New “Millionaire” Lifeline Question

16 Sep

Posted by Alex Davis as Syndication, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

I know we have some people connected with Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in some way shape or form who read this, so I figured I’d ask. I’m actually really curious about this too. It comes from reader David H.. He asks “just had a thought. If you use Double Dip on a question, get the first time wrong… the clock restarts, right? So if you let it run to zero from there, does that mean it counts as a wrong answer or a walkaway?”

Fantastic question, David. Something I wish I knew. Honestly, this hasn’t even occurred to me yet and I’m hoping someone can email me or comment the answer. It’s a really tricky area, because if they let you walk away, it really goes against the idea of Double Dip where it’s drilled through your head that you can’t turn away once you use it. If you’re counted as wrong if the clock hits 0, it goes against what the clock does for every other question. Interesting gray area here. Can’t wait to see what the answer is.

Courtesy of Valleycrest Productions Ltd.

8 Responses

Wayne
1
September 16th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

It was mentioned in the first episode of the new season–once you choose the Double Dip, you MUST answer. Yes the clock starts again after the contestant’s first answer, but if they are wrong, they must give another answer before the clock hits zero or they lose.
Alex Davis
2
September 16th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

Ah, OK. Yeah I didn’t get to see the first few episodes; I was out of town. thanks for the quick answer.
Mitch
3
September 16th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

Yeah, but. I don’t think Meredith specifically gave the answer to Alex’s question on that first show. Meaning, she didn’t say “If you don’t answer before the clock runs out using Double Dip, it counts as a wrong answer.”

I don’t see how it could count as anything else other than a wrong answer, but the situation hasn’t come up and Meredith hasn’t divulged this rule yet.
Wayne
4
September 16th, 2008 at 9:06 pm

Another way to look at this, mentioned or not, is the rule is: after choosing double dip, the contestant must answer correctly; therefore, no answer would be NOT answering correctly, and a loss.

Too bad when Millionaire updated their site, they didn’t update the rules list to reflect the changes.
Someone Connected
5
September 16th, 2008 at 11:28 pm

To confirm, in general, if a contestant allows the clock to expire it’s counted as a walkaway. But if a contestant uses Double Dip and gets the first answer wrong the clock will start again and if it expires before he gives his second answer it is counted as a wrong answer NOT a walkaway.
lobster
6
September 20th, 2008 at 3:57 pm

I have a question for the connected one :D

Say someone hems and haws over an answer and with 1 second left they manage to stop the clock and request the Phone-a-Friend.. They phone their friend and they get an answer that they’re going to use… When Meredith says “You have one second on the clock, and your time starts now”, how will the show handle that? Literally, do they have to get their answer in and mumble “Final answer” in that one second? Chances are the buzzer will get them if it really restarted at one second..

a semantic situation but could happen especially when people will likely use lifelines as a clockstopper/delay..

:D
Dart
7
September 29th, 2008 at 7:25 pm

I’m not connected, but there was one contestant who chatted out his answer, old-school style, and basically used up his 15 seconds on the $1000 question, and the only reason I could see that they took pity on him was that he started his answer before the clock ran out.
Josh
8
September 30th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

The incident described happened in today’s (9/30/08 single ep) episode. The contestant has an unlimited ammount of time for the first answer, and then they start the clock upon Merideth’s signal if the first answer is wrong.