Phone a friend!
 

While watching "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" earlier with my sister, she posed the question "Who would you have for your phone a friend?".

For the foreigners amongst you, it's quite simple.

It's a general knowledge quiz show where you answer multiple choice questions.

One of your "lifelines" (if you get stuck and don't know the answer) is to phone-a-friend, where you phone up one of three preselected friends and give them the question, to see if they could help you.

So if you could choose one person from GD to have as your phone-a-friend, WHO WOULD IT BE? AND WHY?

:salute:

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Jakiri because he would know.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Googlebot as it has seen and read everything.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Sport - Lok
History - Jakiri
pwning young girls - Alessio

Re: Phone a friend!
 

a2 probably

Re: Phone a friend!
 

A2/Phil and making sure they have google up and running for the duration of the show. :p
Tomkat for male/female gender issues
JBG anything beer related.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Tacitus wouldn't be a bad choice. He seems to have a lot of information on hand.

Yahwe also knows a fair amount but he would probably spend most of the alotted time telling me what a spastic I was for not knowing to begin with.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

I only trust Yahwe to be able to know something I don't


*cough

Re: Phone a friend!
 

He's also quite likely to ignore the answer and point out that the question's wrong. Or tell you that the answer's not one of the four options.

I've always wondered how they'd stop this sort of thing. I mean, not Google, because the "I'll tell you in 15 seconds <tap> <tap> <tap> 1974" might give you away, but I don't see why you couldn't have your phone-a-friend in a room with twenty other people who all listen to the question on speaker-phone and scribble down the answer on a piece of paper and show the friend if they know the answer.

You see a person with a flat chest, an Adam's apple and short spiky hair. Is this person (a) a bloke (b) a male personage (c) the owner of a penis or (d) I'll tell you once I've asked him if he's single?

You'd get the answer, but you'd also get the entire historical and social background to the answer. How well this would work in a 30-second phone call I'm not too sure.

Or making you tell him how tall you are before he decides to help you.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Probably Tact, Mark or T&F but it'd depend on the question. I think for sheer broadness I'd go with Mark.

<3

Hugs.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

yes, yes, i know the show. :rolleyes:


and i would have chosen jakiri (seems to have a decent level of general knowledge) or you tom, because you know things i don't (i'd be fked if i'd get a question about big brother for example).

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Dante and Deepflow.

For drug related questions.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

I would assume the people you choose as your phone a friend are sitting in a room somewhere near the studio with a phone line that goes direct to them.

If it was just them at home the person could be ordering a portable back hair remover from qvc when Chris Tarrant rings.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Since you're allowed upto 5 friends and there are something like 10 contestents (overall, not who necessarily play) per show, I doubt this is what happens. According to Wiki they phone your friends when you start playing and tell them to be ready.

Anyway, to answer the question I'd have to agree with the Tact / Mark consensus which is building up. Leshy also knows quite a lot too, Vermillion is an obvious choice and dda is old so presumably if alzheimers hasn't kicked in must know a lot of old useless crap. More generally I'd have someone who is competent in using Google (and who could type quietly to deal with Proteus point) which would be most of the regular users here (well, certainly most of the computerish people) but in particular the likes of Nodrog, Leshy, Gayle29UK, s|k, etc.

There are plenty of smart people here but their knowledge is either too specialised (computers, maths, the law, etc) or they would know very similar things to me anyway. I'm pretty sure if there was a "General Knowledge" based question on computers I'd have a good chance of getting it so having a bunch of people with Computer Science degrees waiting would be pretty useless.

I think there was a case where some guy just asked five professors from different disciplines at his local university. That seems like quite a good idea.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Ideally I'd pick someone who knows about soaps and Big Brother and other such nonsense, so whoever that categorises. Someone like Dace or TK or someone.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

I definetly wouldn't pick my fiance, she's not the most brilliant in the world. I'd just make sure that she was my friend I get to take with me to the taping, then she wouldn't have to know she wouldn't of been my choice.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

for Killing Skatemouth FC (Pompey (Scum)) Ben Thather
for PA issues Fiery
For GD Pilgrim
For sport and science no-one
For life issues i would fone my mum just tp laugh at her not having aclue as per usual
For everything else theres mastacard

Re: Phone a friend!
 

