History ThatOneLevel / GameShow

** '''Pay The Rent''' features a massive $100,000 grand prize, but to get it, you have to place six grocery items in a 1-2-2-1 tiered fashion such that each tier has a higher total than the tier before it. For a while, there were only one or two correct solutions out of 180 possible arrangements, and while a contestant's first instinct is to place the least expensive item on the first tier, that only guarantees there is no way to win the grand prize[[note]]The proper strategy is as follows: 1. Let's call A the highest price, B the next highest, and so on down to F, the lowest price. Save A for the top tier (obviously). 2. If B < min(C+F, D+E), put B on the bottom; else if C < min(B+F, D+E), put C on the bottom, else put D on the bottom. 3. Then of the remaining 4 items, pair up the most expensive and least expensive, pair up the last 2, and put whichever pair gives you the lower total on the 2nd tier and the more expensive pair on the 3rd tier.[[/note]]; during this time, only one contestant figured it out, and unfortunately he bailed too soon. (The game has recently been set up so that there are multiple correct solutions, including ones where the cheapest item can go in the mailbox; even then, it took until April 2013 for the $100,000 to be won.)

** '''That's Too Much''' is a game that even Drew mentions is hard to win. There is a series of 10 prices for a car in increasing order and you have to stop at the first price that is higher than the actual retail price. Contestants usually like to stop around the middle, when the correct price is either early on (3rd or 4th) or towards the end (7th or 8th). For a short time in late 2008 and into 2009, the correct answer was almost always the second or ninth picks, further fueling frustration over this game, and the producers only reluctantly relented once enough fans complained – that, and a couple of GenreSavvy contestants figured out the scheme and won the car.
** '''Temptation''' is a game where you have to give the last four digits of a car by choosing from two possible numbers on each digit. You have to get ''every single one'' right; miss one, and you get nothing. That gives this game effectively a ''1 out of 16'' chance of being won (1 out of 8 if you can figure out the second digit or if the last digit isn't a 0 or 5 choice). The number choices come from the prices of four gifts that usually total a decent amount, and alternatively, a contestant can bail out with the gifts, which just means even some contestants who get the car price right don't end up winning the car. It took ''over four years'' since Drew started hosting for the game to be won.
** '''Stack the Deck''', a grocery-pricing game played for a car where contestants are shown three sets of two grocery items, each one having a price and the contestant having to match the price with the correct item; a correct answer allows the contestant to have one of the digits (from a field of seven possible choices) inserted into the price; after all pricing questions are played, the contestant is asked to fill in the remaining blanks with the remaining digits. The difficulty is two-fold:
*** The pricing questions tend to be difficult enough already, with the price of the incorrect item often being a few cents off the item it's paired with. On particularly difficult playings, an unfortunate contestant can end up with no free picks, meaning he is completely on his own to price the car.
*** Even on playings where a contestant earns all three available picks, many of the contestants still lose because they did not guess the remaining two numbers correctly. Often, this is because a non-GenreSavvy contestant will frequently pick the first and/or second numbers, rather than the more difficult-to-guess third through fifth numbers. (Leaving the first two numbers open often then leaves an "either-or" proposition, especially if a 1, 2 and either an 8 or 9 are among the remaining numbers).

** By a [[RulesLawyer strict reading of the rules]], fan favorite '''Plinko''' is one as well. The producers only count the game as "won" if you earn all five chips and drop them all into the $10,000 slot, a feat which has never been accomplished and probably never will.

** It is notoriously difficult enough to fill in the car's price, as most of the incorrect guesses on the second and third numbers will boost the car's price considerably.
** Of the 20 envelopes available, there is just one envelope each containing 75 cents and $2; three others have 50 cents, but the other 15 have amounts ranging from nothing to the most common amounts of 5, 10 and 25 cents. With just four picks, it is very difficult to meet the car's selling price, even with just one or two mistakes, and even with the $2 card found, really tough if too many mistakes are made.

** By a [[RulesLawyer strict reading of the rules]], fan favorite Plinko is one as well. The producers only count the game as "won" if you earn all five chips and drop them all into the $10,000 slot, a feat which has never been accomplished and probably never will.

