He gave Darren a good hug instead.

I posted about this a while back. It drives me mad

How stupid are these people

That is a very odd question to ask. An integer is even if it's divisible by two, and zero clearly is : two times zero is zero. If it's not even, then what is it? It certainly isn't odd.

I looked this up and there are some people that argue that zero is neither even nor odd. The long Wikipedia article on the Parity of Zero, however, leaves no room for doubt: the first four words are, "Zero is an even number."

Whatever way you look at it, if there's any room for debate on what the correct answer is, the question should not have been asked.

If I'd been asked that, I'd have been thinking, "The answer to this question is zero, but I bet the answer they're looking for is two." I'd probably have said zero and if they said I was wrong I'd say,"How is zero not even? it's divisible by two". They'd soon be wishing they'd never asked it.

You should probably post this in the "Incorrect answer to quiz questions" thread as well, and see if anyone has a view on it.

As someone with a strong background in maths it never even occurred to me that the answer was anything other than zero. There is the odd slightly dissenting voice on the internet but none of them seem that serious about it.


Good point, I'd forgotten about that thread.

Contestant, Mairead, a women, committed suicide in the first round with terrible timing. She won the two counters in the bonus pot. The first one was a rider and the second scored nothing.

The other young women, Katie, almost got rid of Barry in the first round. She passed to him twice and he didn't do too well just scoring £150. Mairead could only muster £100.

Well done Katie, enjoy your £3,600. I was shouting William Caxton at the TV for your last question but you couldn't hear me.

I don't blame you for not trading. Ben "proved" you wouldn't have won anyway even though the jackpot counter was almost over the tipping point. You played the game as it should be played.

He hugs everyone - he's a very huggy person.

I like Ben but I wish he would stop saying 'come on now'. Next time I think I'll take a shot every time he says it.

Maybe that's why she got it wrong
The answer was printing press

Katie was very good, in terms of tactics/timing/knowledge. Ruthless in punishing Barry at the start.

Only real blemish was the Caxton Q in the jackpot round. Maybe could've dropped the jackpot counter in DZ 1 or 4, but she made pretty good use of DZ 2.

I let her off the footie question as that was a misleading lot of choices but not knowing Caxton was the printer man was nothing short of sad in general knowledge. I mean the others telegraph or champagne as if ?

Anyway the would it drop part did not punish her, so well done and enjoy your three grand and rides on your bike.

Katie was a honey.

After two questions in the last round she already had the jackpot counter nearly over. Sadly she fell away after that. I don't blame her for not going for the trade at the end. As she said, she'd probably be saying "Go for it" if she'd been watching, but it's different when it's your money.

Pedant alert: is "Desmond" , as in Desmond Tutu, rhyming slang, as Ben said in the question? It's a slang word for a 2:2 degree, but it doesn't rhyme, like apples and pairs rhymes with stairs.

Tutu DOES rhyme with two-two...

Pedantically speaking it's not a rhyme - it's a homophone. A rhyme involves two different words that don't sound exactly the same, like 'cream' and 'dream'.

Edit: or like Sarahsaurus says, 'pears' and 'stairs'.

It's not often you see players playing this game well tactically. You only have to see the number of times in the head to head players say they think they know the answer, but then "cleverly" pass it to their opponent, thinking they won't know it - but then find out that their opponent says the same answer as them - and gets the point.

Barry got off to a terrible start, buzzing in on the first question, and then forgetting the answer. So already he's one counter down. Then Katie got the next two right and correctly passed them, recognising that the machine usually doesn't give much out on the first couple of drops. She passed them to Barry, the obvious target, as he's already one counter down. He never recovered, he was virtually out of the game after that.

Can I ask someone who watches this regularly a question... ( I only caught a couple of minutes of yesterdays show and didnt quite understand all the rules).

In the "jackpot" round, why, if you dont think you would like a category (and therefore have to guess an answer) would you take one or two counters instead of three?

Surely if you know nowt about the subject you might as well guess for three. Sorry if I'm being stupid but it just seems illogical.

