Something I came up with about 12 years ago.
Proposal for a Television Quiz Programme
Title: “Give and Take”
Description: A question and answer format where the players compete for a finite amount of money, giving money to, and taking money from their opponents both through answering questions and guessing how others will answer their own questions.
Duration: 26 minutes
Target Audience: For transmission in early evening, pre-prime time. Aimed at students, housewives, unemployed people, teenagers, flexi-time workers.
Concept: A quiz for five players with two preliminary rounds followed by a final. There is a total of €5000 available for the preliminary rounds with each player given €1000 in his account to start. (These amounts are scaleable depending on the budget available.) During the preliminary rounds players will increase or reduce this amount by giving and taking money to and from the other players’ accounts.
Three players will leave with nothing after the preliminary rounds, either through being made bankrupt or through having the least money on account when time runs out. Two players will advance to the final with the money they have won already safe. In the final they will play against each other for a €10,000 jackpot.
Detailed Description of the Format
Round 1 [8 minutes] i. The players are shown a multiple-choice question. e.g. Which country is not a member of the European Union? a. Norway b. Finland c. Denmark d. Sweden
ii. Players B, C, D & E choose an amount of money (from the money each has in his account) to bet on whether Player A will answer this question correctly. iii. Player A is asked for an answer to the question. iv. If he answers correctly he wins all of the money staked by the other players – this is added to the money he already has in his account. v. If he chooses the wrong answer each of the other four players double the money they chose to bet – this money is taken from the account of the player who answered the question. vi. We repeat this process until each player has answered three questions.
(*the questions in this round will be moderately difficult. Should any player (foolishly) become bankrupt in this round they are immediately eliminated from the game. The procedure described above will be quite swift – the placing of bets will be done each time in a matter of seconds.)
Round 2 [7 minutes]
i. Players are asked Quickfire questions with fingers on the buzzer. The first person to buzz on a question gets the opportunity to answer. ii. Before answering the question the player must nominate another player by saying “Nominate [name of player]”. iii. A correct answer wins €50 from the account of the player nominated. iv. An incorrect answer, or a pass, loses €50 from the answering player’s account to the account of the player nominated. The incorrectly answered or passed question is not opened to the other players. v. As the round continues, one by one players will lose all of their money to their opponents. The last two players remaining in the game will go on to contest the final. vi. If there are more than two players still in play after the allotted time the two players with the highest totals in the bank will go forward to the final.
(*Round 2 will feature a mix of easier and more difficult questions, and they are straight Q&A questions rather than multiple choice questions. After buzzing, a player has five seconds to answer each question after which he is considered to have passed.)
Grand Final [7 minutes] (Give and Take) Finalists keep the money won in the preliminary rounds. They now face ten questions, each worth €1,000.
i. The finalist who made the most money in the preliminary rounds is asked the first of ten multiple-choice questions. ii. A correct answer wins €1000 and allows him to answer the next question. iii. If he answers all ten questions correctly he wins €10,000 and the other finalist gets nothing. iv. However, an incorrect answer will lose the €1,000 for that question, and pass all of the money won so far in the final to the other finalist, who gets to answer the next question. v. The questions and money won pass over and back between the players whenever there is a wrong answer. vi. For example, it would be possible for Finalist A to answer 8 in a row correctly, win €8,000, but then get question 9 wrong and pass all of that money over to Finalist B who would only have to answer question 10 correctly to take a total of €9,000 home. Of course, if Finalist B answered question 10 incorrectly then the €8,000 would pass back to Finalist A.
(*the questions in the final are of a similar level to those asked in Round 1, but may be adjusted to keep the amount of money paid out down.)