History Main / UnwinnablebyDesign

** The episode "Court Martial" of the original series has a scene where [=McCoy=] comes across Spock playing computer chess. Spock reveals that, because he programmed the computer to play chess himself, he should not be able to win against it. Him being able to beat it four times in a row is evidence that the computer has been tampered with.

* On ''Series/MinuteToWinIt'', those who make it far enough are subjected to a game they call "Supercoin", where you have to bounce a quarter into the top of a water jug from a few feet away in 60 seconds to win $1,000,000. The producers have allowed people to play it for $1,000,000 after meeting special conditions (either by winning the "last man standing" episodes which award a guaranteed $100,000 to their winners, or being a lucky audience member during their "million dollar mission" during Season 2). No one has won, and of the two times the $500,000 level was cleared, one couple was smart enough to walk away with the half million, and the other attempted the game and failed. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSKR2zzwNbs A YouTube user has proven that part of the challenge is possible]], the part involving bouncing the coin into the jug, but it took ''much'' longer than 60 seconds. Thankfully, losing on Supercoin would theoretically only drop you down to $250,000, which is still a good payout for a night's work. Eventually they lampshaded the whole ordeal by putting a safe point conveniently at $500,000. However, there was ONE person who managed to win Supercoin in under a minute- [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPdcroF-Fwc the host of the Turkish version]]!

** In the ''Literature/{{City of Thieves|1983}}'' gamebook, the player needs to gather a compound to rub into the undead overlord's face, comprised of three items. Just before the final dungeon, you find out you need only two of the three, but you aren't told which ones. The final action in the book is choosing which two you combined. Two combos result in a one line death. The other results in a one line victory. There are no clues to help you. Also there's an inescapable are: if you try to scale a building you're trying to infiltrate, then you'll be faced by a gargoyle. You're told you need a magic sword to beat it. Say you have one, and the game chides you for cheating, saying you can't have one yet. Say you don't, and you're dead. Oh, and the alternative is to approach a guarded door.

* Klondike Solitare has many possible deals that are unwinnable; in some cases, there may be no valid moves besides dealing. The odds of dealing an unwinnable game are believed to be between 8.5% to 18%. The fact that the exact odds have not yet been determined has been called "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_(solitaire) one of the embarrassments of Applied Mathematics]]."

** Certain bad endings are determined by factors entirely outside of the reader's control. In one ''Goosebumps'' book, you are shrunken to a tiny size and have to deal with a (to you) enormous rat. Your decision in the matter is determined by how many letters are in your first name. If your first name has an odd number, you successfully evade the rat and can continue onward. If your first name has an even number? Your attempt to make friends with the rat works a little too well and it takes you back to its nest where you spend the rest of your days raised by a small furry mammal. Game Over. In another book, getting one of the good endings is determined by your height. In the same book, on the path to another ending, you die if you're not left-handed. In some other absurd scenarios, you will be led to a Game Over page if you are reading the book while the weather is rainy outside, or if you are wearing blue-colored clothes while reading the book.

** ''Series/{{Idiotest}}'': The money clock starts when a puzzle appears. Without completely guessing, or being lightning fast (or lucky) in the very first second, there is no way to win the puzzle's full value.

** ''Series/{{Idiotest}}'': The money clock starts when a puzzle appears. Without completely guessing, having an absurdly quick brain or being lucky in the very first second, there is no way to win the puzzle's full value.
** ''Divided'' is a game where three (or four) players must lock in the same answers to multiple-choice questions. The clock starts when the question choices appear and takes away money by the ''hundreth of a second.''

** ''Series/Divided'' is a game where three (or four) players must lock in the same answers to multiple-choice questions. The clock starts when the question choices appear and takes away money by the ''hundreth of a second.''

* Played for laughs on the short-lived ''VideoGame/YouDontKnowJack'' TV series. The "$2 Million Question" starts at $2,000,000 but starts counting down when host Paul Reubens ''started'' reading the question, after which something would inevitably interrupt him and stall the question so that the value was down to less than $1,000 by the time he finished reading it.

