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Michael Wallace wrote:o rite, 'coures. I was thinking if it was some other quiz game (like cops and robbers or something).

Ah right, maybe it's quite northern talk or something?Have you been on the cops and robbers quiz game? Pretty shit isn't it?

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Michael Wallace wrote:o rite, 'coures. I was thinking if it was some other quiz game (like cops and robbers or something).

Ah right, maybe it's quite northern talk or something?Have you been on the cops and robbers quiz game? Pretty shit isn't it?

Nope, but I've heard from those who have.

Went clubbing with Kirk the other day in Durham and he won £8 on Hex. We celebrated with yet more drinks and I cannot remember the rest of the night.

Ryan Taylor (not the one who got an assist for Newcastle this week) introduced me to Hex last week. I was surprised to see a Magen David, albeit a spooky purply one, in the top-right-hand corner of the screen. I was useless (I think I only helped on 2 answers), but Ryan, Innis and Michelle were pretty good at the quizzing. Exciting anecdote, eh, Charlie?

Adam Gillard wrote:Ryan Taylor (not the one who got an assist for Newcastle this week)

Was it the one who plays for Rotherham United

Adam Gillard wrote:Ryan Taylor (not the one who got an assist for Newcastle this week) introduced me to Hex last week. I was surprised to see a Magen David, albeit a spooky purply one, in the top-right-hand corner of the screen. I was useless (I think I only helped on 2 answers), but Ryan, Innis and Michelle were pretty good at the quizzing. Exciting anecdote, eh, Charlie?

Sweet. I don't remember much of Hex but remember the Pub Quiz £5.00 win.

Also, is it just me or does anyone else really hate the word clubbing? I kind of have a queasy reaction to it every time it is either used by me or someone else.

Ryan Taylor wrote:Also, is it just me or does anyone else really hate the word clubbing? I kind of have a queasy reaction to it every time it is either used by me or someone else.

Every time I hear someone talk about 'going clubbing' I have to fight the urge to make a 'seal clubbing' joke. I am well aware it is an entirely unfunny joke, but I cannot help thinking it every time.

Michael Wallace wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:Also, is it just me or does anyone else really hate the word clubbing? I kind of have a queasy reaction to it every time it is either used by me or someone else.

Every time I hear someone talk about 'going clubbing' I have to fight the urge to make a 'seal clubbing' joke. I am well aware it is an entirely unfunny joke, but I cannot help thinking it every time.

I had a joke that went, People say Ibiza is great, a clubber's paradise, but I know some Icelandic fishermen who were severely disappointed when they went.

Michael Wallace wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:Also, is it just me or does anyone else really hate the word clubbing? I kind of have a queasy reaction to it every time it is either used by me or someone else.

Every time I hear someone talk about 'going clubbing' I have to fight the urge to make a 'seal clubbing' joke. I am well aware it is an entirely unfunny joke, but I cannot help thinking it every time.

I ♣ Seals

quiz quiz: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13609171

We won the Secret Letter £10 jackpot four times whilst in Devon this week. It really is the best game about.
Some odd behaviour though - on one machine we left after winning the jacker, then returned to the pub in the evening and Secret Letter had disappeared.
Then when we won on a different machine (2nd time on this particular machine having won a few days earlier) Secret Letter disappeared from the menu the instant we won it.

Interesting stuff. Also, it's ok to turn off and on the quiz machines if one isn't working. (Ok, as in nothing goes wrong and no big alarm, not necessarily ok as in do it without permission). You have to wait 15 minutes to be able to play the machine again though. But on the plus side you do get to see a load of cool boot-up screens and messages and things. They run Windows 2000 Professional, if you were wondering.

Matt Morrison wrote:Interesting stuff. Also, it's ok to turn off and on the quiz machines if one isn't working. (Ok, as in nothing goes wrong and no big alarm, not necessarily ok as in do it without permission). You have to wait 15 minutes to be able to play the machine again though. But on the plus side you do get to see a load of cool boot-up screens and messages and things. They run Windows 2000 Professional, if you were wondering.

Done it plenty of time and once the machine wasn't even switched on so I just turned the fucker on. Rebel. It does take the piss to load up though and looks really retro (and shit) going through all it's booting up on windows 2000. I want a quiz machine.

