

And the quotes are so I can show you this.

Normally it reads:

Mathematical analysis is a branch of mathematics that includes the theories of differentiation, integration, measure, limits, infinite series, and analytic functions.

 My 'translation' was made using this tool, made by @TheoSanderson. The idea of constraint to a smaller vocabulary is an interesting one, and I think potentially very powerful. Mr Munroe has used it to create a comic strip and now a book, but I think it could also be used for teaching and learning, comedy, not to mention generally making text more accessible.

I also think it could have a place in games and puzzles. Everyday language is so well suited to what we use it for that we rarely get to play around with being constrained in general communication. The closest most people get is probably trying to order lunch in a foreign city. Don't you find there's something fun about thinking about how to translate complicated ideas into simple language? Have a play on the website above. I think it's great.

Or should that be: Don't you find there's something fun about thinking about how to word-change from not-easy-to-think-of ideas into simple groups of words? Have a play with the phone-line-using-word-show-picture above. I think it's great.

The 5th Element

While it's still interesting...

It's been known for a while that ITV's The Chase is looking to cast a 5th chaser. The Chase is arguably ITV's best quiz currently running, and often challenges Pointless for the highest daytime ratings each week. A large part of The Chase (and Pointless)'s appeal come from their casts, and so the identity of the 5th chaser is of big significance to both shows.

This week Mark Labbett  tweeted a crucial hint to the 5th chaser's identity. It's been suggested before that the 5th chaser will be a young(er than the other chasers) woman, codenamed 'The Vixen'. Mark says: "the vixen is a champion of TVs toughest quiz". That seems like it should be enough information to prepare a shortlist, and in doing so, quietly celebrate some of the UK's best female TV quizzers.

I've no idea who @bothersbar is.

Googling TVs toughest quiz, yields, on page 1, mentions of 4 UK quizzes: Who Wants to be a Millionaire, University Challenge, Only Connect, and 15-to-1. For this consideration, I'd also like to throw in Mastermind, which I doubt many would dispute is at least, a very tough TV quiz.

We start by eliminating the non-options. 15-to-1 has not seen a non-celebrity female winner since Daphne Fowler in 2001. Daphne, whilst she would make an amazing addition to the chase, recently retired from Eggheads, so it seems unlikely she would wish to return to TV. Winners before 2001 are a possibility, but it seems a bit unlikely that a 'young' chaser would be more than 15 years into a quizzing career.

Similarly, Who wants to be a millionaire(?). Only one of its five UK champions is female, Judith Keppel, and she is also associated currently with the spiritual rival BBC show, Eggheads.

Only Connect and UC, then, will throw up most of our options, with Mastermind providing one outsider.

Three of the thirty (if the reader receives these figures with a mild sense of dismay, they are in the same mindset as the author) Only connect series champions have been women: 

Series 3's Gamblers included Jenny Ryan; 

Prior to choosing a greek letter.

Series 4's Epicureans were lead by Katie Bramall-Stainer, 

Improvised Movie Lines

and Series 6's Scribes featured Holly Pattenden. 

Songs to do with letter-writing. No, I didn't get it either.

From what little this researcher could find of them while compiling this list, all 3 are strong potential chasers, displaying impressive knowledge (although, as OC champions of course they are). As her team's captain, I saw a little more of Bramall-Stainer's character than Pattenden or Ryan, and think she in particular, might have a good ability to play to the half-friendly adversary role that The Chase demands.

Moving onto UC, unlike OC, for which lists of past champion players are not so readily available (for Institutions, yes, which I think tells you more than a little about the strange way UC is viewed in society). However, this researcher is reasonably familiar with the recent history of University Challenge, and can identify two strong candidates who have been particularly memorable UC winners (and in fact, winning captains).  

