Shows Providing Wrong Information

[Dbacksfan12]

This is kind of a takeoff on the thread claiming a B&E show counted a contestant’s answer wrong for appending a “The”.
Have you seen a show provide an actual incorrect answer?  I came across one this afternoon on my lunch break:
https://youtu.be/NRCQ3umMCOQ#t13m54s

The question is referencing an incident in the 1979 Daytona 500.  A contestant answered “Stock car racing” and was ruled wrong, while a contestant answering “Indianapolis Car Racing” (to laughter) was given credit.  I did not see any kind of correction made.

[JasonA1]

Countless. Millionaire's incidents in the Regis run were well noted, given the visibility of the show at the time. We can't forget Million Dollar Money Drop. Tom Kennedy said in an interview with David Hammett that 50 Grand Slam had the composer of "Silk Stockings" absolutely wrong -- made worse by the fact I learned years later that it was on a $50,000 round (and win).

-Jason

[Casey]

It happened with regularity on Monty Hall's Split Second...  One I remember involved lyrics to a Christmas song.  The contestant who was #3 for the question had to provide lyrics and was ruled wrong, only for the other two contestants to tell Monty she was right.  The "correct" lyrics were not the familiar lyrics - Monty accepted her answer after the other contestants protested.

[Chief-O]

It happened with regularity on Monty Hall's Split Second...  One I remember involved lyrics to a Christmas song.  The contestant who was #3 for the question had to provide lyrics and was ruled wrong, only for the other two contestants to tell Monty she was right.  The "correct" lyrics were not the familiar lyrics - Monty accepted her answer after the other contestants protested.

I've seen 2 other examples from Hall SS on the YouTubes: Neither the contestants nor the show knew which state Tommy Thompson governed (he's one of Wisconsin's longest-serving governors), and the show had thought Lada automobiles came from the Netherlands (and they ruled the contestant wrong!).





/in fact there's been a thread on this already

[Blanquepage]

Tom Kennedy said in an interview with David Hammett that 50 Grand Slam had the composer of "Silk Stockings" absolutely wrong -- made worse by the fact I learned years later that it was on a $50,000 round (and win).

-Jason

Oh gosh, it was sloppy. The episode actually exists and I was lucky (for notable game show history's sake) enough to screen it; the champ Stanley gave the correct answer of Cole Porter, and Tom said "no, it was Irving Berlin."
At the end of the champ's round of questions, he's escorted out of the booth, there's an awkward cut to Tom explaining that the answer was "double checked"
and confirmed to be Cole Porter. I suppose in theory the first $50K win could have been worse, but that was some shoddy stuff.

[RMF]

Tom Kennedy said in an interview with David Hammett that 50 Grand Slam had the composer of "Silk Stockings" absolutely wrong -- made worse by the fact I learned years later that it was on a $50,000 round (and win).

-Jason

Oh gosh, it was sloppy. The episode actually exists and I was lucky (for notable game show history's sake) enough to screen it; the champ Stanley gave the correct answer of Cole Porter, and Tom said "no, it was Irving Berlin."
At the end of the champ's round of questions, he's escorted out of the booth, there's an awkward cut to Tom explaining that the answer was "double checked"
and confirmed to be Cole Porter. I suppose in theory the first $50K win could have been worse, but that was some shoddy stuff.

Oh, dear, it does exist- and that fact that Silk Stockings was by no means obscure at that point at time (compounded by Stanley Green's status as the doyen of musical theatre scholars of the period) seems to just compound the situation.

[chris319]

Howard Felsher made a grievous error which screwed a contestant on P+. The answer given by the contestant was not the one I had researched and not the one in the show's "script" and not the one on the on-set graphic. Howard was in a hurry to finish the puzzle and go to commercial and made a very bad call.

Ironically, the puzzle was "cable cars" and the contestant guessed "trolley cars". They knew I went to college in San Francisco and I was confident of the answer, but they never consulted me about it. A few weeks after the taping a letter arrived from the aggrieved contestant stating that cable cars and trolley cars are not the same thing. She was right, but I don't think big machers Howard and Bobby ever did anything about it. They never brought that contestant back. I kept my mouth shut the entire time. If you knew Howard and Bobby you'd understand why I didn't want to take them to task. So Howard, why are you paying me to research the puzzles if you're not going to stick to my research? I could have challenged Howard during that commercial but if you knew Howard like I knew Howard ... something about "opening a can of worms".

If anyone has the clues to the "cable car" puzzle, please share and I will look them over again.

All that said, here is the exact language from the P+ bible:

8.  Best Answer

        Suppose there is a puzzle with the passwords: President, Peanuts, Billy, Teeth, Georgia.  The answer obviously, is Jimmy Carter.  It is conceivable that somebody may indeed exist who is President of a Georgia Peanut butter factory, and has a dog named Billy who has sharp Teeth.  Although the passwords may also happen to describe this other person, Jimmy Carter is the "best answer" to these clues and will be considered the only correct answer.

A cable car moves by means of a moving cable in a slot embedded in the pavement between the two rails. No electrical power is involved.

San Francisco also has many trolley car lines known by the locals simply as streetcars. A single spring-loaded pole extends up from the roof of the streetcar and engages an electrified overhead wire. The streetcar rails ground the vehicle and complete the electrical circuit. The overhead pole is known as a "trolley".

https://www.streetcar.org/wheels-motion/difference/

San Francisco is a compact city. In the 1970's for $11 per month you could buy a "Fast Pass" and get around all over the city on San Francisco's excellent (at the time) municipal transit system.

[Matt Ottinger]

The most egregious error I can ever remember seeing was a kids show (the one with the great big robot head on stage that you could also buy as a toy) where they got the capital of Spain wrong.  It was around the time of the 1992 Olympics, and the show decided that Barcelona was the capital.  They credited the contestant after the next commercial break, but that's always stuck with me as a weird thing to get wrong.

[JMFabiano]

Tic Tac Dough '90....

...when Patrick says, "We made some changes and I know you'll love them!"

[TLEberle]

The most egregious error I can ever remember seeing was a kids show (the one with the great big robot head on stage that you could also buy as a toy) where they got the capital of Spain wrong.  It was around the time of the 1992 Olympics, and the show decided that Barcelona was the capital.  They credited the contestant after the next commercial break, but that's always stuck with me as a weird thing to get wrong.

my very first thought was indeed Pick Your Brain for hearing it come up from time to time.

[Kevin Prather]

They credited the contestant after the next commercial break, but that's always stuck with me as a weird thing to get wrong.

Yeah, it'd be one thing to get the capital of Nigeria or Brazil wrong because they've changed. Madrid's been the capital of Spain since the 1500s.

[TLEberle]

My thinking is that “the capital of Spain” is one of those cast-iron cinch questions where you write Madrid as a muscle reflex and so the question passed through research and found its way into a packet and nobody gives it a second thought until of course it becomes part of the $5,000 race.

[Robbo]

Along the same lines of getting capitals wrong - I have a memory that Idiot Savants once claimed the capital of Scotland was Glasgow.

[TimK2003]

Tic Tac Dough '90....

...when Patrick says, "We made some changes and I know you'll love them!"

Well you can't say that one without this one:

"As you know, The Joker's Wild is a game of definitions..."  -- P. Finn

[trainman]

Not a game show per se, but I recently watched the "Rock 'n' Roll" episode of "QI," and was disappointed that they repeated the "'OK' came from Martin Van Buren's presidential campaign, referring to 'Old Kinderhook'" canard -- that's been debunked since it was researched in the 1960s. ("OK" originated as part of a late 1830s/early 1840s fad for wacky abbreviations.)