* Some physical challenges in ''Series/DoubleDare'' were set up this way.

* SBURB, the RealityWarper computer game from ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', has many subroutines that are unwinnable without considerable lateral thinking.

** On 1934, [[DirtyCommies Communist]] and anti-war journalist Egon Kisch was asked to pass this test in English and then in several other European languages until he failed to recopy the Lord's Prayer in ''Scottish Gaelic'' (more about this [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_exclusion_of_Egon_Kisch_from_Australia here]]).

* In a commercial for American Express, (now former) tennis player Andy Roddick faces an opponent that "returns everything" -- [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UfGpt-0ncc Pong]]. He then inverts it by making the game Unwinnable by Design for Pong by taking advantage of Pong not being a 3D game and constrained to the back of the court -- and lobbing the ball just over the net so it goes under Pong.

(It should be emphasized that this applies to the whole game, and not just a narrow aspect of it. E.g. if part is Cruel but it's Merciful otherwise, the game is Cruel.)

Note that dipping below "polite" is considered a design flaw by most design philosophies today. Old-fashioned adventure games, notably most Sierra games released before 1992, seldom rise ''above'' "nasty".

** A third example of near-unwinnability comes in book 11. If you played through the books and brought the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Sommerswerd]] to Book 10 (forcing you to retain it for 11 -- Lone Wolf is unable to do much of anything at the end of book 10, and storage is ''many'' miles away), then you're forced to fight three boss battles near-consecutively. Even with full health, the [[PhysicalGod Chaos Master]] has about twice your hit points and is nearly unbeatable. Now, even if you leave the sword behind, you still have to go through all three battles, but not having it with you nets you an ''even better'' sword for the Chaos Master battle ''and'' reduces the enemy stats.

** Book 8. God Kai help you if you begin with that book. Unless you get CS-increasing armor, a high CS, the CS-increasing potion, Kai skills including Psi-blast and Weaponskill, the weapon you gain an advantage with using Weaponskill, ''and'' a string of 0s and 9s for the three (or four, depending on how you interpret the text) turns you get in the final battle, you're pretty much SOL.

*** ''Star Trekker'', a parody manga briefly published in the US by Antarctic Press until Paramount [[NoExportForYou came down]] like [[{{Pun}} a mountain]] on them, subverts this by having a Japanese captain fire on the freighter loaded with dilithium crystals, with the resulting explosion crippling the nearby Klingon cruisers. The captain is ordering a followup strike when Admiral Kirk himself (who doesn't want anyone else to win) kills the simulation and dresses her down. She explains that since saving the civilian vessel is a clear impossibility, priority has to be given to saving her own ship.

*** ''Star Trekker'', a parody manga briefly published in the US by Antarctic Press until Paramount [[NoExportForYou came down]] like [[IncrediblyLamePun a mountain]] on them, subverts this by having a Japanese captain fire on the freighter loaded with dilithium crystals, with the resulting explosion crippling the nearby Klingon cruisers. The captain is ordering a followup strike when Admiral Kirk himself (who doesn't want anyone else to win) kills the simulation and dresses her down. She explains that since saving the civilian vessel is a clear impossibility, priority has to be given to saving her own ship.

* A ''Series/MadTV'' sketch about a GameShow called "Get Your Land Back" decides to pull this in a lightning round to eliminate all the contestants so that they don't get any land back. The round involves the contestants having to guess the correct word (Alabaster, shown on-screen below) without any hints as to what it is. When the third contestant manages to guess "Alabaster", we see the word change to "Alabama" and he's considered wrong and eliminated.
* Series/JustRollWithIt: On a game show, the family have to spin a wheel containing donuts, several of which are packed with disgusting flavors. Each one hopes they get the "good" donut in a spin. It's after each has consumed a horrible treat that they're informed there was no "good" donut at all.

* Series/TheThundermans: Games created by Cybron James in the episode "Doppel-Gamers". He advertised that all of his games were unwinnable. They were because he invoked this trope.

