25 years on
25 years on
By my recollection we are now approaching the 25th anniversary of the birth in the UK of money paying quiz machines. How do you think we should mark this 'Silver Jubilee'?
I think we should pioneer the 'on line SWP exchange'.
It's simple. You sign up and you create ten multiple choice questions of varying difficulty. One being easist and ten being hardest. You choose from a variety of stakes and prizes. You can choose to 'lay' or 'play'.
If you 'lay' then you are putting up your jackpot to be won by competitors answering all of your ten questions correctly. You specify time limits, number of choices and try agains (if any) available. Your profile will show how many competitors have got to each stage of your question profile. So you can make the questions as hard and obscure as you like, as long as they are valid. Questions may be refuted and if they are found to be incorrectly set, then the challenger will have their stake refunded and continually poor question setting may result in penalties. If your questions are too hard/your challengers too unknowledgable, your profile will show this and people may be less inclined to challenge you for the jackpot. If you make it too easy, then people will be queuing up for the free money.
You can state if you wish to allow challengers playing 'open book' to play you, or 'closed book'. Bear in mind this is hard to regulate and you will always get people Googling away. You may set stringent time limits to defeat this, but bear in mind it all gets put on your profile.
To 'play' is the reverse of the above. You are the challenger and again your ability at answering questions is all publicly available within your profile.
All players will be graded by ability and on certain parts of the site, this will determine who they can be paired with. The same couplings and same question sets can be played more than once if both parties agree. There is also a 'wild' section of the site, where ability is not counted and you can be paired with any ability.
There are a few other facets as well, but that's the general idea. This was a Channel JG enterprise that never got off the ground due to various legalese. Time to throw into the public domain, may suit the top SWP boys, chance to nab a few carefully graded Qs for their quiz games.
It's that or re-release a silver plated 2010 updated version of Give Us a Break in the original cab? Would cost too much to produce, but let's put that to one side for nostalgic purposes atm.
It's simple. You sign up and you create ten multiple choice questions of varying difficulty. One being easist and ten being hardest. You choose from a variety of stakes and prizes. You can choose to 'lay' or 'play'.
If you 'lay' then you are putting up your jackpot to be won by competitors answering all of your ten questions correctly. You specify time limits, number of choices and try agains (if any) available. Your profile will show how many competitors have got to each stage of your question profile. So you can make the questions as hard and obscure as you like, as long as they are valid. Questions may be refuted and if they are found to be incorrectly set, then the challenger will have their stake refunded and continually poor question setting may result in penalties. If your questions are too hard/your challengers too unknowledgable, your profile will show this and people may be less inclined to challenge you for the jackpot. If you make it too easy, then people will be queuing up for the free money.
You can state if you wish to allow challengers playing 'open book' to play you, or 'closed book'. Bear in mind this is hard to regulate and you will always get people Googling away. You may set stringent time limits to defeat this, but bear in mind it all gets put on your profile.
To 'play' is the reverse of the above. You are the challenger and again your ability at answering questions is all publicly available within your profile.
All players will be graded by ability and on certain parts of the site, this will determine who they can be paired with. The same couplings and same question sets can be played more than once if both parties agree. There is also a 'wild' section of the site, where ability is not counted and you can be paired with any ability.
There are a few other facets as well, but that's the general idea. This was a Channel JG enterprise that never got off the ground due to various legalese. Time to throw into the public domain, may suit the top SWP boys, chance to nab a few carefully graded Qs for their quiz games.
It's that or re-release a silver plated 2010 updated version of Give Us a Break in the original cab? Would cost too much to produce, but let's put that to one side for nostalgic purposes atm.
JG
-
Matt Vinyl
- Senior Member
- Posts: 7198
- Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 6:56 pm
- Location: Lost in the outback, Bryan
Maybe they're all out cleaning up on the new quiz releases... ...oh, hang on.
Good question but by my reckoning we have slightly missed that boat. This week (or very close to it) would actually be 25 years since I first played a quiz machine - the autumn of 1985 when I had just started at 6th Form College. It was called something like Treasure Quest and winning the money involved uncovering four quarters of a 'pie' to reveal the prize underneath. On about my 3rd ever go I won the £10 JP and that was it, I was hooked. I can even remember the actual question - 'Where in the body would you find the aqueous humour?'.quizard wrote:By my recollection we are now approaching the 25th anniversary of the birth in the UK of money paying quiz machines. How do you think we should mark this 'Silver Jubilee'?
However I am pretty sure that machines, particularly Give Us A Break, had already been around at least a few months by then, possibly back as far as 1984.
The first one I saw was Quizmaster and this was about Oct/Nov 1985 time. There had been amusement only ones knocking about in pubs before that.
The machine you described was called Treasure Trail which was the the first one made by JPM. GUAB was JPMs second machine and did not appear until about Sept/Oct 1986.
As I recall with Treasure Trail you only had to answer a minimum of 7 questions so it is fairly miraculous that they ever paid out £10 at all. It was pretty exciting though when the first quarter came off and you could see it was a £10.
The machine you described was called Treasure Trail which was the the first one made by JPM. GUAB was JPMs second machine and did not appear until about Sept/Oct 1986.
As I recall with Treasure Trail you only had to answer a minimum of 7 questions so it is fairly miraculous that they ever paid out £10 at all. It was pretty exciting though when the first quarter came off and you could see it was a £10.
You might be right, although I did think that it was autumn 1985 when I first started playing and that the machines had already been around for a wee while. However it's pretty hard to track down anything definitive, although interestingly a similar 'Old Fogies Reminisce' discussion has already appeared on here:quizard wrote:The first one I saw was Quizmaster and this was about Oct/Nov 1985 time. There had been amusement only ones knocking about in pubs before that.
The machine you described was called Treasure Trail which was the the first one made by JPM. GUAB was JPMs second machine and did not appear until about Sept/Oct 1986.
viewtopic.php?t=9856
in which QM mentions 1984. However a court of law would probably take his mention of being drunk on Pernod into account when deciding how accurate that memory was!
-
QuizMaster
- Senior Member
- Posts: 1254
- Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2005 12:40 pm
Could have been Summer 1985 now you mention it. Either way I wasn't old enough to be in there.
On a slightly related topic, I have never touched Pernod since that day. I have tended to find that once I have honked from a certain type of booze, I can never return to it. A slight exception to this is Guinness, which I have tentatively returned to, 20 years after a night of black vomit everywhere.
On a slightly related topic, I have never touched Pernod since that day. I have tended to find that once I have honked from a certain type of booze, I can never return to it. A slight exception to this is Guinness, which I have tentatively returned to, 20 years after a night of black vomit everywhere.
Stupid punters. Telly all the week, screw the wife Saturday