''Bamboozle!'' was a quiz game featured on

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

Teletext A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. It was originally part of Teletext's "Fun & Games" category, though the rest of the category had been discontinued for some years before Bamboozle! ended (due to the general discontinuation of all Teletext news and editorial content in December 2009). The last edition, themed around 'Ends and Lasts', appeared on Monday 14 December 2009. The Boozler 'family' appeared one last time on Tuesday 15 December 2009 saying farewell to the

audience. On 9 August 2010 Bamboozle! was given a new home by

on the iPhone complete with all the retro graphics (no longer available). On 11 July 2019, Teletext Holidays launched a version of the Bamboozle quiz on their 404 error page.
/ref> Bamboozle! was originally intended as a real-time game that could be played in conjunction with a broadcast TV programme using a similar multiple choice format as ''

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'' (often informally called ''Millionaire'') is an international television game show franchise of British origin, created by David Briggs, Mike Whitehill and Steven Knight. In its format, currently owned and ...

''. The decision by the new broadcast teletext franchise holders (Teletext UK) in 1993 to opt for

X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts ...

packet switching meant that it was impossible to adequately synchronise the broadcast of teletext content in the context of a TV programme. The format thus fell back to the form it had operated in largely unchanged since 1994.

The game

The game used Fastext keys (different coloured buttons on the TV remote control) to select the desired answer from a choice of four, and was "presented" by virtual host Bamber Boozler, who derived his name from the word "bamboozle" and the name of

University Challenge ''University Challenge'' is a British television quiz programme which first aired in 1962. ''University Challenge'' aired for 913 episodes on ITV from 21 September 1962 to 31 December 1987, presented by quizmaster Bamber Gascoigne. The BBC ...

host,

Bamber Gascoigne Arthur Bamber Gascoigne (24 January 1935 – 8 February 2022) was an English television presenter and author. He was the original quizmaster on ''University Challenge'', which initially ran from 1962 to 1987. Early life and education Gasco ...

. Bamber Boozler's appearance was constrained by the limitations of the Level 1

World System Teletext World System Teletext (WST) is the name of a standard for encoding and displaying teletext information, which is used as the standard for teletext throughout Europe today. It was adopted into the international standard ITU-R, CCIR 653 (now ITU-R BT ...

alpha mosaic display format. From 1993–2005, Teletext competitions editor Julian Edwards created the quiz "Bamber Boozler" and the character "Bamber Boozler". In later years, journalists Charlie Ghagan and Roger Wilkinson oversaw the quiz. Wilkinson also provides content for the

iPhone app.

The Boozler family

Quizmaster Bamber Boozler's family members were introduced over the game's first few years. Bamber's wife, Bambette normally appeared when a question was answered incorrectly and Saturday's Junior Bamboozle quizzes, which were generally easier than the weekday editions, were presented by Bamber's son, Buster, with Bambette's role filled by Bonnie, his daughter. A later addition was Brian Boozler who hosted a sports version called "Ten To One".

Gameplay

A new set of questions was originally given each week, but this soon became more regular, eventually becoming daily. Each game originally had 25 questions, later reduced to 20, then 15 and eventually 12; on a very few special occasions there were 30 questions. At one point in the quiz's history, the red, yellow and green keys were sensible answers and the blue was mostly reserved for a comical response (which was occasionally the correct one). This was later changed and all the keys would have sensible answers. The

player Player may refer to: Role or adjective * Player (game), a participant in a game or sport ** Gamer, a player in video and tabletop games ** Athlete, a player in sports ** Player character, a character in a video game or role playing game who ...

was required to answer all questions correctly in order to complete the quiz, but were allowed multiple attempts to do so. Initially, if a question was answered incorrectly, the player would have to start again from Question 1; this was later amended so that a maximum of three questions would need to be answered again. After completing the quiz, there was a score table with themed responses, for example: according to how many questions were answered correctly at the first attempt.

"Bad Luck" pages

The "Bad Luck" pages appeared when questions were answered incorrectly; they initially featured trivia at first and then mainly birthday announcements. This was scrapped to introduce "Bambette's Bonus" (or Bonnie's Bonus in Junior Bamboozle) where contestants could score again with a question from her. This was not a multiple-choice question and contestants could get the answer by pressing the reveal button.

Themes

On particular dates the quiz was themed: for example

Halloween Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observanc ...

featured related questions and images of skeletons and spiders, whilst

Guy Fawkes Night Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and fireworks displays. Its history begins with the ev ...

featured firework-based questions, and there were numerous

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

-themed versions. There were also special "name the picture/person" graphical editions.

Weekly competition

The makers of ''Bamboozle!'' introduced a weekly competition whereby a viewer could contribute the questions to Bamboozle! As well as having their questions used, names mentioned and their image appear on screen (the viewer could supply a photograph, which was converted to a Teletext-style cartoon); the winning contributors also received a £20

WHSmith WHSmith (also written WH Smith, and known colloquially as Smith's and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son) is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and m ...

gift voucher. Even before this, viewer-submitted questions were used in various forms ever since the early days of the quiz.

Spin offs

Back in the early days of ''Bamboozle!'', on a number of occasions the quiz would be replaced by an adventure game (a different one each time), based on the popular children's fantasy programme "

Knightmare ''Knightmare'' is a British children's adventure game show, created by Tim Child, and broadcast over eight series on CITV from 7 September 1987 to 11 November 1994. The general format of the show is of a team of four children – one who tak ...

". Viewers had to use the fastext keys to navigate their way through the quest. "Ten to One", was a sports version of ''Bamboozle!'' with the host Brian Boozler. The quiz was so called because it presented ten sports questions and players had to get from the ten down to one. It is a double meaning as Ten to One also relates to bookies popular odds on betting in many sports. This quiz ran concurrently with Bamboozle! for sometime until late 1998 where Brian said "I'm putting down the mic for a bit, I'm back in 1999...", however it never returned. He was however, during the period that the quiz was "rested", a guest quizmaster on Bamboozle! asking the contestants sports questions like before, with Bamber saying at the end "Thanks Brian..... check your score below!".

Trivia

* Bamber occasionally made reference to the those that had written the quiz over the years, referring to "the different people that have played me". * Bamber proved to be so popular with Bamboozle! that he was also used for a brief period to host a few of the other games on the "Fun and Games" menu before they were all discontinued. * Bamboozle was mentioned in

Peter Kay Peter John Kay (born 2 July 1973) is an English actor, comedy writer and stand-up comedian. He has written, produced and acted in several television and film projects, and has written three books. Born and brought up in Bolton, Kay studied ...

's stand up act (at

the Comedy Store The Comedy Store is an American comedy club opened in April 1972. It is located in West Hollywood, California, at 8433 Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip. An associated club is located in La Jolla, San Diego, California. History The Comedy ...

), when he quipped that you know your relationship is failing when you're playing Bamboozle together in bed. * Bamboozle was an inspiration in

Sam Ryder Sam Ryder Robinson (born 25 June 1989) is a British singer, songwriter, producer, composer and social media personality. He rose to prominence in 2020, after posting music covers on TikTok, during the first UK lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic ...

lyric video of his song Space Man which was chosen for Eurovision 2022.

References

External links

* {{UKGameshow, Bamboozle! Teletext 1993 in British television Television articles with incorrect naming style