Fruit Machine Chat

Some interesting points. I don’t own an SWP and never have done, although I did once obtain a CD of cracked SWP games many years ago, which I couldn’t be bothered to spend time playing and felt guilty about owning anyway. Speaking for myself, I relied during my SWP days on pretty strong general know...

Remember ten years or so ago when you could just go on the Cloud website and search for hotspots to locate all of the it boxes instantly. Nowadays everyone is on the cloud but back then nearly every hotspot signalled an SWP. Ha, I fondly remember transcribing likely spots onto maps from the Cloud l...

A) Smartphones B) Consumer trends C) Poor game design D) The decline in the pub trade E) Poor machine maintenance F) Pro Players G) The 2010 SWP regulations Mainly (G), I think. For me it was the substantial toughening of SWPs in response that led to SWPs becoming unenjoyable for all but the most e...

It's the chance of winning something that keeps those losing players playing, surely? Just like the reason most gamblers gamble despite losing, or the reason I very occasionally spend a few quid in an AWP.

Back in my playing days (first time I've typed that, but it's basically true), I made both of these errors (failing to spot gameplay features and failing to check venues properly) and no doubt many more.

Have to disagree with that mendez. A number of years ago I was given a copy of certain quiz machine games on CD, for use on a PC (naughty naughty). I thought it would be great, but the absence of any cash prize element meant it was so stultifying that I couldn't even be bothered to play for practice...

I know Trevor, but haven't seen him for a long while. He drifted away from most forms of serious quizzing in the early 2000s, aside from his ongoing involvement with his book. He plays very occasionally in my quiz league but is by no means the force he was. At his peak he was a really strong player,...

Wow, very nice.

I understand test mode usually implies no payout, but seemingly not in this case. Not seen anything like this before...

Yes, I attend these Tonka - have dropped you a PM to find out who your real life identity is! They are good fun and I would recommend them, although SWPs, with their finite banks, rote-learning requirements, and multiple choice, are a very different kettle of fish. That said, the basic skills are id...

I thought it was 'Fruit Pursuit' but wasn't sure. Only played it once or twice at the time.

I played a Bellfruit one with traffic cones etc. (from about 1997 I think) in an arcade in north Norfolk in about 2008.

Well, cp999, I guess the question of what is a spoiler depends on how good you are and how much you’re playing and there may be some truth in your suggestion that my playing a lot less and having other things going on nowadays might just mean that I’m far more ready to shout “spoilers!” for what is ...

I would certainly agree the outlook looks grim. A few years ago I illustrated a post about the decline of SWPs by saying that the number of SWPs in pubs walkable from my (central London) office at lunchtime had pretty much halved within a year or so. Since then, at least one or two others have gone....

Surely 'Lumberjack' is one of the most famous of all Python sketches!

I would say, as with most things, it is partly about natural talent but also a lot to do with putting in the hard work. Even someone with a naturally very good memory who reads voraciously will struggle to compete with the very top world quizzers unless they are deliberately seeking to educate thems...