** '''Lucky $even''', where contestants begins with a $7 bankroll and – calling out digits one at a time to the price of a car, lose $1 for every dollar they're off on each number, needing $1 after the last digit to be able to win the car. While some prices such as $16,545 are used on what's expected to be an easy playing, more often than not the price contains digits at both ends away from "5" (i.e., 1, 2, 8 and 9) to take out contestants who guess down the middle or go for the [[OneHitKill wrong extreme]].

* ''Series/WheelOfFortune''':

** Pay The Rent features a massive $100,000 grand prize, but to get it, you have to place six grocery items in a 1-2-2-1 tiered fashion such that each tier has a higher total than the tier before it. For a while, there were only one or two correct solutions out of 180 possible arrangements, and while a contestant's first instinct is to place the least expensive item on the first tier, that only guarantees there is no way to win the grand prize[[note]]The proper strategy is as follows: 1. Let's call A the highest price, B the next highest, and so on down to F, the lowest price. Save A for the top tier (obviously). 2. If B < min(C+F, D+E), put B on the bottom; else if C < min(B+F, D+E), put C on the bottom, else put D on the bottom. 3. Then of the remaining 4 items, pair up the most expensive and least expensive, pair up the last 2, and put whichever pair gives you the lower total on the 2nd tier and the more expensive pair on the 3rd tier.[[/note]]; during this time, only one contestant figured it out, and unfortunately he bailed too soon. (The game has recently been set up so that there are multiple correct solutions, including ones where the cheapest item can go in the mailbox; even then, it took until April 2013 for the $100,000 to be won.)
** Lucky $even is a game where you have to guess the last four digits of a car, and you lose $1 for each number you're off by on each guess. You have $7 to start and must have $1 at the end to win. While a price like $16,545 is easy to win on, more often than not the price contains multiple extreme numbers (1, 2, 8, and 9) that take out contestants who guess down the middle or go for the [[OneHitKill wrong extreme]].
** That's Too Much is a game that even Drew mentions is hard to win. There is a series of 10 prices in increasing order and you have to stop at the first price that is higher than the price of the car; contestants usually like to stop around the middle, when the correct price is either early on (3rd or 4th) or towards the end (7th or 8th).
** Temptation is a game where you have to give the last four digits of a car by choosing from two possible numbers on each digit. You have to get ''every single one'' right; miss one, and you get nothing. That gives this game effectively a ''1 out of 16'' chance of being won (1 out of 8 if you can figure out the second digit or if the last digit isn't a 0 or 5 choice). The number choices come from the prices of four gifts that usually total a decent amount, and alternatively, a contestant can bail out with the gifts, which just means even some contestants who get the car price right don't end up winning the car. It took ''over four years'' since Drew started hosting for the game to be won.
** Stack the Deck is yet another notoriously hard game. You have to form the price of a car out of seven possible numbers, and you can get up to three numbers given for you by playing 1 Right Price with three pairs of grocery items. The difficulty is two-fold; if the grocery items are hard, you can end up with only one or even no free numbers, which makes the game almost impossible. But even with all three numbers, many contestants have still lost because they did not guess the remaining two numbers correctly.
** Master Key is one of those Luck Based missions, and it even expects contestants to get one or both wrong. Heck, even if they get at least one right, it even expects contestants to get only one key, and to top it all off it even expects contestants to get the Dud key. Why? Because there's no telling which key opens a lock, which one is the dud key, and which one is the Master Key itself, making it impossible to tell which key is which.
** Many pricing games in the past have been retired for being considered too hard or too confusing. Most notable of these is the original Bullseye, in which you had to figure out the ''exact price'' of a four-digit car in seven guesses, only being told after each guess whether the price was higher or lower. Unsurprisingly, this game was never won (with one contestant managing to [[DownerEnding miss a win by $1]]). Not even giving the contestant a $500 range or rounding the price to the nearest ten helped.

* Most ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'' contestants seem to have trouble with categories that deal with opera, ballet, or spelling the correct response. {{Lampshaded}} whenever the producers name such a set something like "The Dreaded Opera Category".

