…but we’ll always have Craig.

It’s a really old school edition of The Price is Right from 1961. We’ve discussed this original version before – it’s effectively an auction based format where the nearest without going over wins the prize on offer, some of the prizes and skits being quite unusual.

This video is in two parts.

Part two is here.

Here’s what’s going on, in case you couldn’t be bothered to click the link above:

It’s fairly simple. Four contestants bid items shown to them. On their turn they must either increase their bid to be higher than the current leading bid or freeze. Sometimes there are is a minimum increment, and sometimes there are one-bids (like you get now). Whoever is nearest without going over wins the prize and occasionally a bonus prize. Sometimes these are a bit outlandish, sometimes there’s a mini-game attached. But it’s really neatly done with some neat ideas. And it all shifts along under the auspices of Bill Cullen, as someone who mainly knows him for his later work he’s really sharp here.

Promising 1,000 questions. Fiver on Kindle, £9 in actual book form.

Hopefully the difficulty standard is a bit better than the first series of the reboot. The new series begins January 1st. The book includes Fastest Finger First questions which I don’t remember from the original books (although that’s not to say they weren’t there). Links quite useful for a touchscreen Kindle.

Remember this?

That’s right! It’s the trophy for last year’s The Smartest Person At Bother’s Bar. We were going to do it again this year then came to the conclusion that I couldn’t be bothered to write questions for it.

I do, however, have a trophy collecting dust to give away. What to do?

Well this coming Saturday night, the 22nd, I’m going to do our very own TV Total-style spin-off. The Great Briggish Festive Jack-Off. Six contestants (inevitably male nerds) join me in the Jack-Off Tent, one leaves with a trophy. Five games of cultural phenomenon quiz game You Don’t Know Jack: Full Stream will be played with the lowest scorer eliminated each time. The last person standing is the winner. It’s a test of your smarts and your endurance, who will go the distance and leave Festive Jack-Off champion?

You will need:

• To be free on Saturday night from around 9:15pm to 11pm UK.
• To be on Twitter.
• To have a microphone.
• To have a second screen.

Also, because there’s a trophy and postage involved this time, I’ll be prioritising UK players. However international friends are welcome to apply and fill gaps, and if we do this again I will be more liberal. We will also be live and you will be able to playalong on your phones.

This will only go ahead if we can get six people. It’s a last minute idea (i.e. I was in a queue for a kebab) and people may have plans for the December 22nd.

If you’re interested, please fill in the form below.

Good luck!

In case you missed it, Netflix have started uploading seasons of recent-ish US Game Show Network originals: Idiotest, Emogenius, Winsanity and their adaptation of Minute to Win It. Idiotest is probably my pick for the one you should watch, although people seem to have a lot of time for Emogenius as well.

Fingers crossed for some GSN Golden Age at some point – yer Russian Roulettes, yer Crams. Even so with Jeopardy it’s interesting that Netflix are going down this route – cheap content presumably.

In other news, blog Jack Remembers Things is doing a Crystal Maze month and has interviews with Bob Lishman (who wrote his experiences of being on the show up in the early years of the world wide web) and more interestingly, David G Croft, which is a 45 minute interview on Youtube. A third interview is to come!

Tonight, 9:15pm UK
Here and on Youtube

Get your phones ready! We’ll be live at 9:15.