Millionaire

[rabet]

Watching this? Can you really now ask the questionmaster what the answer is?

[gingejbee]

as one of the options, apparently yes.

[ladybirder]

Yes it's been like that for quite a while.
Does anyone know if, when a contestant "asks the audience" every person in the audience is obliged to press the buzzer? If I was in the audience and I didn't know the answer I wouldn't want to be forced to press either ABC or D and mislead the contestant. Anybody?

[Ellipsis]

> Does anyone know if, when a contestant "asks the audience" every person in the audience is obliged to press the buzzer?

Don't know for sure but I think they are, yes. They may also be prompted have a wild guess and not just press, say, "A" if they don't know. The reason I think this is that one some of the tougher questions, the distribution seems quite evenly spread. I have never yet seen a question where one answer got more than 25% and the other three got less than 25% and the answer with more was wrong. Things get very tricky when more than one answer gets more than 25%, though.

[Hopkirk]

Last series Clarkson was worse than useless when his opinion was asked.

[elliemay1]

Haven't watched tonight's yet but thought that last night's was very drawn out and boring. Can see why it's past its sell-by date.

[Buenchico]

See 'Lifelines' here to see how things have changed over the years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Wants_to_Be_a_Millionaire%3F_(UK_game_show)#Lifelines

[ladybirder]

Thank you Ellipsis. I think you could be right. I looked on wiki and it says //Ask the Audience: When selected, each audience member takes up a voting pad, and votes the answer that they believe is correct for the question. Once the vote is tallied, the contestant is shown what the result of it was, displayed in percentages for each answer.\\
Hmmm so they guess if they don't know. Not good for the contestant is it, being forced to answer when you don't know.

[goodgoalie]

I think the 'ask the audience' option is all about 'the wisdom of crowds'.
See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

[Ellipsis]

Yep, me too. Far from using Ask the Audience early, I'd save it to the end.

[Hopkirk]

There is a danger in saying what you think the answer may be, then asking the audience. You might sway the "don't knows" to go for that answer.

[ladybirder]

Yes Hopkirk I'm pretty sure I've seen that happen more than once.