First of all, Happy The Traitors NZ On IPlayer Day Everybody (specifically those people who like The Traitors but not enough to jump through the hoops to watch foreign ones)!

Secondly, this pilot for Big Break has been knocking about for a few months, but it seems to have been made public now so for interest here it is, starring Mike Reid off of Runaround giving off big snooker hall energy, Len Ganley as the referee not quite landing as John Virgo-esque foil, an extremely plinky-plonky theme tune, endless amounts of beeping, and an endgame that they did a good job of simplifying by the time it made telly.

How fun! Alerted to this on the Discord:

This game stars six Korean celebs – some you may recognize, some new ones (Bother’s Bar mascot Hong Jinho, Jun Hyanmoo, Park Jiyoon, Henry, Lim Banggeul, NS Yoonji) and together they play a game that’s part Whodunnit murder-mystery dinner and part One Night Werewolf. 

Someone has been murdered (fictionally) and the six contestants pick roles of six people who might have been the murderer. Each of them gets some time to learn the character, their motiviations and movements. One of them however is the murderer and is aware of all the clues that point to them and throughout the course of the game must try and throw suspicion onto the other characters.

Each case spans two episodes, the first one is largely exposition – the characters explained, they get to go around the crime scene looking for clues, some discussion. The second episode for me is where the real meat lies – by this point the contestants are more into their characters and take playing detective more seriously. At the end, they all vote on who they think the murderer is. The person with the most votes goes to “jail” and we’ll find out if they’ve been correctly convicted or not – a correct conviction by the majority means that majority gets to take bags of gold coins, if the murderer walks free they get to take all the bags of coins that would have been won by the incorrect majority.

It starts as a game of exploration, becomes a game of logic and ends up being a really fun game of bluff.

It’s very stylishly done (i.e. uses the Tron Legacy soundtrack) and has a fun live viewer participation poll element.

I don’t think it’s as good as The Genius, but I certainly think it would have an easier chance of translating to the West.

It has since been rebooted and sold to other Asian countries. Right now a lot of open questions – are these existing episodes or (more likely I think) New for Netflix ones? And also there’s no date. Still though.

This is what this page has become now, as we trundle towards paying out for another two-years or not for what’s basically a signpost these days. Still what are you going to do? Buy things for Xmas! This is the second selection, a first can be found here.

It’s the tie-in book for great-once-you-get-past-the-intro podcast Lateral!

100 questions with show-style notes to baffle and bewitch your friends and/or family with. All the fun of going “ahhh, mmm, you’re sort of in the right sort of area sort of” like they do on the show, £13.59 on paperback, £8.99 on Kindle and it’s out on 14th November. Mainly new questions on offer with a couple from the podcast, if the podcast ad read is anything to go by.

But why stop there when you can go on a journey across the world through the medium of puzzles? The Race Across The World Official Puzzle Book promises to be an “action-packed” trip through the first three routes except with puzzles. I hope there’s a puzzle where you have to find a lost passport on a packed bus like what seems to happen every series now. It is £12.19 flexibound (oooh) and is out today, apparently October 24th! The Amazon page has a sample you can read (lots of white space and pictures) if you want a preview. We get a small kickback from Amazon links, but you’re a grown up and can buy elsewhere if you want – I’m not your Dad!!!

OR! Why not buy the official The 1% Club book out November 7th? £13.79 in paperback or £7.99 on Kindle. No preview given although I think you’ve probably got a decent idea of what to expect, puzzles laid out in difficulty order. Don’t know if they are new for the book or taken from the show, so buyer beware.

It’s the European Tram Driver Championships from Frankfurt! This is exactly the sort of thing Channel 5 should be all over, it’s a) niche, b) really watchable and c) has quite a bit of British interest. It’s basically You Bet! without Stephen Mulhern. Also I love the Eurovision-style postcards, but with trams, introducing each team.

Six disciplines this year, each one with 500 points available:

• Start/Stop: At the front of the tram is a bowl of water filled to the brim. The driver must smoothly accelerate and stop in three zones to keep as much water in the bowl as possible.
• Brake on target: The driver must run to the back of the tram, accelerate to at least 20km/h then when they are ready, set a variable emergency brake and raise their hands so they can’t touch the controls anymore. They have to try and stop the cab as close to a barrier as possible.
• Billiards: Stop the cab so you push a cue which will push a ball up the billiard table, points awarded for where the ball lands. You only get one go at this, if you stop early or knock the table over you score nothing.
• Blind stop: With the speedometer covered, the driver must accelerate to at least 25km/h then stop. The quicker they stop the more points they get, but if they don’t get up to the speed they score nothing.
• Precision stop: Stop the cab so the middle of the second set of doors lines up with an arrow, without using cameras or mirrors. More points for accuracy.
• Attention Test: Along the course are five signs, put the signs on the board in order. Then sprint to the finish button to stop the clock!

We first saw this years ago where it also had a bowling element but it’s not there this year.

Presumably this is a local production and as such it’s not perfect by any means – sometimes the director misses a shot or the angle doesn’t show us a score clearly, and it would be nice if we had a speedo for the Blind Stop bit. Most annoyingly is that you don’t see a running score for the current team, just a constant top three. Still, though.

Christmas is approaching and the TV tie-ins have begun.

Puzzle Post have THREE TV tie-ins for you to buy and play.

Have you ever wanted to have a full blown Eastenders-style argument around the Christmas dinner table? Well now you can with this set of OFFICIAL The Traitors tie-in Christmas crackers, you get six and each one comes with a hat, a joke, and a card that determines whether you’re a Faithful or a Traitor or not, and you can play a game with missions and banishments and that. They should have had miniature plastic toy weapons to represent being a Traitor really, but never mind. Anyway they’re £25 for 6, with some extra role cards if you have a few more people to play with.

They’re also doing Richard Osman’s House of Games ones and have updated their Taskmaster ones for 2024.

Meanwhile there’s a Gladiators cash-in book coming out, which looks a bit like an annual but they haven’t called it that. It’s a shame it’s coming out before the next series as presumably it will only have series one stories to go on. Still though.

We’re aware there’s a Wheel of Fortune board game coming out but it’s not on Amazon yet. Do you know of any other new Christmas Cash-ins?

The Chase is celebrating it’s 15th anniversary today with a special ‘Double Trouble’ show even though, er, its birthday was the 29th June. Still though, congrats to one of the most successful formats of the modern era, a tight quiz with a loose sense of humour.

Of course a look back in the archives suggest we weren’t quite so enamoured with it initially, as the post on the 29th June 2009 will attest (sadly the old comments were under a different system which has since disappeared) as it only managed “a little bit great” on the Jim Bowen Great-o-meter, although illustrating it with a picture of Lorraine Chase was quite funny. Hopefully this quote from 10th September won’t ever see the light of day again as it would probably be faintly embarrassing for the writer:

This is worthy of a wider mention I think, thanks to Milky Jack for pointing out this article in Broadcast Now suggesting that The Chase and Divided are set to come back for longer runs.

I sort of feel sorry for The Fuse, I think it’s probably the better format (although both are not brilliant, The Chase could do with a little polishing in that regard), but if you will insist on whooping contestants and Austin Healy…

It’s a shame there’s no sign of Spin Star, we were going to apply for it. Shouty Balls is unlikely to return.

As I always like to point out around The Chase’s birthday, in an alternate universe Austin Healy is the biggest name in light entertainment, the story was that two ITV departments got two weeks to air their own teatime quiz and the one that did the best would get a full commission. You can read what we thought about The Fuse on the 13th July post, although crikey if we thought it was better it certainly doesn’t come across.