Ask the Slot Expert: On !mpossible game show, the worst you can do is also the best you can do

Last week my homework assignment for you was to look at two situations in a British game show and explain why the worst outcome a contestant could have in one phase of the game is the same as the best outcome.

The game show is !mpossible. In most parts of the game, contestants have to answer multiple-choice questions. !mpossible adds another dimension to the concept of multiple choice. Some answers are right. Some are wrong. And some are impossible.

For example:

Which Las Vegas casino is named after King Arthur's sword?
A) Excalibur B) Aria C) Borgata

A, Excalibur, is right. B, Aria, is wrong. C, Borgata, is impossible. Borgata is in Atlantic City, not Las Vegas.

In one phase of the show, contestants face a 3x3 grid of answers to a two-part question. Five of the answers are impossible, three are wrong, and one is right. In the first part of this phase, contestants are shown the grid and the first part, the filtering part, of the question and they have five attempts to identify the five impossible entries.

If the contestant correctly identifies an impossible entry, it changes to an exclamation mark. If the entry is possible, right or wrong, it temporarily disappears. It reappears when the second half of the question is revealed.

Here's how a grid might look before the contestant starts guessing.

If the contestant does a clean sweep and correctly calls out the five impossible entries, the grid would look like this:

And here's what the grid looks like if the contestant whiffs it and finds only one impossible entry.

Do you see the symmetry? The contestant knows the four possible answers in the clean sweep grid and the player also knows the four possible answers in the epic fail grid. Performing perfectly well or perfectly badly, the contestant has the same amount of information for identifying the right answer when the second part of the question is revealed. The contestant just has to be able to remember where the possible answers were in the perfect failure grid.

I can't think of any situations in real life. Can you?

I also asked you whether you knew these nicknames for playing cards that I learned on the show.

The Devil's Bedpost is the 4 of Clubs.

The Curse of Scotland is the 9 of Diamonds.

My original plan was to describer the origins of the nicknames, but there are no clear origins and for The Devil's Bedpost, even some controversy about which card it applies to.

I'll cop out and leave researching the origins as an exercise for the reader.

Here are some second parts that could complete the question in my !mpossible grid:

Which casino game...

• lets players deal the cards?
• is not a card game?
• is offered only on a machine?

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