@Travis Dawson LOL. Ok man, I'll give you some details. Just know that we were happy as hell about the 61k, but I'm still upset that nerves cost me a chance at a whole lot more.
This is gonna be a little long.
First of all, the show was "Who Wants to be a Millionaire, back when Meredith Viera was host. I applied online, then had to fly to New York for a written test. At my own expense. There were about 150 of us there, and 7 of us passed the test. I have no idea what a passing score is, but I was 100% sure of 28 of my 30 answers. Then, those 7 of us were interviewed and given a screen test. They wanted to see if we were personable and if an audience would root for us.
Then a week or 2 later I got a card in the mail telling me I was in the pool. That's not a guarantee of being on the show, just that I was in the pool of possible contestants.
A few months later we get the call to show up in New York for a couple of days to be on the show, again, at our expense.
While waiting, I made my first tactical mistake. I watched every youtube video I could find of people missing the first question. These people were crucified for that. I vowed I wouldn't miss it no matter what. The format of the show at the time allowed a contestant to skip up to 2 questions. Each question had a dollar value assigned to it, and the values and questions were in random order, so your 1st question could be super easy for 25k, or super hard for 100 bucks, you didn't until after you answered or skipped it. I was so psyched out, I might have skipped it if they asked me my middle name.
So, anyhow, heart beating, dry mouthed, here comes the 1st question, and even before the answers show up, I knew it. But then one of the answers gave me a tiny bit of doubt, and my mistake of watching all the crash and burns, cost me. I skipped that question, and of course, my answer would have been correct. I don't remember the dollar amount, wasn't huge, but it was a lifeline I would wish later I had back.
Then I breezed through the next 8 questions, only using my ask the audience for a question about Broadway or music producers, and since I don't follow pop culture much, and the show is taped 2 blocks from Broadway, I figured that was the time to use that lifeline.
Come to question 10. Here, you have to understand that the way the rules were then, if you got past question 10, the question went back to the old format. 4 questions worth 100k, 250k, 500k and 1 million. if you walked away any time before question 10, you got to keep half your money if you made it past question 10 you could walk away with all of it. If you missed a any question of 10-14 you walked with 25k. I had 61.6k at the moment.
So, question 10, and it still haunts me today was about Wendys hamburgers, specifically the Baconator. LOL At the time, I had been living in Malaysia for over a year, and there was a Wendy's near by, but it was the only one I'd ever been too, and hadn't seen any commercials for it. And being a Muslim country, they didn't serve bacon, so didn't have the Baconator.
Anyways, I probably could have figured it out, but again, I was risking a lot of money, and some Jackwagon in the audience shouted out the answer. I could see it in Merediths face that she knew I didn't know it, so I just couldn't bring myself to say an answer she knew I got from some guy in the audience.
So, there went the 2nd skip the question and that was my last lifeline. So, here comes the 100k question. "In the 2010 womens French Open tennis tournament, the were 32 players who all had last names ending in which syllable" A, "Enko", B "Ovic", C "Ova", D" Eva". CRAP!!!!. REALLY? LOL So, I'm thinking, Kournikova, Sherapova, I knew those, but I don't follow tennis at all. So, 61k, in the hand, or take a chance and have a 3 in 4 chance of losing 36k.
So. I walked away, but I'm still haunted by question 1 and question 10. One of them I knew, and one I had the right guess. Those 2 lifelines would have allowed me to skip Hot Russian tennis players and get to see at least the 500k question, and I'm pretty sure at least one of those 3 I would have known.
So, there you go, sorry you asked yet? LOL
