Sunday, January 13, 2019

The hardest Idiotest question ever

Idiotest was a show that aired on the Game Show Network from 2014 to 2017.  Two teams would compete to answer a series of brain puzzles presented on a touch screen, and the winning team played a final round for a chance at $10,000.

Most of the challenges on Idiotest were based on wordplay or visual cues.  For example, here's a puzzle that asks you to spot what doesn't belong in a bowl of Alphabet Soup.  The answer is the "4."


During the first few episodes of Idiotest, the final round had a difficult format.  The winning pair were given a total of 60 seconds to answer five questions.  If, at any point, they touched the wrong answer on their touch screen, they received a 5-second penalty.

Here's a question from the final round of episode 2:


That is, without a doubt, the toughest puzzles I ever saw on Idiotest.  The contestants were asked to "touch the total number of hearts" but what you probably wouldn't notice is there are two hearts camouflaged as spades in the top-left corner.  Who the fuck would ever notice those two hearts?  And this was just the second question!  Thomas and Kente wound up amassing too many 5-second penalties, and they ran out of time.  When the host, Ben Glieb, explained why the correct answer was 17, it took me a while to figure what the heck he referring to with regards to the two extra hearts.

I haven't seen black men given a question this tricky since those Literacy Tests in the 1960s!


Actually, that would be a pretty good idea for a game show:  LiteracyTest!  And the questions are always rigged against the black contestants.

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