Last night's Super Millionaire...

[starcade]

And speaking of a thousand sheeshes:

On Super Millionaire:

Let's see, one contestant doesn't know antihistamines work on allergies...

Then he doesn't know the "I Have a Dream" speech...

THEN he doesn't know what a URL is...

How in HECK did he pass the phone quiz??

Then we get the "Three Wise Men" screwing up a contestant, making him think life began 500 million years ago.  If I got that question in the Next Dimension Tier, I'd have high-fived everyone in the studio I could find!!!

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'starcade\' date=\'Feb 27 2004, 07:57 PM\'] And speaking of a thousand sheeshes:

On Super Millionaire:

Let's see, one contestant doesn't know antihistamines work on allergies...

Then he doesn't know the "I Have a Dream" speech...

THEN he doesn't know what a URL is...

How in HECK did he pass the phone quiz??

Then we get the "Three Wise Men" screwing up a contestant, making him think life began 500 million years ago.  If I got that question in the Next Dimension Tier, I'd have high-fived everyone in the studio I could find!!! [/quote]
 I'll excuse the URL question and even the Ancient History/science question, the other two were more inexcusable as the Tinkertoy question from the other night.

[Peter Sarrett]

The URL question was very hard for the $20,000 level, given the previous 3 nights.  The vast majority of Americans-- even, I'd hazard to say, the vast majority of Americans who use a computer on a regular basis-- would have had no idea.  Especially with one of the wrong choices including the word LINK.

I was clueless about the age of the Earth and the date life began, so I'd have gone with the Wise Men too.

As for I Have a Dream, that was harder than it looked.  "Let freedom ring" is part of the speech-- repeated multiple times-- and is resonant enough to be credible as the finale.  In fact, those are the last three words of the penultimate paragraph of the speech, and part of the first sentence of the next.  Very easy to second-guess yourself on that question with the choices they offered.

[Jay Temple]

I didn't see the last two nights.  What was the question about URL's?

[gameshowguy2000]

[quote name=\'Jay Temple\' date=\'Feb 27 2004, 10:13 PM\'] I didn't see the last two nights.  What was the question about URL's? [/quote]
 It asked about what the RL in URL stands for. That was an easy one for me.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Peter Sarrett\' date=\'Feb 27 2004, 07:15 PM\'] As for I Have a Dream, that was harder than it looked. [/quote]
 Depends on how you were exposed to it. Growing up, Channel 2 out of San Francisco used to be The Place To Be for your afternoon Looney Tunes cartoons. And one of the public service announcements used to be about Dr. King and his speech, and the last bit of the spot was Dr. King uttering the last line "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I am free at last." And they played this spot INCESSANTLY. I guarantee you anyone who watched KTVU in the same timeframe I did would be able to answer that question without hesitation.

[Craig Karlberg]

It's a good thing I didn't go back home to New Jersey yesterday after watching Thursday night's developments.  WHAT in SAMHILL was that Deleware contestant doing on there in the first place.  I'm sure the local station I listen to when I'm in New Jersey would've LAMBASTED that guy to death on that show.  Geez!

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'starcade\' date=\'Feb 27 2004, 08:57 PM\'] Let's see, one contestant doesn't know antihistamines work on allergies...

Then he doesn't know the "I Have a Dream" speech...

THEN he doesn't know what a URL is...

Then we get the "Three Wise Men" screwing up a contestant, making him think life began 500 million years ago. [/quote]
 Honestly, of those four questions, only the allergy question should have been a gimme, and even there you never know what holes will pop up in someone's knowledge.  As Peter mentioned, the King speech choices were tricky.  Lots of people know "URL" without knowing what it stands for.  The origins of life question stumped four very smart people, three with nothing to lose.

If you knew them, good for you.  Best of luck on the phone-in game come May.  But the contestants who struggled with them -- under the lights with real money on the line -- aren't blithering idiots for not knowing them.

[BrentW]

Frankly, who says they actually were the ones punching in the numbers for the phone game anyway?  I had help with mine, and I remember others on here said that someone else fed them an answer.  

Could very well be that one smart person qualified a few people, including themselves, and the "fake" was the one who got randomly called.  And the fastest fingers on TV were much easier than some of the ones on the Phone Game.  Put these heartthrobs in order, put these talk show hosts in order...etc..that was on TV.  At home, I had 'put these literature works in order of their geographical setting, starting in the Atlantic Ocean and moving east..'  Girl, puhhleaze...

I handed the phone to my partner and said "here, you do it."  

[Jim]

The "I have a dream speech" has been etched into society.  The beginning and ending are played incessantly.  The logic supplied by the Wise Man as to why 4 million years wasn't right sounded good to me.  You can work on computers 8 hours a day and not ever have to concern yourself with what URL stands for.  Non-IT people probably just call it "the address line" or "the place you can type a web site name in".
Worst for me, I said right away Mexican jumping beans have fleas in them.
Llama-girl really looked bad, though when she, a stay at home mom and special education teacher didn't deduce an erector set isn't based on straw and spools of thread.

[Robert Hutchinson]

[quote name=\'Jim\' date=\'Feb 28 2004, 12:46 PM\']The "I have a dream speech" has been etched into society.  The beginning and ending are played incessantly.[/quote]
I'm going to take a wild guess here: you believe that the "I Have a Dream" speech begins with the phrase "I have a dream." Well . . .

"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free."

I can't say I've seen that bit of the speech played incessatly. The word "dream" doesn't appear in the speech until about 2/3rds of the way through, by the way.