Watched the end of it on Saturday night - quiz programme - guy needed to answer one question correctly to win £98K. - Q. Which is the first number starting from 1 where all the letters are in alphabetical order - he was given 15 secs. If ever a question was loaded against the contestant this was it.
MT - don't think the guy understood the question. If you write 1 as ONE - 2 as TWO etc which number written in letters appears with letters in alphabetical order? see Granty's post for the right answer SdM see Granty's post. 15secs not much time to work that out!
spot on! If someone said devise a question that it almost unanswerable in 15 seconds that would be it. Whoever finances the game show saved themselves form a massive pay out.
It's a great quiz show. Different to the normal of general knowledge questions. Lee Mack is a good host and I like he gets the audience involved in conversation. Can't wait for season 2.
Incredibly difficult in the time allotted. But once you get to thirteen. The next obvious ones in your head to look at are 20, 30 then forty. I reckon I'd have needed 20 seconds. Forgot to add a minute or two lol.
I didn't know it and I got it right when it was on the show. 1 to 10 are quickly ruled out because we're so familiar with those numbers we kind of know that without consciously knowing it. Eleven and twelve are obviously out in a fraction of a second and then you done need to think about 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 or 19 because you've already done them in one to nine. Twenty is new but so quick to rule out as twe is wrong, 21 to 29 we've already done. Thirty needs working out but it's only 5 letters and then 31 to 39 are already done. Next one is forty. Or to put it another we we all subconsciously should know that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ,9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 are in alphabetical order so we only have to check 10, 11, 12, 20, 30 and 40 to get the answer. Its not so much a case of knowing the answer as your brain working in the way that saves the most time when working out that part question in a similar way as how some people can almost instantly see the pattern in a series of words or notice the odd one out.
I guess that's the point, it's a question that only 1 in 100 know the answer to. The likelihood is that the contestant would only get it right if they'd heard the answer before.
I got it in the fifteen seconds, you can ignore the vast majority of numbers once you get to thirteen.
Thought it was something like that. Cheers for the clarification. Even assuming that the contestant understands the question immediately, that's still an extremely tough ask in 15 seconds.
I don't think that's that bad, but the problem with the "only 1 in 100 people know it" thing is you could quite conceivably have a question which is more or less impossible to work out in the time limit but 1 of the 100 people they ask randomly stabs at the right answer.
It's obvious, for example, that it can't be anything in the 20s or 30s once you get to "twe" and then "th", but the problem is keeping calm and collected in such a pressure situation. My younger son, who is an excellent chess player, has a tremendous record in "bullet chess", in which each player is allotted one minute to play all his moves. I play club chess myself, but I would not have the remotest chance of actually winning a game of bullet chess.
To be honest, I thought everyone would’ve known that answer by now. Seems to have been asked in a lot of tv game shows.