Whatever you’re doing with your loved one this evening, have a great time. I intend to go to KFC and eat chocolate with the one person in my life who means most to me… me. They’d better not hike up their prices.
Anyway, I can’t remember if I’ve done it before or not but I don’t care. Endemol did a great show on the US Sci-Fi channel called Estate of Panic hosted rather brilliantly by English actor Steve Valentine. If you hadn’t heard of it, it was basically Finders Keepers for grown-ups – seven people travel to a dark and mysterious mansion with a view to taking the riches hidden inside it, in each room contestants had to get as much money as they can. The last to leave was locked in forever, but the person who collected the least amount of money was also eliminated, taken away by Rupert the Butler. It was a neat system balancing risk and reward, and of course the game was much harder in that each room had some rather unpleasant surprises in store.
Neat show, didn’t really sell anywhere (Brazil had a version apparently, and I’ve seen an advert for a Quebecoise version). Didn’t get a second series in the US, although in a show such as this I’m not sure there were many set piece ideas that wouldn’t have just retrodden old ground anyway. Like a lot of Endemol’s big budget shows, it was filmed in Argentina with a view to lots of countries making their own version (although some of the more destructive rooms were filmed in a big old film studio rather than inside the mansion).
Edit: In case you’re wondering, there’s discussion of the Watson vs Rutter vs Jennings Jeopardy! match in the comments in this post.
Rather annoyingly, it looks like they’ve removed the full episodes of this from Hulu, though Cha$e is still there.
Wait, a quebecoise version Brig? Link anywhere?
Advert on Youtube. Perhaps only went to pilot?
Looks like Challenge are actually buying new stuff for the channel now that Sky are in control. As well as securing the TNA wrestling contract, it looks like they have picked up more episodes of In It to Win It.
Little anal point, 7 contestants, not 6. Also I really enjoyed the show, though the quicksand kitchen was probably the high point as far as rooms go. Was something you didn’t see coming until they actually stepped into the room.
Doh, changed thanks.
Oh, yes, the kitchen was a thing of beauty. And that one contestant managed to go down in that room with a “save yourself” moment at the end was way more like a horror movie/thriller outcome than the producers could ever have scripted.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=rashad8821 has the Jeopardy match up now. Slight annoyance: it’s two matches spread over the course of three days, so you only get half a game in this episode.
very interesting viewing.
wont drop in any spoilers, but i cant help thinking that he shouldnt have got the questions in text form, there is surely a speed improvement in that form. is voice recognition really that beyond a computer that huge?
But the contestants effectively get the clues in text form also, surely?
Yes, I think the idea is that Watson gets exactly the same treatment as a ‘normal’ contestant, which somtimes works in his favour and sometimes doesn’t. If he didn’t get it in text file form, it would have been trivial to do an OCR job on the screentext which isn’t really the point.
I’m really glad they kept in the ‘preview’ statistics so you could see his thinking.
I won’t have a chance to watch it until this evening, but I’ve done some reading around – it sounds like Watson doesn’t hear the other contestants’ incorrect responses so will buzz in and repeat them if he’s confident about it. I’m surprised they didn’t add some sort of voice recognition element to the proceedings.
Just been talking about this at work – I think they should have at least test the competitors’ reading rate and revealed the clue to Watson at the same rate. But actually, I think that’s moot because all three of them will have processed the clue before the ‘permitted to buzz’ light came on.
Below: NOT REALLY SPOILERS but talking about how it played out a bit…
It was clear that Watson had a massive reaction advantage. I wonder how the computer was informed it was permitted to buzz in? I’m fairly certain that it never buzzed in early (penalised by a .25s freeze out I think).
One interesting point was on a Decades questions. Player 1 answered ‘What is the 1920s?”, incorrectly, and Watson then gave the same answer. Clearly there is very little strategy coded into Watson. It does have a confidence monitor but I don’t think it considers how much money it will lose if it gets the question wrong.
It has an ‘eye’ that can see the Buzzer Enabled light.
Apparently, voice recognition is something they might add in future but it’s not going to be the key factor in most games.
Shame, it would obviously look quite whizzy for it to recognize a wrong answer then recalculate on the fly.
I saw some of the preview game that’s up on Youtube, I’m quite impressed that it pronounces foreign words (such as French names) in the manner they should be pronounced rather than apparent phonetic guesswork.
