One Word Makes All the Difference
Nostalgia for an old game leads to immediate discontent over a single word
I remembered the game MindTrap from my childhood while I was watching clips of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Specifically, I wondered the difference between the board games MindTrap, Trivia Pursuit and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I asked Grok and Grok old me that Trivia Pursuit was general trivia, Who Wants to be a Millionaire was similar to the TV show the game was based on in that it was about the ladder of difficulty in the questions and that MindTrap was about lateral thinking with misdirection thrown in for extra…fun1.
Years ago, I bought a copy, but never played it because I wanted to play with people but I didn’t want to have read all the questions and answers and won simply because I owned the game. Sadly, I never found anyone to play with–not that I looked that hard.
Events have transpired that I have either misplaced or lost my copy of the game, so I ordered a new copy with with the fastest shipping available. Unfortunately, it would appear this is not the original version despite the word “Classic” in the name: there are only 220 questions in my recent copy vs the over 500 that was in the original game.
Nevertheless, I have a problem with Question 1102.
Joanne’s mother had four children, not to mention a rather odd interest in names related to money. The oldest child was named Quarter. The second child was called Dimeond. The third child was named Nickelas. What was the fourth child and only girl likely named?
If you thought the answer was “Penny”, you’re wrong.
It turns out the answer is in the question…except the question has one word that makes the card not a great card.
Joanne’s Mother
This is a variation on this riddle:
A man is looking at a portrait (or photograph) and says: “Brothers and sisters have I none, but that man’s father is my father’s son.”
Whose portrait is he looking at?
In this riddle, the person in the picture is the speaker’s son.
The correct answer to the riddle on my MindTrap Classic card is “Joanne”. Why? Because:
Joanne’s mother had four children
Three of the children were boys
therefore the only girl or daughter was Joanne
But it’s the word "likely” on this card that upsets me.
We’re told unambiguously that “Joanne’s mom…”, so it’s not just likely that Joanne’s mom named Joanne “Joanne”, it’s unequivocal.
My assumption is that the word “likely” was added to the question to increase the misdirection. If that was the goal, the question fails because it’s not just likely the Joanne’s mom named her Joanne–she did in fact name her daughter Joanne, no ifs, ands or buts about it.
C-, MindTrap Classic. Not your best work.
Read: difficulty.
Why Question 110, I hear you cry? because what was sent to me was a box with two “decks” of cards: 1-110 and 111-220. Question 110 was on the back of the first wrapped deck.