IIRC, it was "at an unspecified location in an unspecified country anywhere in the world". I think I was covertly begging the answer "underneath the Eiffel Tower", to test a received wisdom that that would/should be the answer, and don't think I got it.
Very similar games to the above were played postally, particularly in the 1990s, normally under names like "By Popular Demand". For instance, "By Quite Popular Demand" (or "By Not So Popular Demand") awards minus (or zero) points to players submitting the single most popular answer, or any of several answers involved in the tie, but positive points (as per Common Answers above) for every other answer. Accordingly the aim was to try to submit the second most popular answer.
On TV, Family Fortunes is indeed based on the Common Answers principle, and the "it doesn't matter whether it's a correct answer or not, just whether people have picked it" property is fun; conversely, Pointless (and, briefly, Topranko) were based on principles rather closer to Scattergories, though (almost always) without the given-initial-letter criterion. Heck, Scattergories itself had a short-lived TV show in the US. This goes to demonstrate - if anything - that there aren't all that many game ideas out there sufficiently simple to turn into a game show.
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Date: 2010-11-05 09:55 am (UTC)Very similar games to the above were played postally, particularly in the 1990s, normally under names like "By Popular Demand". For instance, "By Quite Popular Demand" (or "By Not So Popular Demand") awards minus (or zero) points to players submitting the single most popular answer, or any of several answers involved in the tie, but positive points (as per Common Answers above) for every other answer. Accordingly the aim was to try to submit the second most popular answer.
On TV, Family Fortunes is indeed based on the Common Answers principle, and the "it doesn't matter whether it's a correct answer or not, just whether people have picked it" property is fun; conversely, Pointless (and, briefly, Topranko) were based on principles rather closer to Scattergories, though (almost always) without the given-initial-letter criterion. Heck, Scattergories itself had a short-lived TV show in the US. This goes to demonstrate - if anything - that there aren't all that many game ideas out there sufficiently simple to turn into a game show.