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- Competitions that consist of nothing but an insultingly easy question, often designed to loophole around lottery laws by making them nominal "tests of skill", or tempt gullible people into entering?
- Princesses?
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The question may be in a call-in competition, which usually means the phone call is going to cost you money; require you to text-message your answer, at normal texting rates, of course; or on a form you need to mail in — then the question means that the contest is not a "lottery" by legal definition, and therefore not subject to the regulations concerning lotteries,
and you provide your address and/or phone number which can be added to mailing lists for sale.
When used on the radio, the point of the competition is usually thinly concealed advertising for a local business rather than a true competition.
Examples
- In Ireland, when Toy Story was released, there was a competition where the question was "What is the name of the cowboy?" The application form gave his name in the plot summary.
- Also, every single episode of The Afternoon Show did this. A typical question would be something like "In which country is the Eiffel Tower? A: France. B: America. C: Ireland."
- American Idol had a text-message contest during season 7 that was similarly ridiculously easy. Of course, you had to pay to text.
- Web banner ads do this, too.
- A series of ads about 20 years ago promised a "beautiful gift worth $40" if you could name the tune. One was "Yankee Doodle." The next was "I Heard it Through the Grapevine," and they used the part of the chorus where Marvin Gaye sang the title lyrics. It cost $10 per minute to call.
- PC game You Dont Know Jack had at least one question along these lines. It was titled "It's a Dog" and was something like "What looks like a dog, sounds like a dog, etc?" The answer? A dog.
- Fictional example: In A. A. Milne's play The Ugly Duckling, the law of the kingdom requires a suitor for the hand of the princess to answer a riddle. The current princess is very plain, and her parents, not wanting to give anyone an excuse to turn her down, use riddles like "What is it which has four legs and barks like a dog?" This is Played For Laughs in multiple ways. Early in the play, the king and queen recall one suitor who was so desperate not to marry the princess that he somehow completely failed to answer the riddle. Later, a none-too-bright prince who's an impostor anyway is given the answer in advance, but the riddle is changed at the last minute and he gets it wrong. Another character (the real prince) quickly covers for him.
- Inverted in the UK show QI (Quite Interesting), which would frequently have questions that looked temptingly easy only to have the real answer be something weird and complex (and possibly subjective).
- Questions like "How many moons does the Earth have?" Go, on, you know that! It's obvious! What kind of moron doesn't kno- did you say "one"? Oh dear...
- Often when there is a grand opening of a Wing Street (Pizza Hut) franchise, they will give away coupons for wings on the radio. Typical questions are "what vegetable is usually served with wings?" (celery) and "name one common dipping sauce for wings" (either ranch dressing or blue cheese works as an answer).
- Of course, recently in the UK, several shows most prominently 'Richard & Judy' actually got given heavy fines after it was determined that their competition questions had become so insultingly easy that it was basically a lottery rather than a competition which broke gambling laws or aomething and shows were forced to make harder questions.
