Bamboozle
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- For the music festival, see The Bamboozle. For the film, see Bamboozled.
Bamboozle is a quiz game featured on Channel 4 Teletext in the United Kingdom. It was originally part of Teletext's "Fun & Games" category, but the rest of the category has been discontinued for some years. It has had many page numbers over the years, and as of 2006, resides on page 390.
Bamboozle was originally intended as a real-time game that could be played in conjunction with a broadcast TV programme using a similar multiple choice format as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. The decision by the new broadcast teletext franchise holders (Teletext UK) in 1993 to opt for X.25 packet switching meant that it was impossible to adequately synchronise the broadcast of teletext content in the context of a TV programme. The format thus fell back to the form it had operated in largely unchanged since 1993.
It has recently become available on Digital Teletext. Originally only five questions were featured, but now the whole quiz is included. The digital version is text-based and does not feature the graphics of the analogue version.
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[edit] The game
The game uses Fastext keys (different coloured buttons on the TV remote control) to select the desired answer from a choice of four, and is "presented" by virtual host Bamber Boozler, who derives his name from the word "bamboozle". His first name is also a nod to the former University Challenge quizmaster Bamber Gascoigne, and his appearance is reminiscent of Magnus Magnusson, host of the quiz show Mastermind from 1972 to 1997. It has also been commented that Bamber resembles the actor Tom Bosley who appeared in the popular American sitcom Happy Days. Bamber Boozler's appearance was constrained by the limitations of the Level 1 World System Teletext alpha mosaic display format. In fact his appearance is largely based on Johnnie Walker - the organizer of a pub quiz league in Nottingham in which the developer of the original Bamboozle format played.
A new set of questions was originally given each week, but this soon became more regular, eventually becoming daily. Each game originally had 25 questions, later reduced to 20, then 15 and currently 12. The player must answer all questions correctly in order to complete the quiz, but is allowed multiple attempts to do so. Initially, if a question was answered incorrectly, the player would have to start again from Question 1, Hhowever this was later amended so that a maximum of three questions would need to be answered again. After completing the quiz, there is a score table with themed responses, for example:
| 12 | Super star |
| 10-11 | Martian master |
| 8-9 | Clever comet |
| 6-7 | Middling meteor |
| 3-5 | Plodding Pluto |
| 0-2 | Total eclipse |
according to how many questions you got right at the first attempt.
[edit] Themes
On particular dates the quiz is themed, for example Halloween featured related questions and images of skeletons and spiders, whilst Guy Fawkes Night featured firework based questions, as well as numerous Christmas based versions. There have also been special "name the picture / person" graphical editions.
Other Boozler family members were introduced over the game's first few years - Bamber's wife, Bambette, who normally appears when a question is answered incorrectly; and Saturday's quizzes are presented by Bamber's son, Buster, and are generally easier than the weekday editions. Bamber also has a daughter, Bonnie, who fills Bambette's role when Buster presents the quiz. At one point in the quiz's history the red, yellow and green keys were sensible answers and the blue was mostly reserved for a stupid response although this was sometimes the correct one. This has now generally stopped and all the keys now usually have sensible answers.
[edit] Weekly competition
The makers of Bamboozle have recently introduced a weekly competition whereby a viewer may contribute the questions to Bamboozle. As well as having their questions used and names mentioned, the winning contributors also receive a £20 WHSmith gift voucher. Even before this, viewer-submitted questions have been used in various forms ever since the early days of the quiz.
[edit] Cheats
Through the years and the various versions of the game, there have been ways for the player to cheat. When a player has been presented with the "wrong answer" page, it has often been possible (on many but not all teletext controllers) to press the down button to return to a different question. On one early version, it was even possible to press the down button from the "wrong" page to go directly to the final page. It has not been possible to cheat in this way in recent years. It is also not possible to use this cheat on the digital version.
[edit] Trivia
- Bamber has occasionally made reference to the different people that have written the quiz over the years, referring to "the different people that have played me".
- A page has recently been created at http://bamberboozler.com. This site does not appear to be official and only consists only of a picture of Bamber and a counter.