Even if the question for 1 or 2 is theoretically easier if you know nothing then it makes no difference.

This is a good question. As you say if you genuinely know absolutely nothing about a subject, you're better off going for a 3 point question, because you'll be guessing in any case. However there's a bit more to it than that. I would imagine the one point questions are probably very easy. But I can't be sure because I've never seen anybody go for a one point question. It's hardly surprising, getting it right only gets you one counter, and so many of the counters fall nowhere near the jackpot counter and are no help, if you took only one point questions you'd need phenomenal luck to get it out.

There is a bit more of an argument for going for a two point question, if you're especially weak in a particular subject. In my experience these tend to be fairly easy as well. But I think on balance you're better off sticking to three pointers. Katie yesterday went for two two point questions and got neither of them right, including a football question, (what country does Luis Suarez play for), which if you know anything about current footballers, is easy, but if you don't, you'll still be guessing.

You can put some numbers in and work out your expectation.

For example, say on a two point question, you reckon you've got a 40% chance of knowing the answer. Your chance of getting the question right is thus sixty percent (because you will guess right 1 in 3 times when you don't know it), so your theoretical expectation is 1.2 counters.

On a three point question, if you know the answer only ten percent of the time, and guess the rest, you will get it right 40% of the time. This is also worth 1.2 counters, the same as the two point question expectation, even though you are guessing nearly every time. So on balance three is probably better.

Thanks for that. I was just wondering whether a 1 point question may be stupidly easy ie having only one viable answer...something along the lines of:-

Which English Club does Wayne Rooney play for

a) Real Madrid
b) Manchester Utd
c) Glasgow Celtic

or similar. I am presuming that even a football numbskull would know that Glasgow and Madrid aren't in England.

Well until somebody asks for a one point question, we'll never know. I would imagine a one point question would be the sort of question they used to have on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire for £500 or something, "What's the capital of France", that sort of thing, although every now and then somebody would get one like that wrong, or have to ask the audience, thus making you wonder why they applied to go on the show in the first place,

Incidentally "Glasgow Celtic" are just called Celtic, so would just appear as Celtic in the choice of answers, so you would at least have to know that Celtic weren't an English club.

I think a Wayne Rooney one point question would be more like:

Wayne Rooney plays for which English football club?

A) Manchester United
B) Cambridge United
C) Northampton Town.

Even people who know next to nothing about football would surely be able to work out that it can only really be one of those three.

Indeed, thats why I suggested it may be made ridiculously simple by including detail that to most is irrelevant.

Anyway I think I get the picture now but probably wont bother watching again. The dreadful sound effects were enough to put me off.

Thanks for your input

Having seen a one counter question on a few occasions, I don't believe there is any difference between the one, two or three counter options. There's one question for each category so always choose three counters.

Jesus Christ that girl with the short orange hair was bloody irritating.

Every time she speaks a stupid childish giggle.

Repeat of her game was on Watch last week.

I don't think that would be allowed. Ben says, "The more counters you play for, the more difficult the question is." All this stuff is monitored by an Independent Adjudicator. If the host says the questions are different, then there have to be different questions, and this will be verified, the adjudicator will presumably be able to see all the potential questions. It cannot be the same one for all three options, otherwise the host would effectively be deceiving the player by saying if they go for a one or two point question, it will be easier then a three point question.

Having said all that I would always go for a three point question for the reasons I stated in my post earlier today.

Nothing surprises me about the array of absolute dullards on this show. The level of stupidity is scary.

"The naval conflict the Battle of Jutland took place during which twentieth century conflict?"

"Pass."

Fair enough he might not have heard of it but you might as well guess the First or the Second World War. (It's the First.) This is Tipping Point, not Mastermind. It's not going to be the Korean War, or the Russo - Japanese War of 1905, is it?

People are often very quick to pass on quiz shows on eminently guessable questions.

Perhaps they're afraid of saying something silly and ending up in the "stupid quiz show answers" thread on here.