* ''Series/{{Pyramid}}'' contestants had trouble conveying the names of famous people to their partners. It doesn't really help that saying the entire name is a mouthful when you're playing against the clock. However, GenreSavvy players could clear this category with relative ease if they remembered that all the clue-receiver had to say was the last name (unless the host said otherwise).
** This one was even lampshaded on the box "I Hope It's Not Names", which led to the category "Things a ''Pyramid'' contestant might think about."
* For ''Series/WheelOfFortune'''s 12th season (1994-1995), they tried a new category called Megaword. Each puzzle was a 9- to 13-letter word that, after solving, the contestant could use in a sentence to earn a $500 bonus. Pat made it blatantly obvious from the get-go that he hated the category, and for good reason. Most Megawords were extremely uncommon words and/or had a lot of uncommon letters, leading to one incident where someone solved a fully-revealed puzzle of PRISTINELY incorrectly — and another where it took ''eleven'' spins before someone uncovered any of the letters in OXIDIZED, and eleven ''more'' before anyone revealed another. Worst of all, the sentences were not judged for proper use of the word; just about anything other than a deer-in-the-headlights stare was accepted. Needless to say, Megaword didn't make it too far into 1995.

* On ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'', some pricing games are notoriously difficult to win (And often has many a contestant who lost a pricing game to be informed that it's "Comeback Time!" in the showcase Showdown), you'll understand why the majority of the winners who won the showcase are people who lost a pricing game.

* ''Supercoin'' on ''Series/MinuteToWinIt''. Since it's the million-dollar game, and the show doesn't change games until someone has won it, it's unlikely the top prize will be won (barring ExecutiveMeddling), and with Apollo now hosting, it's safe to say that it will never will.

* While ''Series/TakeshisCastle'' is known for its infamous difficulty. The level that had the fewest winners was either "Rice Bowl Down Hill" where contestants had to sit in a rice bowl down a water slide and not fall off or "Quake" where they had to kneel on several levels of cushions and not fall off while the entire set shook. Not to mention the various other levels that were simply based on luck alone, such as when they had to chose out of five holes which to jump down, two were safe. There was absolutely no way for anybody to make a guess as to which to go down.

** Master Key is one of those Luck Based missions, and it even expects contestants to get one or both wrong. Heck, it even expects contestants to get only one key, and to top it all off it even expects contestants to get the Dud key. Why? Because there's no telling which key opens a lock, which one is the dud key, and which one is the Master Key itself.

** Master Key is one of those Luck Based missions, and it even wants many a contestant to get one (or in some occasions both) wrong. Heck, it even expects many a contestant to get only one key, and to top it all off it even expects many a contestant to get the Dud key.

* ''Supercoin'' on ''Series/MinuteToWinIt''. Since it's the million-dollar game, and the show doesn't change games until someone has won it, it's unlikely the top prize will be won (barring ExecutiveMeddling).

** By a [[RulesLawyer strict reading of the rules]], fan favorite Plinko is one as well. The producers only count the game as "won" if you earn all five chips and drop them all into the $10,000 slot, a feat which has never been accomplished and probably never will.

** Many pricing games in the past have been retired for being considered too hard or too confusing. Most notable of these is the original Bullseye, in which you had to figure out the ''exact price'' of a four-digit car in seven guesses, only being told after each guess whether the price was higher or lower. Unsurprisingly, this game was never won. Not even giving the contestant a $1,000 range helped.

** Pay The Rent features a massive $100,000 grand prize, but to get it, you have to place six grocery items in a 1-2-2-1 tiered fashion such that each tier has a higher total than the tier before it. For a while, there were only one or two correct solutions out of multiple possibilities, and while a contestant's first instinct is to place the least expensive item on the first tier, that only guarantees there is no way to win the grand prize; during this time, only one contestant figured it out, and unfortunately he bailed too soon. (The game has recently been set up so that there are multiple correct solutions, including ones where the cheapest item can go in the mailbox; even then, it took until April 2013 for the $100,000 to be won.)