But Unwinnable by Design is a whole other kettle of fish: This time around, the designers have set down giant digital man-traps that exist purely to ensnare the unwary. The worst are those that cripple the game from the start, but let the player continue for hours before the fatal error becomes apparent.

** The most famous game, Plinko, is technically close to unwinnable because the official rules only consider Plinko to be won if the full $50,000 is won. The only way to do that is to win all four additional Plinko chips (by correctly answering 'either/or' questions), and then to have ''every one'' of the five chips land in the center slot (out of nine) at the bottom of the pegboard. Even hardcore ''TPIR'' fans consider the game to be won if that slot is hit at least once, but WordOfGod disagrees. Nobody has won the game in the 29 years since it's been introduced, and nobody is likely to win it any time soon. So far, the highest winner on the show earned $31,500 on May 25th, 2017.

For cases in which you get a game over from creating an unwinnable situation, see NonstandardGameOver. Games that wish to rub things in a bit may include a period of ControllableHelplessness. For a milder version where you are at least well aware that you're screwed, see CycleOfHurting. For situations where the game intentionally makes you ''think'' you've lost, but you haven’t, see FissionMailed. See also TheComputerIsACheatingBastard.

* Many visual novels with "point-based" route systems will have choices that secretly assign you a score based on whether you picked the 'right' answer or not, but the actual choice leads to only a few lines of different dialog before rejoining the main story. So even if your love interest appeared annoyed by your actions, all seems to be forgiven and the story continues as normal. It may not be until the very end of a route that the story is suddenly score-gated and players who've been making wrong choices are shunted to a bad ending, with ''no'' explanation of what caused you to fail. You'll probably need to start over.

If the unwinnable situation arises as the result of a programming flaw, like a bug, or a design error such as making it possible to advance to the next stage without collecting a vital item, this is UnintentionallyUnwinnable. This includes when the unwinnable situation requires the player to take steps that are blatantly unnecessary, actively warned against, or otherwise feel as if the player must actively ''seek'' a way to make the game unwinnable.

'''Note that this trope is just for games where the designers constructed an unwinnable situation ''on purpose'', and was not [[UnwinnableJokeGame intended as a joke]]. It is therefore not to be confused with the following:'''
* If the unwinnable situation arises as the result of a programming flaw, like a bug, or a design error such as making it possible to advance to the next stage without collecting a vital item, this is actually UnintentionallyUnwinnable.
* If the unwinnable situation arises after the player had done one or several mistakes to a point they were continually warned against what they're doing or feel as if the player must actively ''seek'' a way to make the game unwinnable, it is ''also'' UnintentionallyUnwinnable as it's just a case of a player exploiting a design flaw for kicks.

For cases in which you get a game over from creating an unwinnable situation, see NonstandardGameOver. Games that wish to rub things in a bit may include a period of ControllableHelplessness. For a milder version where you are at least well aware that you're screwed, see CycleOfHurting. For situations where the game intentionally makes you ''think'' you've lost, see FissionMailed. See also TheComputerIsACheatingBastard.

{{Adventure Game}}s, and InteractiveFiction in particular, originally were ''rife'' with intentionally unwinnable situations, and were usually known as "dead ends" during the genre's prime. Meanwhile, a player continuing to play a game that ubeknowst to them had been rendered unwinnable was referred to as a "walking dead" situation. A hallmark of the genre once, the tradition has waned in the 1990s because most players can't stand them, and some even claim that they constitute a form of FakeDifficulty.

* ''Propositiones ad Acuendos Juvenes'', a 9th century medieval Latin manuscript of math and logic problem, has one. The 43rd problem proposes a situation where a man wants to slaughter 300 pigs in 3 days. However, it says there has to be an odd number of pigs on each day, which makes it impossible. Wiki/TheOtherWiki theorizes this was written to punish troublesome students.[[labelnote:note]]It's a parity puzzle. Odd (pigs) times Odd (days) always equals Odd, and 300 is Even.[[/labelnote]]

** ''UnwinnableByDesign/{{Sierra}}''
** ''UnwinnableByDesign/{{Infocom}}''