ITV Play | 21/08/07 - 01.50 |
Late nights on ITV normally turn into ITV Play. This is a adfree show or collection of shows (that was infact once it’s own channel) which involve live puzzles which callers can phone in and solve to win cash prizes. The puzzles are always very straight forward and normally have many solutions. Callers who phone in which correct answers are told that their answers are “not hot”. And the prize money remains with the presenter.
For instance on the program called “Glitterball” they have one game in which you have to complete the start of a word or phrase. The start given was the letters “FULL”. The answer could have been anything. When I watched FULLSTOP sprang to mind. It was guessed by a caller soon after I thought of it… but it wasn’t hot. Other incorrect answers for the game included FULL STEAM AHEAD, FULL MOON, FULLY, FULL UP etc. Someone even guessed FULL METAL JACKET. But it was unfortunately also incorrect. Seven answers had apparently been singled out by the production team in advance to be “hot”. With the number of possible answers literally infinite, the number of calls to the show in a minute being just under a thousand and the average number of calls taken to air per 5 minute period being roughly one the chances of you being a “lucky winner” are not very high. In the time I watched only one of them was guessed (FULL BODIED).
Here is one of the puzzles from tonights show. Just see how many answers there are to this one. You have to make a four letter word by taking one letter from each line of the letters below. E.g. DIRT is one correct answer.
C B D S
O A I E
N L R ?
E D L T
(I forget the fourth letter on the third row.)
Many many solutions. Definitely more than 30. In this game only 5 were “hot” and would win prizes. The chance of you winning anything is next to nothing… and with the calls costing multiple pounds to make and the presenters ramblings to pad between callers being severely irritating ITV Play is worth a miss.