SDS Bonusrunde: Back to Square One

By | March 18, 2019

If you missed our Schlag den Star watchalong at the weekend, one of the highlights was a game David Bodycombe tried out called Back to Square One which I’ve cut into its own video here. Three rounds were played.

In its current form it feels like something that’d fit right in on the Netherlands’ VARA mid-highbrow quiz slot (like Twee voor Twaalf or Per Seconde Wijzer).

As it is, I’m sure there used to be decks of cards like these in the 80s, a bit like Top Trumps, which worked in a similar sort of way. Can anyone remember what they were called?

11 thoughts on “SDS Bonusrunde: Back to Square One

  1. Matt Clemson

    I remember discussing those cards on a forum. There was one about learning for your driving test, if that’s any help!

    Reply
    1. Matt Clemson

      Ah, found some old pictures from when I was talking about them before. They’re Waddingtons’ Quiz Card Games:

      If HTML links work here:

      Reply
      1. Chris M. Dickson

        Very nicely found, thank you for sharing. I think we had the TV edition and I found that I could answer only a handful of the questions – far fewer than eight in the whole deck, let alone eight that happened to link up to form a square.

        I was making the Sue Robbie “Connections” music stab in my head whenever the team managed to get Back To Square One.

        Reply
  2. Kniwt

    Sunday Night Takeaway managed to stop the bleeding last night at its new earlier start time of 7pm, adding 20k viewers to a five-city total of 279k … but still way, way behind Married At First Sight (1.48m).

    They seem to be playing up the tear-jerking, feel-good moments; they’ve started using a new pre-credits recap apparently designed to make you go “Awwwwww.”

    Here’s the show: https://southhemitv.com/2019/03/17/snt-1-4/

    Reply
  3. David

    Mental Samurai was perfectly reasonable- which in this day and age might be good enough (it was 2nd in the timeslot in the key demographic rating, but overall a meh).

    Basically it’s what is on the tin. Each contestant is strapped into a rotating and moving chamber and faces 3 questions in each of 4 categories: Knowledge (trivia), Sequence (put things into a certain order), Memory (see a picture remember a detail, hear/see a sequence and repeat it or give what was a specific point of the sequence, etc.), and Puzzle (simple wordsearches, visual puzzles, etc.) 5 minutes to get all 12 right, do it and you get $10K and a a chance to answer one more question in each category to up the prize to $25K, $50K, $75K, and $100K respectively (you get 90 seconds plus whatever time left from the first round for this); one miss ends the game. They went through a ton of players, but didn’t give a lot of money out (you have to get the first 12 right to get anything). Rob Lowe is perfectly adequate for this- if this is successful enough for a UK version you could see Ben Shepard host.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      Enjoyed this, will quickly repeat what I said on Twitter:

      Watching it now, agreed it’s quite fun – would like a go. It’s 1000 Heartbeats whilst being thrown about in a chair with more ‘inspirational’ backstories. Suspect it’d need to be a bit less punitive to work over here, also clock running whilst chair moving a bit off. Good variety of question material.

      Reply
      1. Tom B.

        If they did a less-punitive UK version, maybe something like 250-500 pounds a question for the initial 11 if you fail, with the jump to 10k for the 12th correct answer, then the 25k, 50k, 75k, 100k for the Circle?

        Reply

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