Just had a pretty tasty sesh. DoND is our main game, but it was being a bit rubbish to start so we mixed it up and tried the Eggheads game which we hadn't seen before. Was going ok until the dodgy screen managed to misplace my press by about 4 inches, causing us to lose out (Interestingly, it has a rollover system - every 50p play adds 10p to the jackpot, which is kinda cool.)

Before returning to DoND we had a quick bash at Hex, which was pretty awesome. The £1 was only about 3 hexes in, got there with only 2 lives left (the dodgy screen not helping too much) but then the £2 was only 2 more hexes along, so we gambled and got there, which was pretty exciting. The £3 was then only another 2 hexes after that, but by then we figured we'd pushed our luck enough and cashed out.

Went back to DoND, where we finally cracked it and got to its super generous end game (it's chase the ace with £3, £3.50 and £4 - bargain!), I followed the £4, the screen misinterpreted my press (again), gave me the wrong box, which apparently had £3.50 in, but then the machine gave us £3 in the bank and £1 credit, so god knows what was going on there - anyone else had similarly random winnings distribution like that?

Michael Wallace wrote:Just had a pretty tasty sesh. DoND is our main game, but it was being a bit rubbish to start so we mixed it up and tried the Eggheads game which we hadn't seen before. Was going ok until the dodgy screen managed to misplace my press by about 4 inches, causing us to lose out (Interestingly, it has a rollover system - every 50p play adds 10p to the jackpot, which is kinda cool.)

From my experience Eggheads is a horrible game to play for money in terms of it being solid (played it about 4 times and there is not even a sniff of money).

Michael Wallace wrote:anyone else had similarly random winnings distribution like that?

An odd thing has happened on Match of the Day (the hangman game) on a quiz machine that I go on each Sunday. It has paid out double the prize before into the bank which is pretty tasty. Once won £8 off it but it didn't pay out £16 sadly.

Went on the quizzer tonight and won £2 on Hex (quite a way of £3) and then lost £1 by playing 50p on You Have Won £20 and then the other 50p on Battleships. It was playing this game that I took the remaining £1 out because the type of questions coming up were "What score did the judges give Phil and Flavia in the week that they were voted off of Strictly Come Dancing?'*, that is pretty damn convincing that you don't want to put any money in the machine as the 50p you spend doesn't even become a Fun 50p.

*If you wanted to know, the answer is 20.

Ryan Taylor wrote:I took the remaining £1 out because the type of questions coming up were "What score did the judges give Phil and Flavia in the week that they were voted off of Strictly Come Dancing?'*, that is pretty damn convincing that you don't want to put any money in the machine as the 50p you spend doesn't even become a Fun 50p.

I always have a mix of anger and lulz when this starts happening. One of our semi-regular machines tends to start spitting out absolutely ludicrous football questions (like how many goals did $random_player from $random_team (not even Premier League golden boot or whatever) score in $season (from years ago)).

Michael Wallace wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:I took the remaining £1 out because the type of questions coming up were "What score did the judges give Phil and Flavia in the week that they were voted off of Strictly Come Dancing?'*, that is pretty damn convincing that you don't want to put any money in the machine as the 50p you spend doesn't even become a Fun 50p.

I always have a mix of anger and lulz when this starts happening. One of our semi-regular machines tends to start spitting out absolutely ludicrous football questions (like how many goals did $random_player from $random_team (not even Premier League golden boot or whatever) score in $season (from years ago)).

Yep, it's fucking pathetic. I wouldn't mind if the questions were just hard general knowledge but what annoys me is the fact that they aren't general knowledge. Classic ones on football too are the capacity of low league football stadiums (giving you 4 close together options) or one which I saw that asked the attendance of a specific match.

Michael Wallace wrote:The £3 was then only another 2 hexes after that, but by then we figured we'd pushed our luck enough and cashed out.

You do know you can collect at any time, don't you?

Jon Corby wrote:

Michael Wallace wrote:The £3 was then only another 2 hexes after that, but by then we figured we'd pushed our luck enough and cashed out.

You do know you can collect at any time, don't you?

Yeah I forgot to mention , I thought it was a bit strange that you said you wouldn't push your luck further. It's not like say Pints Make Prizes were if you go for it you have to get it before having a chance to collect your money again. So always on Hex just go on until you have the one life left.

