Tag Archives: tv

The UK’s puzzle show tradition

"Treasure Hunt" UK tv show logoYesterday, I hinted that the then-upcoming Schlag den Brig would be spectacular; happily, this proved to be the case. The two contestants were mailed a package of several envelopes that they were not to open until directed by the appropriate game. Having opened envelope “A” for game one and been required to set up a short chain of dominoes while blindfolded to topple, and having been required to write poetry against the clock for game two, game three was a treasure hunt. Specifically, a treasure hunt through a book contained in envelope “B”. If you’ve got just over 20 minutes, it’s well worth a watch.



If you have less time and want to skip to the exciting conclusion of the treasure hunt game, skip forward to about 1:03 or so. On the other hand, if you’re not in a rush, scroll back to 0:00 because the entire just over five hours is well worth watching; there’s a great deal of inventiveness from start to end and the ordering of the games marvellously jumps from the light of inherently silly games taken very seriously to the shade of serious quizzes and strategy, then back again as the tension mounts. Contestants Nick and Dan play with skill, style and great humour; Game devisor/curator David J. Bodycombe has a real grasp of originality and comedy. The variety required of the contestants, and the play-along value for viewers at home during several of the games (in a way demonstrating how watching live shows over the Internet can enable richer participation than watching regular TV) were tremendous. The conclusion is delightful for its unlikeliness… and, yet, it works marvellously in context.

Over time, one of the other running themes of this blog is likely to be the UK’s puzzle show tradition, “puzzle shows” being a subsection of “game shows”. I don’t claim that the UK is unique in this regard, but this, arguably incomplete, list of shows demonstrates that the UK is well-served in this regard.

Speaking of which, Only Connect has thrilled viewers for eight series on BBC Four. It features lateral-thinking “connect this series” and “what’s next in this series” puzzles, the wonderfully interlocking Connecting Walls and the exciting turbo-charged wordplay of the Missing Vowels round to complete each show. The ninth series starts at 8:30pm tomorrow night on BBC Four.

Saturday night treat: “Schlag den Brig”

"Schlag den Brig" logoThis is more likely near-topic than on-topic, but there are several very fine, very puzzly people involved, and the first attempt in January was a spectacular success.

One of Germany’s most spectacular TV shows is Schlag den Raab. The title refers to regular house contestant Stefan Raab, a TV host, musician and comedian, might be thought of as a German version of Jonathan Ross crossed with Vernon Kay… in their dreams. He’s as prolific and important as a US late-night talk show host who’s been attracting A-listers for 20 years. In Schlag den Raab, Raab takes on a contestant in a series of 15 games. The games can be mental, can be physical, will often be outdoors, can often be spectacular. It’s a test of “Who’s best at everything?”.

The first game is for 1 point, the second game is for 2 points and so on; there are 120 points possible, so the first to 61 wins overall. (If it finishes 60-60, there’s a sixteenth game.) The most exciting thing is that the show starts at 8:15pm and runs, live, as long as it has to in order to find a winner. Maybe it finishes as early as midnight; maybe it runs past 2 a.m. The show is that important and popular that people will stay up as late as they have to, to see who wins. There are pretty A-list musical guests, as well.

Part of the attraction is that Raab is very competitive and extremely good at what he does. The show is so big-budget that they run it as a special, six times a year. There have been 46 episodes to date; Raab has won 32 and lost 14. He’s beaten an Olympic gold medallist, a Boat Race participant, and some pretty high-powered competition.

That’s Schlag den Raab, this is Schlag den Brig; the Raab role is played by Nick Gates, known as Brig Bother in his guise as host of the superlative Bother’s Bar web site. The Bar discusses UK and international game shows, with a heavy emphasis on the puzzlier end of the spectrum. It was very probably the foremost English-language discussion site for the amazing, puzzle-laden Korean show The Genius (series one discussion and series two discussion) and the Dutch Wie is de Mol?.

Schlag den Brig is an online event broadcast live as a Google Hangout. Nick and his opponent play from the comfort of their own homes. This affects the sorts of games that can be played; the physical games are dialed down somewhat – though not entirely – and the puzzle content has been dialed up. (That said, Nick and his opponent have met face-to-face for two pre-recorded games already, leading to this trailer.) The game devisor is David J. Bodycombe, who has been producing puzzles for TV and print for over 20 years, possibly most notably for the first eight series of Only Connect (and the ninth series starts on BBC Four on Monday) and also for The Crystal Maze. Nick’s opponent is Daniel Peake, who co-runs Puzzled Pint in London.

The first episode took place in January and featured plenty of puzzly games: the first game was a word puzzle with a physical combination lock, the fifth game was a cracking and unusual strategy contest between the two, the sixth game saw the contestants complete jigsaws while blindfolded (much harder than you’d think, despite the jigsaws going out of their way to help), the thirteenth game was Mastermind and the eleventh was a Solo Chess series of puzzles that used chess-based concepts in an unusual and interesting fashion.

The first episode was played in excellent humour and was full of surprises; none of the games dragged and you knew there was something different coming up shortly. The second show should be at least as remarkable, with more interactive elements promised. The URL will be publicised within this post at Bother’s Bar at around 8pm UK time; follow also on Twitter using hashtag #sdb – and post your allegiance with either #teamdan or #imbackingbrig to play along!

Real Escape Game TV

Television set
(Tip of the hat to our friends at Clavis Cryptica and Bother’s Bar; this post is something of a team effort.)

Real Escape Game is the English-language brand that SCRAP, the pregenitor of the genre, use for their exit game activities. Their games have proved so popular, and so well-established, that they have extended the brand into the world of TV. My Japanese is not great, but Google Translate and the Wikipedia page suggests that 2013 (and the first three days of 2014) had four episodes of “Real Escape Game TV” broadcast in Japan. An English-language press release from TBS, the network on which the shows were broadcast, suggests the show “has been nominated for the 2014 International Digital Emmy Awards“.

The press release describes the show as “a real time viewer participation telemovie”, which is an unwieldy but accurate description. Imagine a race-against-time action drama in the style of 24, with a heavy emphasis on puzzles. Viewers can solve the puzzles, in real time, on a web site, hopefully before they are solved on-screen as part of the story. Solving early puzzles leads to later ones. A frequently-upated real-time display counts the number of participants and the much, much smaller number who have solved all parts of that episode’s puzzle.

A spin-off drama (again, use your favourite online translator on the Japanese Wikipedia page) details the progress of five girls through a series of much more literally-interpreted locked rooms, with much less time pressure on the play-along-at-home puzzles.

I speak little more Japanese than I speak Hungarian, by the margin of “a year of night-school classes long ago” to zero, but you may get a feel for the sense of event in the first episode, even if you – like me! – cannot crack the puzzles.

It’s delightful to see the TV companies of the world giving this sort of show a try at all!