English Chess Forum

With due respect to our President, Only Connect is my favourite quiz show. It got nearly five times the viewers of Signed by Katie Price this week.

I'm a Pointless fan. I think the presenter and his sidekick work well together.
I now take a very very late lunch to watch it in the canteen.

(between you and me I think the Eggheads get easier questions. I can usually
get thier question but toil on the non-Egghead ones. One week in a tie break
the question was about the town where one of the Eggheads actually lives.)

Geoff Chandler wrote:between you and me I think the Eggheads get easier questions

Y' know, Geoff, I've felt that way myself sometimes when watching the show. But I've never liked to say so because I'm not a regular enough viewer to make an informed judgement.

Hi John

Just watched another episode. Again 9 Egghaead I got right, v 7 from the other team.

I think the strategy is to get your best guy on his chosen subject to play Kevin.
You need him knocked out when playing the money round.

I googled. 'eggheads get easier questions.'

We are not alone. Most agree the show is a carve up.

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/in ... 112AAqArtU

One wit thinks poor old CJ should not be an Egghead.
Another poster say they put CJ in the team so people won't think it's a fix!.

I think he does OK. Kevin is practically unbeatable. CJ is just good as Chris and Daphne.
Judith scores the worst.

Complete nonsense mate.

I've been on the show. You get the choice between the first set of questions and the second set of questions. Whichever pile of questions you choose, the Eggies get the other one. Furthermore the presenter is sat inches from your table. The studio is much smaller than it looks on TV. You can see exactly what's going on.

It's just another urban myth. Sorry.

As I've said, I can't speak authoritatively about Eggheads, because I don't watch it at all regularly (it screens out here at 4.15pm daily, and though semi-retired we're often busy elsewhere at that time of day).

But it's my impression, based on frequent viewing of many other shows over the years, plus my own observations when actually competing in a few, that although their overall level of probity is very good, hardly any of them are run totally straight 100% of the time.

There's nothing nowadays as gross as the events depicted in that movie Quiz Show, of course. But selection and line-up of rival contestants so as to favour or disfavour a particular individual has certainly gone on; likewise taking into account someone's demographic or profile when deciding on subject-matter and level of difficulty of questions. I can't be more specific without heading into potentially libellous territory. (And no, I haven't been directly affected by any of these practices.)

Hi James.

They had no need to rig the show when you were on it.

Of course it's not fixed, but I was assured/surprised to see
that quite a few people felt the same.

"Kevin is practically unbeatable. CJ is just good as Chris and Daphne.
Judith scores the worst."

I'm slightly surprised nobody has calculated the stats. I know figures for Countdown are more easily available, but someone worked out that both Carol and Rachel scored over 90 % on the numbers, excluding impossible numbers games.

Someone must have been keeping a track of how successful each of the Eggheads is. Daphne has clearly worked on her sport and is now much better than she was!

I like Pointless as well, a nice mix of sitting smugly when they ask for single letter symbols for chemical elements, and horror when you are supposed to remember album titles of U2...

There is poll knocking about asking viewers who they thought was the best.
Kevin came top and CJ a very creditble 2nd.

I'm good friends with a lad, David Reid, who won a few rounds at Countdown.
In the Championship where they paired previous winners against each other he
hacked his way to the final.

There is/was a minor piece of fixing going on in Countdown.
The celebrity guests were given a helping hand if they could not
come up with a word of their own in the 30 seconds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/282342.stm

I've heard it said (a long time ago, mind) that in Countdown Carol would be allowed extra time to solve the numbers round (which would be edited out come the broadcast); other than that it was pretty much as you saw it. Perhaps Matthew Turner of this parish has some tales...

Some people at my work were on Eggheads about a year ago. They weren't aware of any favouritism (although they won). Some of the tie-breaker questions were edited out, so viewers won't see all the questions and any stats would be incomplete.

"I've heard it said (a long time ago, mind) that in Countdown Carol would be allowed extra time to solve the numbers round (which would be edited out come the broadcast); other than that it was pretty much as you saw it. Perhaps Matthew Turner of this parish has some tales..."

Perhaps I can answer! Obviously Carol got more than 30 seconds as Richard went to the contestants first to find out what they had done, then went to Carol if the contestants failed. Based on my ten appearances, every time she didn't get it and then worked on it in the commercial break (the game stopped although we didn't see the adverts), they openly said, "Carol got it while we were away." Then she showed the solution. On one occasion they credited the camerawoman, who had worked on the show for many years and had got quite good herself.

The ear piece for the celebrities is a non-story - they insert it whilst sitting at the desk, so it's hardly a secret. Some of the guests play along, some of them are just there to try to be entertaining. You can normally tell from watching the programme.

A list of people would be quite interesting on those who have been, or are, ECF graded or FIDE Rated, who have appeared on quiz shows. I'll start that ball rolling:
CJ
Jim Plaskett
Matthew Turner
Kevin Thurlow
Malcolm Pein
James Coleman
Ron Harman
Melanie Buckley

As far as I know, only the first two have made real money from such shows.

There was, of course, the Forbes/Warwick led women's team on Eggheads

There was a Camberley Chess Club team on Eggheads of Ken and Christine Coates, Julien Shepley, Paul Sloane and Steve Harley.

I remember them well, my mum made me watch a recording of "some chess players you probably know on Eggheads" even after I'd protested I didn't know everyone who plays chess. My position was undermined when the show included Ken, who'd recently given me a lift to a county match, and Julien who was captain of my 4NCL team

Roger Edwards the most recent chess player I've recognised on countdown. He was champion for a few days earlier this year.

Dave Ledger the first chess player I remember being countdown champion, 1994 apparently. It was actually a bit surprising to see someone I knew back then, before quiz shows really took off.

Does The Krypton Factor count as a quiz show?