Michael Wallace wrote:gave me the wrong box, which apparently had £3.50 in, but then the machine gave us £3 in the bank and £1 credit, so god knows what was going on there - anyone else had similarly random winnings distribution like that?

Any winnings less than a precise pound go into the game credit rather than the bank, so I'm fairly sure you would have forgotten you had 50p still in the credit and thus got all confused. Not calling you dumb or nothing but that's usually how it works. It's something you see a lot more often with Battleships where the odd wins are commonplace.

I've certainly never seen anything like Ryan mentioned with the payout being actually wrong. (It's Match of the Day - Road to Wembley by the way.) (I think.)

I'm really surprised no one has been speaking about Secret Letter. I mean seriously, we're all word geeks, I can't tell you how easy it is. We've won another two or three ten pound jackpots this month (as well as plenty of £2s-£4s) yet none of you seem to be catching on. I'd do it and do it soon - it seems to be disappearing in the same way that Bullseye now completely has (unless you count some of the shitty boxes which still have regular Bullseye on).

Matt Morrison wrote:I'm really surprised no one has been speaking about Secret Letter. I mean seriously, we're all word geeks, I can't tell you how easy it is. We've won another two or three ten pound jackpots this month (as well as plenty of £2s-£4s) yet none of you seem to be catching on. I'd do it and do it soon - it seems to be disappearing in the same way that Bullseye now completely has (unless you count some of the shitty boxes which still have regular Bullseye on).

I've only played it a couple of times on my own and haven't won anything major. I find it difficult not having someone else who can do wordy games to be looking whilst I press which is why it's so much easier with just one extra person. It's the same with Hexagrams, even if I have like 3 extra people stood around, all of them are useless because it is just me doing it and they may as well nto be there. Ideally to win everytime I would need one extra person.

Matt Morrison wrote:I'm really surprised no one has been speaking about Secret Letter. I mean seriously, we're all word geeks, I can't tell you how easy it is. We've won another two or three ten pound jackpots this month (as well as plenty of £2s-£4s) yet none of you seem to be catching on. I'd do it and do it soon - it seems to be disappearing in the same way that Bullseye now completely has (unless you count some of the shitty boxes which still have regular Bullseye on).

What is Secret Letter? Not sure I've ever seen it.

Also, never noticed wrong amounts being paid, but we did once get Bullseye playing for free. We thought it was probably some kind of bug to do with (credit + bank) > cost per play, but credit < cost per play, but we never managed to replicate it afterwards, so god knows. I thought it would buzz it up the more we played it, since there was no incentive to ever collect anything other than the jackpot, but after about half an hour of being offered nothing big, I think we took £2 or £3 and bailed.

Matt Morrison wrote:it's ok to turn off and on the quiz machines if one isn't working. (Ok, as in nothing goes wrong and no big alarm, not necessarily ok as in do it without permission). You have to wait 15 minutes to be able to play the machine again though. But on the plus side you do get to see a load of cool boot-up screens and messages and things.

Pretty interesting follow up to this that is fairly relevant to anyone who suffers quiz machine issues.

So we got to Wetherspoons a couple of weeks ago, aiming to get quizzy (of course) and the screen was completely frozen on a menu image. We told the staff member who happened to be eating on the table next to the quizzer, who turned it off and on for us. So we buggered off outside to have a smoke and kept an eye looing out for the white screen that has the 15 minute countdown on it, and went back in towards the end. It was a new quiz machine (replaced, new supplier) so we definitely were keen to have a go and figured we might be able to do some winning whilst it was fresh. We did, and from our initial quid we picked up £3 or 4 pretty quickly, and then played a game of Hex. From a 50p play (although in general now it's become such a tight game that we only play quids, finally listening to Ryan and Kirk) we'd got £2 pretty impressively, and still had a couple of bonuses and all 6 lives, two squares away from £3 when the screen just went black and the whole machine had reset itself. Seen so many broken quiz machines, frozen screens, not accepting cash when they look fine, but never seen one just straight up reboot itself. It was a pisser, we told the nice manager dude and he gave us the £4 we had in the bank in case it was gone from the bank when it rebooted. This wasn't really satisfying, we were about to win at least another £3 from Hex, and hadn't even had a go at raping DOND or Secret Letter yet. Anyway, hoping we could do at least one of those, we stuck around again for the 15 minute countdown sat at a nearby table. Kept eyes on the thing obviously so went up and stood by it, ready to possibly claim back our £4 and definitely carry on some winning, but when the countdown hit 0 the fattest shrillest loudest alarm just went off and the screen flashed on and off bright red with a message to the effect of "REBOOT WARNING: CONTACT MACHINE OWNER". Fucking sketchy as everyone in this big Wetherspoons just turned and looked at us like we were the scum that we are. Luckily the same manager was nearby, turned it straight off at the wall and just apologised to us profusely.

