Ya Big Fat Fuckin Cheats

OK, so I'm watching dodgy late night telly last night and, flicking channels, I spot what is quite possibly the cheapest, tackiest, lamest excuse for a TV show I've ever seen. On ITV2 (needless to say) it's this show called Big Game TV. You have a presenter sitting there behind graphics of a timer counting down, the game question (e.g. picture of a fish with a speech bubble that says "Hi, I'm Wanda"... Name The Movie, Moron), a huge graphic flashing between "50,000" and "JACKPOT" and an ickle graphic down in a corner for how much you can actually win on this particular game (i.e. 1575). Bottom of the screen is the phoneline number for the drunk schmucks to call in, wait in a queue for 10 minutes racking up the phone charges, then maybe get through to the presenter so they can answer the dumb question and win some dosh.

So far, so crass. But here's the rub.

When I flick onto this show, the timer is at 6:00 mins or so, and the question for this game is a riddle:

Jim and Kim drank 30 drinks
And 5 shots in 30 bars
For every drink they had a drink
Then they were seeing stars

So I flick onto another channel... but ya know how it is with riddles. There's nada on the other side, so I end up curious, flicking back to ITV2 five mins later and see that they're still on the same game. I mean, OK, this is a late night show for drunken fuckwits but, still, surely someone should have been able to do the simple mental arithmatic by now. It's obvious, isn't it?

Well, no, I realise. The question is clearly designed to be ambiguous in its lack of punctuation and precision; there's a couple of readings open at least. My automatic reading is simple, though:

((Jim & Kim together) drank (30 drinks and 5 shots) in each of 30 bars) then (for every drink they had a drink)

Or...

((30 + 5) x 30) x 2

Aside: I've always done this sort of mental arithmatic the "easy way". I reparse this as ((30 x 30) + (5 x 30)) x 2. Actually I reparse the (5 x 30) to (3 x 50) cause that's more natural for some reason, from dealing with fifty pence coins perhaps. Weird. Anyhoo, that's (900 + 150) x 2 = 2100.

As I say, though, the cunning bastards have clearly given themselves a few extra outs. You could also say that Jim & Kim each had 30 drinks and so on (4200). You could say they had these 30 + 5 drinks between 30 bars, each or together. You could exclude the shots as "not drinks". And so on. Clearly they can choose the most awkward solution possible, stretching the logic of the language big time, in order to maximise the phoneline profits from more drunken schmucks phoning in with right answers that aren't "the" right answer. Funny enough, when the timer reaches zero, they put another minute on the clock to pump up those phoneline charges even more -- sorry, to "give someone the chance to win the money".

When some punter phones in with the 2100 answer and it's "wrong", I feel quite justified in not being that drunken schmuck; yer not scamming my money out of me ya goddamn grifting bastards. But by now I'm intrigued to see just how much they've stretched the logic, to see just how left field an answer they've come up with.

Anyhoo, finally the counter ticks down to zero (again) and the presenter reveals the right answer. And my response is WHAT THE FUCK?!?!

2147

Now, if anyone, I mean anyone, can get 2147 out of that riddle, please fer the love of Christ illuminate me, because I think that's a HUGE BIG CROCK OF FUCKING SHIT.

Ya big fat fuckin cheats, I think. They just picked a number that can't actually be reached by any reading of the riddle. That 47 fucks up any process that involves doubling as the last step to get to the final solution. Hell, I don't see how any process could get to 2147 using the numbers involved. So this is like having a question like, say, "What is the capital of Scotland?" where the obvious answer is "Edinburgh", and the sneaky answer to the trick question is "the letter 'S'"... but they say "Bogota".

I repeat: Ya big fat fuckin cheats.

I can't really say I'm outraged at drunken schmucks being swindled by these grifters; screw the morons. I can't really say I'm surprised by the act of swindling; I'm not that naive. But... this is a major fucking TV network running a bona fide SCAM. A real honest-to-God CON. Man, I really wanna know if that's in the terms and conditions these Big Game TV guys purportedly have up on their internet site (which I seem to have misremembered the URL for, cause www.biggametv.com seems entirely unrelated (UPDATE: it's www.biggame.tv -- see below))... "Warning: some of our games are rigged so that you cannot possibly win them. We just want the money from the phoneline, sucker."

I mean, if anyone can show me how you get to 2147 from that riddle, well, I'll take my hat off to these guys for their sheer cunning, but until such time all I can say is:

Ya big fat fuckin cheats.

Afterthought:

I have email addresses for contacts at the main Glasgow tabloids. Should I -- just for the sake of stirring up some shit for the morons who are dumbing down society day by day -- drop them a line about this "national TV network scamming viewers" story? Does this qualify as news or are we too far gone to give a shit? Do we just sit back and wait for the hilarious DIY Con show, you know, where the team gets sent round some senile old granny's place to fix her gutters, only to gradually find more "essential" repair work every day, until eventually they're charging her for replacing the whole fucking roof?

UPDATE:

You know that "I seem to have misremembered the URL..." caveat above? It was indeed the wrong URL (and has now been corrected). My humble apologies to the Big Game TV company which is NOT the Big Game TV company with the dodgy game show on late-night ITV2, for the irate punters I seem to have misguided in their direction. And a tip of the hat to them for being so polite in their request to please point aforesaid irate punters elsewhere.