Daily Cascade

No Tricks in Winning

Prompt:
On this day in 1955, New York psychologist Joyce Brothers wins "$64,000 Question" with topic of boxing. If you were playing the 64,000 game and could choose your category what would you chose? Why?

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At that time, I was still a child, although I remember Joyce Brothers talking about it on a talk show, probably a few years later, denying that she was given the answers beforehand. What I also recall is that the show didn't have a long life, although its name became a phrase for solving difficult questions.

Even for its early success, the show was said to be made for dramatic effects, with an isolation booth for contestants and such, so the people would keep watching Unfortunately, because of the idea and the drama, the contestants were given the questions and answers and were made to act like actors. For that and probably a few other mishaps, the show didn't survive much longer. Granted, the idea behind that show might have been innovative but the show itself certainly broke a few ethics rules.

As for me, I wouldn't be playing that game in the first place. I'd rather earn stuff or receive things or funds freely as gifts through the good will of friends and family. I've never entered a sweepstakes in my life, unless you don't count the trike I won when I was six years old, which wasn't my doing. It was my mother in the wings.

Then, of course, here in WdC, we have writing contests with prizes, but they are made to encourage writing and to give new ideas to our writers. Also, our reviews are entered into the Good Deeds race, which isn't really a quiz show or sweepstakes or even a game. When I accidentally win something anywhere through the good will of friends and family, I usually give it, or at least the monetary value of it, to someone else or to charity.

Still, to answer the prompt's underlying question, were I to enter such a game, I would probably choose linguistics or words or something like that, which I might easily lose once the game could get more difficult. After all, no one knows everything! I certainly don't.