Bamboozling

When I was little I drank slightly less alcohol than I do now, so I didn't want to go to pub quizzes.  And those fundraising "wine and wisdom" things in the school hall where everyone's parents scrabbled to show themselves off somehow seemed a bit forced.  And we didn't have the internet, unless you rather generously count Compuserve.  But you know what we had?  We had Channel 4 teletext.  And by 'we', I mean my grandparents.  They lived 88.5 miles away - I knew this because I was me, I remember this because I'm still me.  Every time we visited, I'd snaffle the remote once a day and switch to page 452 to play Bamboozle! 

Bamboozle! was a daily quiz of twelve multiple choice questions hosted by the rather dashing Bamber.  And they were tough.  If you didn't know your birthstones, county towns and English rivers, you were in all sorts of trouble.  You had to press red, green, yellow or blue to choose an answer.  You could always tell when you'd got one wrong by the mangled page number you were routed through to get to the next question.  Just like life, there were no second chances, no prizes and it frequently broke.  At the end, Bamber would give you your score and rank you according a scale based on the final question.  If question 12 was 'What type of animal is a cetacean?', a perfect score might earn you a 'blue whale', but a big fat zero might slap you with a 'Jonah'.  When I was young it was the most fun you could have with a middle-aged toupéed man without… let's not go there.

Bamboozle! disappeared from Teletext a couple of years ago, commemorated only by this very special image which I promise I haven't printed off and don't keep under my pillow.  Not even a little bit.  At the time, I remember thinking that it almost seemed as if the national press didn't care.  Everything had changed and no-one had noticed, and so on and so forth.  It was a bit of a shame.  You get the slow-loading pixellated picture.

Fortunately the life cycle of a game works very differently these days.  Once upon a time, a popular game would be shelved just a few short sequels after it had outstayed its welcome.  Now everything gets brought back as an iPhone app, and that's exactly what's happened to Bamboozle!  There are a few differences - a timer, penalties for mistakes, a leaderboard - but for 59p, it's an extremely cheap and addictive game which I can wholeheartedly recommend.  I'd even be happy to leverage the global fame that came with my unsuccessful appearance on 15 To 1 to endorse it on billboards, but only if the money is right.  The questions are very hard and I haven't seen any repeats yet - that's all you can ask from a quiz, surely?  Anyway, my best time so far is a thoroughly mediocre 75 seconds.  Let me know if you smash that to pieces on your own nostalgia trip.