Hmm, according to this link it has no eyes at all, the button that turns on the buzzer enabled light also tells Watson that it’s OK to buzz, so he won’t ever buzz early. Also there’s a man telling him when he can speak, but not telling it what to say.
http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-watson-sees-hears-and-speaks-to.html
I’m seriously impressed by it, though more so with Brad for catching up to it at the end. I’ll be interested to see how it handles Final Jeopardy since the wagering there is an entire other bit of strategy.
I think that the computer had an unfair advantage given that it will never buzz early. But I agree that it was a VERY impressive comeback by Brad – and his message on his final answer (about bowing down to our new computer overlords) was wonderful!
A couple of pertinent links. Language Log reports on the linguistic aspects of Watson v Jeopardy! (Comments may contain spoilers for the game. Not that UK viewers need be tremendously bothered about that, seeing as how this made-for-television spectacle isn’t actually on television.)
Audio on the same subject comes from Studio 360, where a reporter has visited one of the contestants tuning up. (Again, if spoilers are a concern, careful now.)
The press seem to have picked up on Control, whose pilot’s filming Wednesday week – consensus is that the first series proper’ll begin filming at the end of the month, with a primetime slot for it.
I’ve got a ticket, will let people know what it’s like. If I get in.
Are you still coming to the HOFAH pilot on the 1st of March?
MAYBE.
Please come!! I promise not to harass you.
Alright then.
Yeah!
I’m just playing hard to get, I got a ticket ages ago.
Slightly dubious (although still very impressive) Final Chase today. There were a couple of questions on which the team members answered out of turn.
I thought the same thing… I’ve only just discovered The Chase (in a week of doing the school run due to my wife being on day shifts) and I really like it. I recognise Mark Labett from The Rugby Boys on Only Connect (or am I wrong). Anne is great (she’d lost her voice when I saw her) and I’m yet to see Shaun.
Yep, that’s the same Mark L.
It’s Simon Cowell’s Ultra Quiz!
http://t.co/YBGn271
Those who don’t want to know the scores from the 1st game of the Jeopardy! IBM Challenge are advised to look away now.
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Jeopardy! IBM Challenge Game 1 scores:
Ken – $2,400
Watson – $36,681
Brad – $5,400
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Just finished watching Day 2 on YouTube, those were the scores BEFORE Final Jeopardy.
Whoops… read the wrong bit. The score is at http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=3576 anyway.
Since I’m not sure it’s come up in the discussion before, is anyone else hoping Watson loses? I’m pulling for Brad, personally, but at this point any human victory would be a victory in my book. That said, I do enjoy all the backstory and insight into Watson’s mind and I think there’s some potential for what they’ve done here.
But now for more sour grapes. I can’t help but feel that Watson has an unfair advantage with the buzzer. Given how large a computer of that size is already processing libraries of information, I think being given an electronic “buzzer active” signal is a bit of an unfair advantage. I’d like to think that if Watson had one eye that only saw the “buzzer active” light, and had to buzz in according to that signal, the match would be more fair, even if by a little bit. I have all confidence that Brad and Ken know the answers, but they’ve both said in the past that so much of the game lies in mastering the rhythm of the buzzers.
Yes I think I agree with this.
Absolutely (above).
Brig – am I alone in suggesting that WordPress comments aren’t the best environment for discussion. Have you considered hosting a Vanilla Forum?
No, someone else has suggested that in the past. However, I don’t think the average thread here is nearly long enough to make such an effort particularly worthwhile – as a concession there’s a list of the last eight comments up the top.
Game Show forums are available as well as Digital Spy et al, but I’ve always found the discussion here to be a bit more convivial – like chat in an actual bar.
Product placement becomes permitted on British TV at the end of the month, additional to the prize placement that we have become used to for some time now. Any analysts care to take a guess how it’ll affect things? My gut feeling is very little at the top end of the market, but there’s definite potential for this to be a revenue stream at the daytime and marginal end of the game show spectrum, probably by turning the descriptions of the prizes on offer to something a bit more advertorial.
I like the idea of the logo that must be shown to highlight the use of Product Placement.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12445867
Reminder that Survivor starts in the US tonight- but the new “duels” won’t start until episode 3 apparently:
Ep 1 someone will be voted off and be the first person on Redemption Island.
Ep 2 someone will be voted off and go to RI (looks like they might both stay overnight on RI depending on TC timing)
Ep 3 will begin with the first duel at RI (and some, if not all, of the remaining players will watch the duel).
The show order after that will usually be:
Duel at RI
Combined RC/IC
TC
Oh, I see you’ve just answered my questions, there.