Blimey, Think Tank is back. Who'd have thought it? I just happened on this by accident.

Not much seems to have changed so far. Same bunch.

One minor change is that in the "Two Tankers argue their case for their answer" round, they don't have to get out their seats and stand next to Bill looking a bit silly.

So in the final round, do they still have to pick a Tanker to help them, even when they know the answer? Which was one of the daftest bits of the first series.

It looks like they do.

Also I missed the start, so I don't know if the players are still doing the silly hand gestures at the start when they get introduced.

Will check now

Nope.

A belter from "former travel rep" Ken there.

Windhoek is the capital of which country? I'll admit I didn't know that but I suspected it would probably be a former colony of Germany or Holland.

He said it was probably in Africa and was a former colony. Fair enough. Then he says, "Try Cape Horn."

Cape Horn's not a country. And it's at the Southern tip of South America, not Africa.

The answer was Namibia.

Jackie thinks a duck is an insect, so wacky!

Nope, not a single one except the qualifying question about Frasier's dad's name, continuing her fine performance from the first series.

I posted back then that I had serious doubts that she's a genuine doctor. How could someone with a head that empty even find her way to the lecture theatre?

She is a real doctor. Her full name is Abi Kanthabalan, and she works, or worked, at University College hospitals.

There is a talk by her on Vimeo about prostate cancer. Although it is audio only and there is no picture of her, it is clearly her voice.

I knew it was on today, but (despite starting topic many moons ago) I've really lost interest in this programme now. I've been watching the repeats of the WIlliam G. Stewart version of 'Fifteen to One' on Challenge, and that is imo the best quiz show ever. Most of the recent quiz shows are pale shadows of that.

Thanks Sarahsaurus I stand corrected.

Straight, no-nonsense quizzing with very little faffing about. My only bugbear is the inconsistency of some of his overruling of correct answers.

Sorry but this quiz is so fake.

In what way is it fake?

Well some of the think tank must be getting fed the right answers at some point.

The answer to the question about the "type of articulated lorry" was absolutely wrong!

A "juggernaut" is not a type of articulated lorry; that could be semi-trailer, or road train. Juggernaut is a slang term for a large articulated lorry - or really any large truck. They are never know as juggernauts.

Very poor!

Going by a lot of their answers, they're seriously underfed.

What would be the point in that?

All the questions that are asked, except the final round, the Think Tank have already answered before the show. So they can easily select questions that the Think Tank got right, they get asked hundreds. And their record in the final round, the ones they haven't seen, is pretty poor, you're lucky if they get even half of them right.

Cape Horn again!

Nobody on the Think Tank thought of any country in South America; for me it was between Argentina and Chile, and I plumped for Chile.

Just what is the pedigree of these members of the think tank? They surely haven't been chosen for their quizzing prowess.

Anyone complaining about 500 Questions needs to watch this to see a truly bad quiz! I'm switching over to something more intellectual - Tipping Point!

Turns out by a strange coincidence Cape Horn was the impossible question today, after Ken suggested it yesterday as a country in Africa. Nearly all of them thought it was in South Africa, but that's the Cape of Good Hope. Cape Horn's in Chile, right at the bottom of South America.

I'm surprised none of them knew that.

You beat me to it by two minutes.

And no, they have not been chosen for their quizzing prowess. They were selected from people that applied to be on the first series as contestants. See the first few pages of this thread for more discussion on this, if you're interested.

glad i now know its a new series , i wasn't sure,
my how bad will Tristan be today starts again
wooooo hoooo

has it already been 4 months since the last series. time flies

Apparently somebody said that they're only showing new ones Monday to Wednesday, and it's repeats Thursday and Friday.

Easiest way to tell is watch the contestants when they get introduced.

If they do silly hand signals and mimes, it's a repeat.

I notice that in the "Think Tankers ask a question round", which gives them an excuse to ramble on in a generally non interesting way about why they got the question right, if one of them isn't picked to ask a question during the round, Bill gets them to ask their question anyway, "just for fun". I don't remember that happening in the first series, although I could be wrong.

What the point of it is I don't know. There's enough waffle in this show as it is.

We're on 90 minutes earlier, this week. Are they trying to hide it from us? Still waiting for Doctor Abi to get a question right, this series. She got one on Friday but that was a repeat.

Did anyone hear the gem Ken came out with, when answering a question today

The question was

Who won the first series of X Factor


And Ken said, Mark Wahlberg

seems my comedy gold Tristan is no more and has been replaced by the two newbies,
both dull and add nothing to the show.
though i will still watch its a shame

Nearly spilled my cuppa today. Not only did Abi answer two in a row correctly, she also managed to answer more correct than anyone else.