Just the facts, ma'am

A recent faux tweet linked to a blogger who dissed Speed's new quizzer Pumped for its fact-checking. As I said, I have no clue what a black flag means in a NASCAR race. But I figure Speed would have some fact-checkers who would know.

The late, unlamented Million Dollar Money Drop got into much more publicized trouble on those pesky little facts. Seems that Post-It Notes were marketed a little earlier than the fact-checkers thought. It meant a big difference in the show's debut episode.

An interesting interview with game show writer Rick Rosner includes this discouraging word for would-be scribes:

Many questions are written but for one reason or another never make it to the show, whether because the writer can't make them work, or because the fact checker shoots holes through them or even because the head writer simply doesn't like them.

I get a grim feeling that a determined fact-checker could shoot holes in just about any question, given enough time. The Internet makes the checker's job even easier, since so many different references can be consulted so fast. It makes me all the more sympathetic to game show writers, as they try to stump the contestants while keeping the show entertaining.