So there we go - totally cool to turn them off and on again once to rectify issues, just don't let it happen more than once in quick succession.

Then last week we were in a different pub - one owned by one of Heather's friends - and had won £4 off our £1 and doing damn well in deal, two boxes away from guaranteed money (had 21k out of 25k deal so didn't even matter if we picked the 250k box) when the screen just stops responding. Game totally fine, not even a blip in the animation and timer carries on counting down, but can't press a goddamn thing. Worst feeling ever to have to watch the fucker time out. Goes back to the DOND menu, nothing works still. Eventually times out back to the machine main menu - still nothing, screen totally unresponsive. So matey from the pub turns it off and on. At this point we retire to lean on the nearby bar, knowing full well that after the bootup procedure there'll be a 15 minute countdown before we can get back on the fucker. Whilst it's rebooting and showing the Windows logos, the local special comes up to the machine, with his carer (who is genuinely just as special as he is, it's pretty odd) and try to play the fucker. We explain it's going to be 15 minutes and that we (hopefully) have £4 in there anyway but they don't really get it so just stand by the machine. Shockingly, there's no countdown at all - after the dongle- and connection-initialising screen, the countdown numbers don't appear and there it is, the menu, straight away. With our four quid still sat in there. Definitely some interesting points to note down there.

Sadly the issues didn't end there. They used their quid on two games of Eggheads in about a minute (tops, no joke) and then (I could see this coming) completely rinsed through our four quid in not much longer while we stood on helpless. What you gonna do, they're kinda known in the pub and it was basically just a charity donation. Obviously we tried to win it back again afterwards and proceeded to lose another £4, pretty harsh. Was not happy at all, wasn't feeling very charitable after that. Beware the specials when you are playing quiz machines.

Some highlight answers include choosing "WWW" and then "BMW" rather than "LBW" on a question asking which abbreviation meant you were out in cricket. And also "Horse jumping" followed by "(it must be) Badminton (then)" as the preferred options over "Snooker" for a sport that uses balls.

Jon Corby wrote:What is Secret Letter?

Five rounds. 95% of the time Round 5 = £10, occasionally when machine is harsh or it's just been won this might be £1 or £2. But basically, Round 5 is a £10, and Round 4 will also be money - anything from £1 to £4. Very occasionally Round 3 might even be £1 paid.

Each round is a grid of letters. Before the grid is generated you get to choose a "magic letter" from a selection of 3. At the harshest, you'll be choosing from X, J and Z. At the easiest, it'll be something like E, T and R. Then the grid comes up and you start making four-letter words pressing on a letter at a time.

Using the magic letter you chose before the grid appeared will earn you 100 points for your word. The point is to try and find the "secret letter" (by using a mix of quiz machine psychology, good observation, and making words from as varied a selection of letters as possible). In the first couple of rounds the number of points required to go to the next round is no problem at all, so you have time to mix up the letters and try and work out the secret letter. If you find the secret letter the word will be worth 250 points. No magic letter and no secret letter in your word and you just get 25 points.

If you use more than one magic and/or secret letter you get no more than the 100 or the 250. So if "L" is your magic letter you'll get 100 points for HOLD and also for HULL (not 200 for 2 Ls), and if your magic letter is L and your secret letter is X then you'll get 250 points for LYNX, not 350. So obviously to win on the final couple of rounds you absolutely have to be strict and to use as much of the time as you can to foreshadow - "what letters are left if I declare this particular word, can I make two more words from them?" kind of thing.

You also get +5 seconds of time per magic letter used, so the tactics especially at the end are nearly always use all instances of magic letter to begin with and then move up to use the secret letter once you've built up your time. Especially as it takes 3 or 4 seconds depending on the position of the letters for them to move into place, and then for it to tell you how many points you've got, all while the timer is counting down.

You really need to get a job Matt.