* While ''TakeshisCastle'' is known for its infamous difficulty. The level that had the fewest winners was either "Rice Bowl Down Hill" where contestants had to sit in a rice bowl down a water slide and not fall off or "Quake" where they had to kneel on several levels of cushions and not fall off while the entire set shook. Not to mention the various other levels that were simply based on luck alone, such as when they had to chose out of five holes which to jump down, two were safe. There was absolutely no way for anybody to make a guess as to which to go down.

* On ''ThePriceIsRight'', some pricing games are notoriously difficult to win (And often has many a contestant who lost a pricing game to be informed that it's "Comeback Time!" in the showcase Showdown), you'll understand why the majority of the winners who won the showcase are people who lost a pricing game.

* ''{{Pyramid}}'' contestants had trouble conveying the names of famous people to their partners. It doesn't really help that saying the entire name is a mouthful when you're playing against the clock. However, GenreSavvy players could clear this category with relative ease if they remembered that all the clue-receiver had to say was the last name (unless the host said otherwise).

* For ''WheelOfFortune'''s 12th season (1994-1995), they tried a new category called Megaword. Each puzzle was a 9- to 13-letter word that, after solving, the contestant could use in a sentence to earn a $500 bonus. Pat made it blatantly obvious from the get-go that he hated the category, and for good reason. Most Megawords were extremely uncommon words and/or had a lot of uncommon letters, leading to one incident where someone solved a fully-revealed puzzle of PRISTINELY incorrectly — and another where it took ''eleven'' spins before someone uncovered any of the letters in OXIDIZED, and eleven ''more'' before anyone revealed another. Worst of all, the sentences were not judged for proper use of the word; just about anything other than a deer-in-the-headlights stare was accepted. Needless to say, Megaword didn't make it too far into 1995.

* On {{Nickelodeon}}'s ''[[DoubleDare1986 Double Dare]]'', the obstacle course BonusRound ''always'' had one segment, like "Pick It!", "Garbage Truck", or "Blue Plate Special", where the contestant had find the flag hidden in gunge, often only by touch. "Squelch'm Waffles" was especially bad, since there were usually two waffles, and the flag was ''always'' hidden in the bottom one.
* ''Supercoin'' on ''MinuteToWinIt''. Since it's the million-dollar game, and the show doesn't change games until someone has won it, it's unlikely the top prize will be won (barring ExecutiveMeddling).

* ''Shrine of the Silver Monkey'' in {{Legends of the Hidden Temple}}, it's simply piecing a monkey out of three blocks, but in an already tough game show (where starting with less then a full Pendant is {{unwinnable}}), it's often the room where contestant end up losing the biggest amount of time. Then there's the tree room, where a token half and a switch is hidden in one of two trees, but the other tree is a guardian, so it's down to pure luck if the contestant gets tagged out.

** Master Key is one of those Luck Based missions, and it even wants many a contesant to get one (or in some occasions both) wrong. Heck, it even expects many a contestant to get only one key, and to top it all off it even expects many a contestant to get the Dud key.

** Many pricing games in the past have been retired for being considered too hard or too confusing. Most notable of these is the original Bullseye, in which you had to figure out the ''exact price'' of a four-digit car in seven guesses, only being told after each guess whether the price was higher or lower. Unsurprisingly, this game was never won. Not even giving the contestant a $1,000 range helped.

** Pay The Rent features a massive $100,000 grand prize, but to get it, you have to place six grocery items in a 1-2-2-1 tiered fashion such that each tier has a higher total than the tier before it. There are only one or two correct solutions out of multiple possibilities, and while a contestant's first instinct is to place the least expensive item on the first tier, that only guarantees there is no way to win the grand prize. The good news is, it's extremely easy to win $10,000 by simply bailing at the third tier (Only two have figured it out, unfortunately both bailed out too soon).

* On ''ThePriceIsRight'', some pricing games are notoriously difficult to win (And often has many a contestant who lost a pricing game to be informed that it's "Comeback Time!" in the showcase Showdown).
** Pay The Rent features a massive $100,000 grand prize, but to get it, you have to place six grocery items in a 1-2-2-1 tiered fashion such that each tier has a higher total than the tier before it. There are only one or two correct solutions out of multiple possibilities, and while a contestant's first instinct is to place the least expensive item on the first tier, that only guarantees there is no way to win the grand prize. The good news is, it's extremely easy to win $10,000 by simply bailing at the third tier.

