Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: Am I right, or do I just think too highly of myself?  (Read 3827 times)

TLEberle

  • Member
  • Posts: 15800
  • Rules Constable
Am I right, or do I just think too highly of myself?
« Reply #15 on: July 13, 2006, 05:54:39 PM »
[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'124117\' date=\'Jul 13 2006, 02:03 PM\']
[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'124114\' date=\'Jul 13 2006, 01:46 PM\']
If you were to cross Jeopardy! with Pyramid, you'd get a little something like this. Which I haven't played in a long time because the material doesn't age well, but an updated game would be neat.
[/quote]
Really more of a cross between Jeopardy and Password Plus, innit? Were most of the topics of the "Things With A <BLANK>" variety?
[/quote]
Sometimes it was "Things that are <blank>" or "Things With a <blank," and still other times the answers would add up to a puzzle more like the Password variety. You might have questions about colonial America, golf, airplane guidance, and they all tie together for "Get Smart."
Travis L. Eberle

TLEberle

  • Member
  • Posts: 15800
  • Rules Constable
Am I right, or do I just think too highly of myself?
« Reply #16 on: July 13, 2006, 05:58:53 PM »
[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'124098\' date=\'Jul 13 2006, 11:51 AM\']
[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'124087\' date=\'Jul 13 2006, 11:57 AM\']
I could give two tin ones about who drives the number 11 car in the Nextel Cup Series. [/quote]
Way to give Henke a reason to post.
Quote
Does that require zero intelligence too?
Yes, it does.  Whether it be football, racing, or hockey, it takes 0 intellegence to remember. Oh! Drew Bledsoe played for the Patriots and the Bills before Dallas.  

As for the Paris Hilton comment...I think all recalled information takes little...if any. intellegence...and she seems to fit that bill perfectly.

If it is considered intellegence...well, I guess my IQ is sky-high...but the last time I checked, Paris Hilton and sports weren't on IQ tests.
[/quote]
You're mixing two things, Mark. The key thing is that being smart and knowledgeable are two different things. Typically you don't have to be smart to get on a game show, but you do have to be knowledgeable. The recalling of information in such a way that you can do it faster than other people takes thousands of neurons firing all at once, and then your brain has to get you to push the button and say the answer. Knowing thousands of facts isn't enough. A game like "Countdown" is probably something closest to testing the textbook definition of smart.

But why let that take away from your opportunity to make a needless slam on something that had zero to do with our thread (Paris Hilton)?
Travis L. Eberle

Matt Ottinger

  • Member
  • Posts: 12958
Am I right, or do I just think too highly of myself?
« Reply #17 on: July 13, 2006, 06:08:04 PM »
[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'124098\' date=\'Jul 13 2006, 02:51 PM\']If it is considered intellegence...well, I guess my IQ is sky-high...but the last time I checked, Paris Hilton and sports weren't on IQ tests.[/quote]
And neither are state capitals or names of popes.

Far too often, people lump together "knowledge" and "intelligence".  Two very different things, although people who have a lot of one tend to also have a lot of the other.

Q&A games generally require knowledge.  Do you know the capital of Montana?  Do you know the number of the last pope named John?  Do you know the first name of Paris Hilton's most recent fiancee?  All of those are asking you to have learned and retained information.  People can -- and have -- placed value judgments on which sorts of information are "better" to know than others, but it's all essentially the same stuff.

Again speaking generally, word games require intelligence.  Can you figure out the five-letter word using these rules and conditions?  Can you figure out -- or convey -- information with a series of one-word clues? Can you identify a phrase with only as few key letters showing?  All require a modicum of knowledge (I'm very intelligent, but I would suck at a Spanish version of Lingo) but mostly, they're testing your brain's ability to process information, not necessarily retain it.  And that's what I.Q. tests test.

No game show exclusively tests one as opposed to the other, and really good quiz games can craft clever questions that let you use your intelligence to solve them even if you don't have the specific knowledge.  I would suggest that the very best game shows are the ones that test your ability to "figure out" as opposed to your capacity to "know".
This has been another installment of Matt Ottinger's Masters of the Obvious.
Stay tuned for all the obsessive-compulsive fun of Words Have Meanings.

Peter Sarrett

  • Member
  • Posts: 226
Am I right, or do I just think too highly of myself?
« Reply #18 on: July 13, 2006, 08:58:11 PM »
[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'124120\' date=\'Jul 13 2006, 02:54 PM\']
If you were to cross Jeopardy! with Pyramid, you'd get a little something like this. Which I haven't played in a long time because the material doesn't age well, but an updated game would be neat.
[/quote]

My favorite personal moment from Stage II:

The answer to question #1 was SOLOMON.  I tossed in a chip and correctly guessed the category: components of the magic word SHAZAM (Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury-- drilled into my head by watching The Shazam/Isis Hour as a child).

Everyone looked at me like I'd grown a second head.

FeudDude

  • Member
  • Posts: 283
Am I right, or do I just think too highly of myself?
« Reply #19 on: July 13, 2006, 10:20:16 PM »
I can definitely vouch for the difference between knowledge and intelligence.  I've generally scored respectably on IQ tests, and people tell me all the time that I'm a good writer, but memorizing a bunch of facts about things that don't interest me all that much has never been my strong point.  And I'd say that I'm pretty good at word-association games, but I'd make a complete fool of myself on Jeopardy!