Matt Morrison wrote: Sadly the issues didn't end there. They used their quid on two games of Eggheads in about a minute (tops, no joke) and then (I could see this coming) completely rinsed through our four quid in not much longer while we stood on helpless. What you gonna do, they're kinda known in the pub and it was basically just a charity donation. Obviously we tried to win it back again afterwards and proceeded to lose another £4, pretty harsh. Was not happy at all, wasn't feeling very charitable after that. Beware the specials when you are playing quiz machines.

Errrr wtf? You just stood there and watched them spend your money? Did you not even go over again and ask them if you could take your £4 out? That's stupid, if it were me I'd be kicking off big time, special or not.

Matt Morrison wrote: Some highlight answers include choosing "WWW" and then "BMW" rather than "LBW" on a question asking which abbreviation meant you were out in cricket. And also "Horse jumping" followed by "(it must be) Badminton (then)" as the preferred options over "Snooker" for a sport that uses balls.

At first I thought you meant these were your answers. What's funny is that these idiots managed to get £4 playing credit out of even bigger mugs than themselves.

They're known in the pub. Not just some random specials off the street. Couldn't kick up a fuss really, or at least it wouldn't have felt at all good doing so.

I'm with Matt on this one.

Jon O'Neill wrote:I'm with Matt on this one.

As his carer presumably.

Matt Morrison wrote:They're known in the pub. Not just some random specials off the street. Couldn't kick up a fuss really, or at least it wouldn't have felt at all good doing so.

Yeah but I don't think anyone would see anything wrong in you asking to get the money out of the machine that you won it on before others started playing on it. If anything, you are even more wrong for not confronting them with the reason being that they were special, as if this makes a difference. Because it doesn't. And any locals who would think it wrong of you to claim your money on the basis that "you shouldn't go doing things like that to special people, they need treating differently" are complete twats too.

Edit: I'm not calling you or Heather twats.

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:They're known in the pub. Not just some random specials off the street. Couldn't kick up a fuss really, or at least it wouldn't have felt at all good doing so.

Yeah but I don't think anyone would see anything wrong in you asking to get the money out of the machine that you won it on before others started playing on it. If anything, you are even more wrong for not confronting them with the reason being that they were special, as if this makes a difference. Because it doesn't. And any locals who would think it wrong of you to claim your money on the basis that "you shouldn't go doing things like that to special people, they need treating differently" are complete twats too.

Edit: I'm not calling you or Heather twats.

So after all he's been through, you're gonna break his heart for the sake of £4?

You fucking horrible prick. You don't realise how lucky you are.

Fucking hell this thread exploded over night. But yeah - you can collect money on Hex even if you lose? Homo. I'd assumed that you had to collect it when you could, since the machines are designed to steal your money so I figured they'd use every trick possible. But that's good to know

Michael Wallace wrote:Fucking hell this thread exploded over night. But yeah - you can collect money on Hex even if you lose? Homo. I'd assumed that you had to collect it when you could, since the machines are designed to steal your money so I figured they'd use every trick possible. But that's good to know

Yeah - mid-puzzle there is a little "collect" (I think) in the top-middle of the screen. So you can guess away until you're down to one life and then collect. You're right that some games are complete bastards for this. Cluedo I think is one where you have to collect "now or never", and there's absolutely no guarantee that having turned down a win you'll EVER be able to collect anything again. Gay.

Jon O'Neill wrote: So after all he's been through, you're gonna break his heart for the sake of £4?

You fucking horrible prick. You don't realise how lucky you are.

I'm ginger.

Matt Morrison wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:What is Secret Letter?

Stuff.

This sounds quite like an extended version of Word Soup, although I've never seen it.

In other news, the last time I played, the machine failed to pay me my £2 (pound each from Pub Quiz and Word Soup), and gave an on-screen message saying so. This is quite a nice innovation, and a welcome replacement to the days when the coins get stuck inside and the machine spat nothing into the hopper.

Actually, that reminds me of the worst rip-off I ever had. I was playing a fruit machine in the union in my freshers week and dropped the £100 jackpot on my first quid in (always pleasing). Trouble was, given that it obviously hadn't had a busy weekend to fill it with pound coins from the bar or whatever, I got paid mostly in 20p pieces. Even worse than having to carry about five kilos of coins around with me (okay, there are worse things to have to put up with), it only paid around £86, as it was utterly emptied, and the bar wouldn't refund me the different. Bastards.