** Master Key is one of those Luck Based missions, and it even wants a contesant to get one (or in some occasions both) wrong. Heck, it even expects the contestant to get only one key, and to top it all off it even expects the contestant to get the Dud key.

** Lucky $even is a game where you have to guess the last four digits of a car, and you lose $1 for each number you're off by on each guess. You have $7 to start and must have $1 at the end to win. While a price like $16,545 is easy to win on, more often than not the price contains multiple extreme numbers (1, 2, 8, and 9) that take out contestants who guess down the middle or go for the wrong extreme.

* On ''ThePriceIsRight'', some pricing games are notoriously difficult to win.

** Also, sometimes the UnexpectedlyObscureAnswer rears its head for Final Jeopardy! See the main article on the show for a particularly {{egregious}} example.

** Pay The Rent features a massive $100,000 grand prize, but to get it, you have to place six grocery items in a 1-2-2-1 tiered fashion such that each tier has a higher total than the tier before it. There is only one correct solution out of multiple possibilities, and while a contestant's first instinct is to place the least expensive item on the first tier, that only guarantees there is no way to win the grand prize. The good news is, it's extremely easy to win $10,000 by simply bailing at the third tier.

* In ''TheAmazingRace'', there's just about ''always'' one or two roadblocks or legs that really stump people up.
** Any Food challenge. It tends to be either:
*** Eat something really really gross
*** Eat something that's not-so-gross...but you have to eat it fast or sickening amounts of it.

** The American version has the haybales - it ''defines'' ThatOneLevel. One team could not even finish it because they ''never found a clue''. It was a LuckBasedMission for sure - you had a 5% chance of finding a clue as you unrolled the haybales. While the probabilities of finding a clue went up the more haybales were unrolled, it was still fully possible to keep on rolling and rolling and never finding one. Which is exactly what happened to Lena and Krista, who unrolled haybales for ''six hours''.

** The american version has the haybales - it ''defines'' ThatOneLevel. One team could not even finish it because they ''never found a clue''. It was a LuckBasedMission for sure - you had a 5% chance of finding a clue as you unrolled the haybales. While the probabilities of finding a clue went up the more haybales were unrolled, it was still fully possible to keep on rolling and rolling and never finding one. Which is exactly what happened to Lena and Krista, who unrolled haybales for ''six hours''.

* For ''WheelOfFortune'''s 12th season (1994-1995), they tried a new category called Megaword. Each puzzle was a 9- to 13-letter word that, after solving, the contestant could use in a sentence to earn a $500 bonus. Pat made it blatantly obvious from the get-go that he hated the category, and for good reason. Most Megawords were extremely uncommon words, leading to one incident where someone solved a fully-revealed puzzle of PRISTINELY incorrectly. Others had very few "common" letters, leading to an incident where it took ''eleven'' spins before someone uncovered any of the letters in OXIDIZED, and eleven more for someone to reveal just the X. And worst of all, the sentences were not judged for proper use of the word; just about anything other than a deer-in-the-headlights stare was accepted. Needless to say, Megaword didn't make it too far into 1995.
** Once, the puzzle was BUTTINSKY. With only the U and I missing, it took 9 turns before someone pronounced it correctly.
** Similarly, the BonusRound can be this at times. Even with 10-11 letters at your disposal (RSTLNE plus three more consonants and a vowel, and a fourth if the contestant has a Wild Card), some bonus puzzles can be nearly impossible to solve thanks to heavy reliance on obscure letters. And it's not as if they're tied to the value of the prize, either, since that's not revealed until after the fact. So good luck trying to figure out, say, HAZY SKY or AT THE BUZZER even only for $30,000.

** The american version has the haybales - it ''defines'' ThatOneLevel. One team could not even finish it because they ''never found a clue''. It was a LuckBasedMission for sure - you had a 5% chance of finding a clue as you unrolled the haybales. While the probabilities of finding a clue went up the more haybales were unrolled, it was still fully possible to keep on rolling and rolling and never finding one. Which is exactly what happened to Lena and Krista, who unrolled haybales for ''six hours''.