None of those people are GD posters but ok thanks for coming here have a complimentary flannel and little scented soap.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

i wish we actually had them :(.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

The answer is they don't, or at least not our version anyway.

During one episode of the Australian Who Wants To Be A Millionare, the contestant stated that the phone-a-friend she had chosen was in a loungeroom with 3 other people, 1 of which was operating a computer connected to the internet, another with encyclopedia on hand and that they were all working together to help find the answer. Neither the presenter nor the shows producers appeared to have any problem with this and treated everything as normal. In the end it didn't help anyway because of that limiting time factor.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

They have 30 seconds to answer.

In theory if you had 30 seconds you should be able to find out the answer on google, as long as you're reasonably quick at it.

It often takes the contestant about 15 seconds to read out the question and possible answers though.

Assuming it takes 5 seconds to type the question in, and then another 5 to process the results (load them and then look at the answer), that really only leaves 5 seconds or so to give the answer back.

So there often simply isn't enough time to do it.



...I don't like to admit to it, but I was curious to see how long it took so I got my sister to watch Millionaire on mute and then read out the question and answers to me. It is POSSIBLE to get the answers in time but it isn't that easy :(

Re: Phone a friend!
 

You must be REALLY bored.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

If you were doing it seriously then you could probably develop some sort of intermediary system which might help. Or two people with networked machines to check through the results or something like that).

For most questions I wouldn't imagine it would be very difficult with Google's help, but so what - that's one question out of the 12 or whatever it is - which is why I doubt the producers care too much.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

I would probably go with T&F, Dante, Yahwe, Jakiri and 1-X as my phone a friends, it covers quite a broad knowledge base to be honest plus I know a fair bit myself.

On random shit, I swear I know a load of random stuff, **** knows how. Part of it is down to an education, the other part is probably watching crap on TV at 4am.

I also read the sun most days and nick the office copy of heat so I'm pretty upto date with all the celeb shite.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

a roomful of friends, one of them holding the phone.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

They don't put you in any room, they call your house - some guy who was at my school some time ago was on Who want to be a millionaire and phoned one of my teachers as his phone a friend.

Theoreticall, you could use a speakerphone but then you need to get it in there without being caught etc, or you could have a few people waiting with google ready so they can get the answer ASAP.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

It's funny because people often choose their teachers as their phone-a-friend but could you imagine someone choosing me as anything beyond a "pop culture knowledge" expert :(

Re: Phone a friend!
 

I'm confused as to when everyone lost respect for my genius :(



Tomkat though, especially now when I presume he spends all day reading Hello and watching Neighbours.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

horn

As for twatbags that think they know everything, I would like to call Yahwe and DDa to the stand.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

I'd phone Vampy, I mean its not like she's going to hang up.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Thank you for saying that I must know a lot of old useless crap instead of merely pointing out that I AM a lot of old useless crap.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

no

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Would pick id if the topic was pies.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

It was a rhetorical question sweetheart :salute:

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Thats probably a pretty good indication of hether someone would be good at phone-a-friend or not. Anybody constantly winning money on the it-boxes??

Re: Phone a friend!
 

I would choose Yahwe, because I know he would be around to pick up the phone.
You guys didn't think of that aspect.
<3

Re: Phone a friend!
 

This is lies.

(Besides, most of the questions on millionaire are fairly easy compared to such things)

Re: Phone a friend!
 

**** the fruit machines, its all about the it boxes. Pub quiz and bullseye all the way, thats how the cool kids make the money!

Re: Phone a friend!
 

:up:

Re: Phone a friend!
 

If I went on the show I would have Ninja_Spammer as one of my phone a friends mainly because I live with him and he'd probably be miffed if I didn't, and also because he is one of these people who knows random facts about things, particularly history. However if I was to have someone other than him it would be Mark for the sheer ammount of knowledge that would be available to me.

Re: Phone a friend!
 

Phil^ - I want somebody who understands what I am asking within a few seconds and only needs another few seconds to Google for it. Plus he wouldn't make me feel embarrased on national television which is something I can't say from a lot of other people here ;-)