MillionaireIM

[SplitSecond]

I received my first MillionaireIM IM just a few minutes ago.  After I gave my response, I received the correct answer in a matter of seconds.

Does anybody "in the know" what triggers them sending out the correct answer?  If they send it out before the entire question is played out in the studio, what's to prevent the Hot Seat contestant from calling a Phone-a-Friend who's also doing MillionaireIM, receiving the correct answer?

[Steve McClellan]

Last I heard (a few days ago), that hadn't been decided.

However, merely seeing the question early would give a PaF plenty of time to look up the correct answer, whether I'm IMed it or not...

[SplitSecond]

Well, the interesting thing is that even though it's technically taking advantage of the house, you'd have to preserve both the ATA and PAF lifelines until you really wanted to pull this trick - and we've all seen that ATA tends to be much more helpful on lower-level questions.

[Steve McClellan]

Yeah, what you'd have to do is know all of the early ones, then think, "Okay, I'm so far up now that the audience probably isn't going to do me much good anymore; I might as well use them now, and if the vote is inconclusive, hem and haw a while, then use the PaF."

That said, yes it can be a good strategic move, but in all likelihood, you aren't going to see it used, except perhaps by accident, i.e., bad contestant uses two lifelines on question, PaF happens to be on MillionaireIM list.