More famous is Gail Trimble, who won (ish) with Manchester in 2009, and generated such enormous media coverage at the time that I'm not even going to link it, go google if you need to. Gail's knowledge is perhaps the most impressive of any on this list, and she certainly carries enough fame from her UC time to 'need no introduction' if appearing on The Chase. However, from her appearances on UC, I worry whether Gail's personality is too earnest, and generally well-meaning to meet the character role required for the Chase. Trimble, who is now Dr Trimble, is a fellow in Classics at Trinity College Oxford, and has made few quiz or media appearances since 2009. 

Compare to Daisy Christodoulou (easier to pronounce than you're thinking), who was winning team captain for Warwick in 2007. A better historian might give you arguments as to why Christodoulou's win was not followed by the same sort of media explosion as Trimble's - but certainly it wasn't due to less impressive general knowledge, as Christodoulou displayed incredible knowledge through her series, including the most important skill for a UC winner, the ability to recall information exceptionally quickly for the buzzer questions.

As a former secondary school teacher, I'm sure Christodoulou has the toughness needed to appear on The Chase. Christodoulou has also not been media-shy since her victory; appearing in a 'graduates' series of UC, as well as a short film about education for the daily politics.

Christodoulou is described by Wikipedia, first as an education researcher. She has written a book, and given talks on the subject of education. Perhaps this is not incompatible with a regular quiz-show appearance?

And finally, a relative outsider, 2015 mastermind champion Marianne Fairthorne. I remember Fairthorne mostly for captaining the Festival Fans in series something of Only Connect, you may or may not remember her mostly for wearing a hat on University Challenge. She is a relatively recently active TV-quizzer, having only won mastermind this year, but is again a great character who I think could 'work' on The Chase. 

It felt necessary to mention the hat.

Appearing on Mastermind

So there you have it. I'm sure in a few days or weeks this speculation will be rendered entirely wrong, but for now, my analysis of the potential 5th Chasers for ITV.

Talos and Story in Puzzles

I want to rave a bit about The Talos Principle. 

Steam tells me I've played 5 hours and I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface (although I play quite slowly and methodically). It's probably been reviewed properly enough times by now, so I won't, but I will summarise by saying that in my opinion it offers the rarely-seen combination of excellently designed puzzles; rich, beautiful artwork, and an immersive story and universe.

Confusing, weird, and very pretty.

Last night I was stuck for around 40 minutes on one of the star puzzles. I had searched everything on this island twice and was feeling utterly, utterly defeated at the hands of this (as it turned out not too difficult) puzzle. My attempts: initially systematic, then frantic, had become completely random and I was close to losing all hope. Just then, at what felt like the last second, I spotted the trick I was looking for and within 20 seconds had the puzzle complete. 

My head fell into my hands and I spent a good 30 seconds just breathing and clearing my thoughts. A real sense of desperation, and genuine stress had crept into me attempting this not-roadblocking, not-time-pressured, not-mentally intensive puzzle. I needed to calm down. I needed to recover. It was a very unusual, but deeply satisfying experience.

There are two points about this anecdote I want to emphasise. 

Pretty pretty pretty.

First is that The Talos Principle featues excellently designed puzzles. Although IMO the difficulty skews a little toward too easy throughout the game overall (caveat: I'm only about 20% of the way through), there are difficult ones out there (generally the stars, which don't seem essential for progress at my stage in the game), and all of the puzzles are incredibly elegant. It is actually very hard, and requires a lot of time and energy, to get stuck in the Talos Principle, because even if you can't see what works, you can usually see a few things that might work, and experimentation has a lovely tendency to reveal something you didn't think of yet. 

Second is that I experienced a well known puzzle-feeling, the: I have exhausted everything I could try, I have no hope of proceeding,  I may as well consult a walkthrough now manner. But I didn't, and I didn't ever feel close to doing so, not because I was worried about spoiling the puzzle, but because TTP had me so thoroughly wrapped up in its world that I didn't want to break out of character by minimising the game. It would have felt **awful** to do so. So I think this is a key lesson about the interaction between game and story and puzzle: very often a quality of story can tide over a temporary dissatisfaction due to a stuck puzzle.