Jon O'Neill wrote:So after all he's been through, you're gonna break his heart for the sake of £4?

You fucking horrible prick. You don't realise how lucky you are.

I think Ryan's point is that Matt's tale, prima facie, makes you go "...did you not even ask for your £4?"*

I mean, if these thieves understood the mechanism that you have to put money in to play the machine, it might not have been beyond their comprehension that they don't get £4 free with every £1, and that money belonged to someone else, once they'd seen it in there in black & white (as opposed to having it explained while the machine was still initialising).**

However, as Ryan also said, Matt & Heather aren't twats, and so you'd assume their assessment of the situation as a whole meant that the best course of action was to do and say nothing.


* Are these quotes in the right place?

** How do brackets work with regards to punctuation? Same deal?

Jon Corby wrote:How do brackets work with regards to punctuation? Same deal?

We've been all through the brackets one before, depends whether they are being used as part of a longer sentence (like this).
(Or are a statement in themselves.)

Matt Morrison wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:How do brackets work with regards to punctuation? Same deal?

We've been all through the brackets one before, depends whether they are being used as part of a longer sentence (like this).
(Or are a statement in themselves.)

Yeah, that's what I always do, as it's logical. However, I do think it then looks weird when you start a new sentence in the same paragraph after the brackets (like I'm about to do.) So I tend to get a little flustered and restructure everything to avoid it. Although I haven't done that here, as I'm illustrating the point. But I am still a little flustered.

Edit: oops, wrong.

Yeah well I didn't know much about the specials or what has happened to them (I think one was car crash -> brain damage, not sure why the carer is also so odd), so I was never going to make a scene of it. But the landlord had said to them "you need to give Heather that £4" before they even started playing, but they barely reacted. With about £1 of our £4 left the carer dude turned round to Heather and said something like "oh was that your money in there?" but did it in a snorty embarrassed way, a bit like an autistic teenager making a dick joke for the first time. Then when they'd rinsed that the landlord (Heather's friend) again said to them "you need to pay back that money to Heather" but Heather told landlord not to worry about it. I guess we get enough free drinks in there to chalk up a £4 loss as part and parcel.

Jon Corby wrote:

Jon O'Neill wrote:So after all he's been through, you're gonna break his heart for the sake of £4?

You fucking horrible prick. You don't realise how lucky you are.

I think Ryan's point is that Matt's tale, prima facie, makes you go "...did you not even ask for your £4?"*

I mean, if these thieves understood the mechanism that you have to put money in to play the machine, it might not have been beyond their comprehension that they don't get £4 free with every £1, and that money belonged to someone else, once they'd seen it in there in black & white (as opposed to having it explained while the machine was still initialising).**

However, as Ryan also said, Matt & Heather aren't twats, and so you'd assume their assessment of the situation as a whole meant that the best course of action was to do and say nothing.


* Are these quotes in the right place?

** How do brackets work with regards to punctuation? Same deal?

Basically yes, I can't understand why they wouldn't have at least asked for the money they won (the amount is irrelevant whether it be 50p or £100).

Matt Morrison wrote:With about £1 of our £4 left the carer dude turned round to Heather and said something like "oh was that your money in there?" but did it in a snorty embarrassed way, a bit like an autistic teenager making a dick joke for the first time.

Helpful simile

Jon Corby wrote:Yeah, that's what I always do, as it's logical. However, I do think it then looks weird when you start a new sentence in the same paragraph after the brackets (like I'm about to do.) So I tend to get a little flustered and restructure everything to avoid it. Although I haven't done that here, as I'm illustrating the point. But I am still a little flustered.

Oops, I messed up my example as that full-stop should've gone outside the brackets anyway. What I meant was that if you have a bracketed sentence inside a paragraph, I think it looks queer.

Jon Corby wrote:... What I meant was that if you have a bracketed sentence inside a paragraph, I think it looks queer.

I didn't realise that your punctuation indicated your sexual alignment

Peter Mabey wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:... What I meant was that if you have a bracketed sentence inside a paragraph, I think it looks queer.

I didn't realise that your punctuation indicated your sexual alignment

Well this whole thread makes me feel rather gay.

