Duel
I will be surprised if it turns out that the “Duel” game show mini-series did well in the ratings this week. I enjoyed it, but the rules are hard to pick up at first, and I’m not sure enough people will make the effort to figure them out. (I came in in the middle of a game and actually went to the ABC web site to look up the rules.)
It’s a head-to-head quiz that involves strategy as well as knowledge. As I indicated, it’s hard to explain, but here’s my attempt.
Each of the two contestants gets 10 chips. A multiple choice question is asked, with four possible answers. In order to stay in the game, you must place a chip on top of the correct answer every time — but you may place as many chips as you like. If you can’t decide between answer A and answer C, for example, you can place chips on both of them. If you are completely clueless, you can place chips on all four answers, which guarantees you have covered the right answer and will survive until the next question.
The trouble with covering up more than one answer is that you will get back the chip covering the right answer, but you will lose any chips which are covering wrong answers. Since you start out with only 10 chips, they can disappear quickly if you cover all the answers on every question.
The first player to decide where to place his chips and lock in his choice triggers a seven-second timer on the other player to lock in his answers. Neither player can see what the other is doing, and there’s sometimes an advantage in trying to bluff the other player into a panic by locking in your choice quickly, making the other player think you know the answer when you’ve really just covered all four answers.
Eventually, as the players lose their chips, one or the other will end up failing to cover a right answer and lose the game. The winning player then gets to choose his or her next opponent from the contestant pool. The original plan was that the four players with the best records from last week’s episodes would compete in the finals tonight. However, there was a tie for fourth place, so tonight’s finale will start off with a sudden-death playoff between two players for that last seat in the finals.
The jackpot for the eventual winner of the week-long tournament is based on the number of wrong chips collected — each time a chip is lost, the jackpot increases. It’s already nearly $1.5 million going into tonight’s finale.
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