I would have guessed Brando. It's the only Marlon I can think of from that period and famous enough to be a Warhol work.


Does Tipping point have a time limit?
I'd give the benefit of the doubt more in quizzes with a time limit as if you get flusters or have a mental block you're pretty stuffed.

Could the mother's surname have been Flynn?

On today's Pressure Pad repeat...

Q. Who in the 60's sang Pinball Wizard?

A. Shakin' Stevens.

Not really a stupid answer, just a wild guess.

No that is a stupid answer...

A stupid answer would be Florence Nightingale ... or perhaps Barbra Streisand!

Would you care to explain why, in your opinion, it's a stupid answer rather than an incorrect one?

deleted - realised my reply was stupid.

Why is Streisand less of a wild guess than Stevens?

I agree though that if you don't know the answer then saying a popstar as a throwaway answer is better than nothing.

Right Pinball wizard was by the Who late 60s, Shakin Stevens mediocre pop singer, early 80s.

If you don't know your pop music, you're unlikely to be any the wiser either way, to be fair.

I give up, if you cant tell the difference between the Who and Shakin Stevens then theres no hope (sigh).

I'm just playing devil's advocate. Not everybody knows everything about everything, which is why we have quiz shows

Assuming that you had ever heard the song, it's not something you would imagine being sung by Streisand! So it would be sensible to go for a male pop singer of the past if you didn't know much about pop music and were just guessing.

Of course if you didn't know the song at all, then I see your point and Streisand wouldn't be a stupid answer, though I think still an unlikely one!

But if you've never heard the song before and don't know that it's by the Who, then why is Shakin Stevens such a stupid guess? Is it a stupider answer than saying "I don't know"?

What if the only version you have heard of it is by Elton John when he sang it in the film version of Tommy? But you know that Elton sang it later than the sixties. So you assume you are looking for a contemporary of Elton John. Is it still a stupid answer?

Given that Shaky first starterd performing as a Rock n Roll singer in the sixties - and his first album was released in 1970 - it's not too stupid an answer.

Pointless last night. Apparently, Nottingham is on the River Thames!

That's the point, if it is a subject that interests you then trivial information like this will be obvious so any wrong answer is 'stupid' whilst most normal people will have no idea.

It's rather like the number of times you hear people amazed that someone does know who won the Cup Final in 1897 when most, like me, could not tell you who played in it this year, never mind who won.

Depends what the question was.

Was the question "What city stands on the River Thames"? I doubt it was, because there are loads. The furthest north being Oxford. But it might have been. If, however, London, Oxford, Windsor and Reading have gone, then I think many people would be struggling.

Was the question "Name the river that flows through Nottingham"? More likely. And as an added incentive was the first letter of this river also displayed ("T")? If so, and depending where the contestant who gave the answer came from, I can understand why they said Thames rather than Trent.

If they came from Northern England (further north than Yorkshire), Scotland or Ireland, so to them Nottingham is a city to the south of where they come from, and the Thames is definitely a river to the south of where they came from, then if they don't know the answer is Trent then Thames is a better answer than nothing at all.

Pointless doesn't allow you to pass - you must give an answer of some kind. If the question was the last one on the board, and the contestant had absolutely no idea of any of the other answers, then it is a reasonable guess. Yes, it is wrong. But it isn't stupid. But then, GoCompareThis, most of the suggestions that you make to this thread aren't really stupid - they are just answers which people got wrong but which you knew the answer to. That's not the same thing at all.

You've been told about this before, but it doesn't stop you coming along with another answer which you found easy, but for whatever reason the person answering didn't. I could call you stupid for not knowing the name of the first Iron Maiden single to get in the top ten. But I won't. It's just something that I know the answer to - and I'm presuming that you don't. That doesn't make you stupid.

Suggesting, however, that anybody who gets an answer wrong on a quiz programme that you would have got right, does hint that you might be stupid though...

The question was a list of clues to towns on the Thames. The person giving the Nottingham answer thought that the Bodleian Library and another well known landmark that I've forgotten were in Nottingham, so it was a rather stupid answer in that the landmarks mentioned were not in Nottingham and neither is Nottingham anywhere near the Thames.

The thing here is that it is subjective. While I would debate the merits of this answer it is about when something might be considered common knowledge (or at least wrong answers should easily be ruled out). Your Iron Maiden example is not ideal as while a successful band they are not particularly mainstream. I looked it up and know the song but probably would have needed a few guesses to get it. If instead you were asked what was the name of the Sergeant who had a Lonely Hearts Club Band in the album by The Beatles you would expect most to get it. You would also perhaps think it stupid if they said e.g. Sergeant Wilson. There is a famous Sergeant Wilson (Dad's Army) and there will certainly be people who don't know the answer but you could also argue that it is so obvious that Wilson is at least a terrible answer. This can be even more extreme. Some people would say the UK has a King rather than a Queen or that they don't know what the letters stand for in U.S.A. It is down to the individual how obvious they think the answer is, or at least how obviously wrong the given answer.

Yes I would agree here. But I think Sgt Peppers being a Beatles album is probably more widespread knowledge than the Bodleiean Library being in Oxford. I only went to Oxford for the first time last year - I might have struggled to have got that answer right prior to me visiting Oxford.

I wouldn't have guessed at Nottingham because I know Nottingham is in the East Midlands and sits on the Trent - but I wouldn't have necessarily known it was Oxford either. Would have probably guessed at Oxford depending what other answers had gone before, but wouldn't have known for sure. Don't know whether that makes me stupid in GoCompareThis's eyes or not?

But as I said before, you aren't allowed to pass on Pointless. You must give an answer of some kind. So, the contestant had to guess a city - presumably a University city given that it has a famous University library. Without knowing how old or young they were, whether they were in any way academic or not, and what their geographical knowledge was like - is Nottingham that much more of a stupid answer than (say) Cambridge, Bristol, Leicester, Derby, Birmingam? All university cities, all nearer to the River Thames than (say) Manchester.

If the only things that the contestant knew about Nottingham was that it was a historic university city that was nearer to London than they were, and they had an inkling that it stood on a river whose name began with the letter T, is it really that stupid an attempt?

If you didn't see the programme, why are you writing a novel to make a pointless guess as to why Nottingham might or might not be a stupid answer?

In fact it wasn't so much stupid as showing a shocking ignorance of UK geography.

According to Wiki
So even should you know the dates of the song and your guess, how would that make your guess stupid?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakin%27_Stevens



That, of course, only works if you know that The Who sang that song. If you knew that, then you wouldn't need to guess at all.

Np, it's simply an incorrect answer, not a stupid one. In the same way as, if I was asked who'd won last year's grand national ... actually, I couldn't even guess at that.

This thread is totally losing the plot.

Frankly it's been "Answers which are stupid because I knew them and the contestant didn't" for about the last 20 pages...