I went bowling last night and we always have a few goes on the quiz machine while we're there. There wasn't normal Hex on it but instead some weird variant that I'd not seen before (can't remember what it was called and can't seem to find any reference to it on the internets either). It had the normal Blockbusters style board for choosing categories, but then instead of getting the QWERTY keyboard on screen, you'd get something like (Cheeses Of The World):
and you have to slide the letters in the scramble to their correct places in the words below.

Needless to say it was fucking impossible and we won nothing. Anyone seen this one and managed to get it to pay out?


The answer to this one (not one we actually got but of similar obscurity) was FROUMAELA VALMANDOURAS.

^That's Hexagrams. I'm with you on this one, every single time I see it on a machine I feel compelled to play it, thinking it should be an easy win, and not once have I even come close to winning anything. Maybe there's a strategy I'm missing, but it seems like as soon as it decides to throw up a near-impossible question like the one above, you're doomed.

That said, I'm sure I remember a few people from here saying they can complete the whole board consistently. How?

Innis Carson wrote:^That's Hexagrams. I'm with you on this one, every single time I see it on a machine I feel compelled to play it, thinking it should be an easy win, and not once have I even come close to winning anything. Maybe there's a strategy I'm missing, but it seems like as soon as it decides to throw up a near-impossible question like the one above, you're doomed.

That said, I'm sure I remember a few people from here saying they can complete the whole board consistently. How?

When it throws up some insanely lengthy and obscure answer you just have to guess as quickly as you can and more often than not you should arrive at the answer in good time, even when it's a long one. I went for 'Capital Cities' the other day and the answer was 'SRI JAYAWARDENAPURA-KOTTE' which took me nearly a minute to get just by guessing as quickly as I could. Intuitive will often help even when you haven't got a clue what the answer is - town names often ending in -VILLE or -TON, or -ROCK for example. When you know the answer to a round, use both hands and 'tap' the letters in - don't slide them across the screen. Touch the letter (it will start flashing) then touch the destination square. Saves a lot of time.

Chris Davies wrote:When it throws up some insanely lengthy and obscure answer you just have to guess as quickly as you can and more often than not you should arrive at the answer in good time, even when it's a long one. I went for 'Capital Cities' the other day and the answer was 'SRI JAYAWARDENAPURA-KOTTE' which took me nearly a minute to get just by guessing as quickly as I could. Intuitive will often help even when you haven't got a clue what the answer is - town names often ending in -VILLE or -TON, or -ROCK for example. When you know the answer to a round, use both hands and 'tap' the letters in - don't slide them across the screen. Touch the letter (it will start flashing) then touch the destination square. Saves a lot of time.

Oh, so there's no penalty (other than the wasted time) for trying to put a letter in the wrong space? We tried this vaguely recently for the first time and were in a similar boat to Jim, and it felt like we were being properly told off by the game for just blindly guessing (and getting letters wrong).

Yesterday we won the Hexagrams jackpot for the first time ever - only had a couple of 4s and a bunch of 3 and 2 quids before that.
And then today we experienced for the first time the Harsh variant of Hexagrams, where you complete the whole game to get £1 rather than the progression from £1 through to the final £5. It was something Kirk bandied about a while back on Facebook and it was the most bloody exciting way to win a pound ever.

Chris - if you really took a minute to answer that one, you probably missed out on a spider running across the top of the screen. Usually happens around the 40 second mark (at a complete guess) - squash him for an instant complete phrase.

I saw Chris complete this on Facebook about 2 months ago and he said the barman got pissed off. I also saw Kirk complete this twice for only £1 each time. I have only ever won £2 off this. I sadly didn't get to play Hex or anyhing tonight but I really wanted to. I spoke to Kevin Ashman tonight on the phone. It was my absolute dream. I asked him a quiz question and he did not know it. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me ever.

Ryan Taylor wrote:I spoke to Kevin Ashman tonight on the phone.

How did that happen?

Ryan Taylor wrote:I saw Chris complete this on Facebook about 2 months ago and he said the barman got pissed off. I also saw Kirk complete this twice for only £1 each time. I have only ever won £2 off this. I sadly didn't get to play Hex or anyhing tonight but I really wanted to. I spoke to Kevin Ashman tonight on the phone. It was my absolute dream. I asked him a quiz question and he did not know it. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me ever.

You have acted like a complete prick in this topic Ryan. You gingee bastard. I hate myself in life.

Michael Wallace wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:I spoke to Kevin Ashman tonight on the phone.

How did that happen?

He was on the train back from the Quiz Grand Prix event in Rochester and I rang someone who was sat with him who had been to the event.

Ryan Taylor wrote:

Michael Wallace wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:I spoke to Kevin Ashman tonight on the phone.

How did that happen?

He was on the train back from the Quiz Grand Prix event in Rochester and I rang someone who was sat with him who had been to the event.

Sweet - can you remember much of the conversation? Did you ask him if he thought you were sexy?

Michael Wallace wrote:

Ryan Taylor wrote:I spoke to Kevin Ashman tonight on the phone. He was on the train back from the Quiz Grand Prix event in Rochester and I rang someone who was sat with him who had been to the event.

Sweet - can you remember much of the conversation? Did you ask him if he thought you were sexy?

You can't possibly imagine how close to the truth you are with that second question. I'm sorry about posting this as no one else will get it but Ryan will laugh.

Michael Wallace wrote: Sweet - can you remember much of the conversation? Did you ask him if he thought you were sexy?

I do remember the conversation.

Ryan: Hello?
Kevin: Hello.
Ryan [to friends]: OMG, OMG, OMG THAT'S KEVIN ASHMAN'S VOICE!!!
Kevin: *chuckles*
Ryan: OMG I'M REALLY NERVOUS, YOU'RE LIKE MY IDOL
Kevin: *chuckles*
Ryan: I can't believe this is the Kevin Ashman. Can you confirm that this is the Kevin Ashman who did not know the answer to which person drove the car that hit Victor Meldrew in the final episode of 'One Foot in the Grave'? [an allusion to a question Kevin once got wrong on Eggheads in sudden death]
Kevin: Ha, yes that's me. I still wouldn't know who it was!
Ryan: That's amazing. So I hear you didn't do very well in the event today. I hear Jesse Honey beat you and the big man Pat Gibson...
Kevin: Yes I wasn't at my best today (said in the way that only Kevin Ashman can say something like this (very calm, with a slight sigh))
Ryan: Awesome. So how do these Quiz Grand Prix's work then?
Kevin: Well they're ran on the first Saturday of each month and you sit 6 papers on 6 different categories.
Ryan: Awesome. Awesome. (I was still my giddy self at this point as you can tell by my replies). So can I quiz you?!
Kevin: Go for it.
Ryan: OMG. OMG. I'M QUIZZING KEVIN ASHMAN!! (by this point my mates are a bit tired of my excitedness)
Kevin: Hehe

So I decided to ask him on something that I'd just recently learnt which was Nobel laureates for physics and he failed to answer the guy who won it in 1953 but then did manage to get one of them for 1954. He said modestly "it's been a while since I've looked at this particular list".

And then it was disconnected after going through a tunnel. But get this...the best part is yet to come. It turns out that Kevin knows all about apterous and it's influence on Countdown. IS THERE ANYTHING THAT HE DOESN'T KNOW?!?!

Ryan Taylor wrote:It turns out that Kevin knows all about apterous and it's influence on Countdown. IS THERE ANYTHING THAT HE DOESN'T KNOW?!?!

Well, there's who was driving the car that killed Victor Meldrew, and the Nobel physics laureate for 1953 for a start.

Quite cool him knowing about apterous though. Wonder how that came about?

JimBentley wrote:Quite cool him knowing about apterous though. Wonder how that came about?

Yeah very cool I thought but I have no idea how. Maybe he was on the wiki trying to learn a list of all Countdown champions and finals before stumbling across Charlie's page. I genuinely do not know though.

Ryan Taylor wrote:But get this...the best part is yet to come. It turns out that Kevin knows all about apterous and it's influence on Countdown.

That's pretty boners. These Quiz Grand Prix sound awesome - getting together once a month to do a bunch of exam papers, brilliant.

Michael Wallace wrote:These Quiz Grand Prix sound awesome - getting together once a month to do a bunch of exam papers, brilliant.

Haha yeah. They were presumably all the nerdy kids at their school who loved the exam hall. But yeah I think when they then mark the answers that is when he fun starts!! Joking aside, in the afternoon they do the team quiz which I can only imagine is like the most intense pub quiz ever. Then after that they go to the pub for a meal and drinkies and then have quiz sex at the hotel afterwards.