- Rick Edwards hosts the daytime quiz show in which 30 recurring contestants must avoid choosing the impossible answer as they compete for the chance to win 10,000 pounds.
- The game of Impossible, stylised as !mpossible, is a British daytime quiz series that puts a twist on the classic multiple-choice quiz - in addition to the right answers and wrong answers normally presented in such quizzes, there are also what the show refers to as "impossible answers", which often sound plausible but are not consistent with the information given in the question. The game takes place inside a studio with a giant exclamation mark, styled like the one that appears in the graphics to indicate an impossible answer (and in the stylised version of the title), which contains 10,000 £1 coins. The coins represent the maximum prize offered on the series, and in order to win this prize, a contestant will have to correctly answer the £10,000 question that is asked at the end of the show (in the introduction, host Rick Edwards pulls out a card that he says contains the £10,000 question.)
In each episode, a pool of contestants compete for three places in the final round, but only one of them will be asked the £10,000 question at the end of the final. The size of the pool, the maximum duration of each contestant and whether or not they are replaced have changed over different seasons as detailled below. Except on the final episode of each season, any contestant who is eliminated at any stage of the game would return on the next episode as long as they hadn't reached their maximum duration.
Each of the three rounds played before the final round consists of two parts. In the first part of each round, the host asks all the contestants who remain in the game five multiple-choice questions, and each question will have three answer options, of which one is right, one is wrong and one is impossible. After each question is read out, the contestants have a time limit in which they have to choose and secretly lock in the answer that they think is right. Once they make their choice, the letter that corresponds to their choice will appear on a monitor in front of them. Once all of the contestants have locked in an option, the right answer and the impossible answer, sometimes in that order and other times in the opposite order, are revealed. Every contestant that locked in the right answer scores one point, but any contestant who chooses the impossible answer is eliminated from the game, unless all remaining contestants choose it, in which case every contestant who remains in the pool comes back into play. The revelation of the impossible answer can be accompanied by one of two possible sounds depending on whether or not any contestants selected it. If any contestants fail to lock in an answer in time, a tone will sound and the contestants will be eliminated, as if they had chosen the impossible answer. An example of the kind of question asked in this part of the game and its options is "On a standard UK Monopoly board, which property is the most expensive? A) Bond Street B) Park Place C) Mayfair". For this question, answer C is the right answer, and answer B is the impossible answer - Park Place is found on a standard US Monopoly board, but is not found on a standard UK board; Park Lane is found on a standard UK board.
After five questions have been asked, if one contestant has more points than anyone else, then they will advance to the second part of the round, known as The Grid. If more than one contestant shares the top score, then The Grid is played by the contestant who locked in all of their answers with the fastest total time. In The Grid, the contestant selects from one of up to four question categories (four categories are available in the first round, only the three categories not selected in that round are options in the second round, and only the two categories not selected then are options in the third round). Once they select a category, they will be presented with nine answers, of which one is right, three are wrong and five are impossible. The host will then ask the first part of the question, which will be enough to reveal the information with which the impossible answers are inconsistent. Sometimes, more than one piece of information will be revealed in the first part of the question, in which case the impossible answers will be consistent with part of the information but not all of it - for example, if the first part of a question is "Which English cricketer ...", the impossible answers will include English people who play sports other than cricket and cricketers who represent countries other than England. The contestant then chooses one by one the answers that they think are impossible. After each choice, they find out if their chosen answer is impossible before they make their next choice. When they choose an impossible answer, the Impossible exclamation mark will take that answer out of play and £100 will be added to a prize pot. If the answer they choose is not impossible, it will be greyed out. If all five of the answers they choose are impossible, a total of £500 will be added to the prize pot, making the maximum winnings from the pot £1,500 if all three contestants who play The Grid (some contestants may play it more than once) each correctly find all five impossible answers.
After they have chosen five answers, any possible answers wrongly chosen as impossible are returned to play and the contestant who had the second highest score or second fastest time, or the last contestant to be eliminated if only one contestant was still in the game at the end of the first part, is revealed. The host will then read out the second part of the question, and the highest scoring contestant then chooses which one answer of the remaining options they think is right. If they choose the right answer, they will advance straight to the final. If they choose an answer that is wrong but possible, then the runner-up contestant gets to choose one of the remaining answer options, and if they pick the right answer, they will advance to the final, but if they choose a wrong answer or an unrevealed impossible answer (the latter resulting in their elimination from the game), then the high scorer advances. If the high scorer chooses an unrevealed impossible answer, then the host will work through the remaining contestants starting with the runner-up until one of them chooses the right answer - any contestants who choose an impossible answer at this stage are eliminated. After the contestant who will advance to the final is decided, if neither of the top two scorers found the right answer, it will be revealed, as will any impossible answers that remained unrevealed to that point.
The contestant who advances to the final gets to sit out any remaining rounds. At the beginning of both the second and third rounds, the scores and times of the previous rounds are cleared to give every remaining contestant an equal chance to play The Grid. If a round begins with just one contestant from the pool remaining and they choose a right answer before they choose an impossible answer, then they will immediately play The Grid.
The three contestants who advance from The Grid then get to play the first part of the final. Each contestant will stand behind a podium shaped like the Impossible exclamation mark, and will begin the round with ten lives. The contestants are then asked a series of open-ended questions, with the first contestant to press their buzzer being able to answer the question. If they answer a question correctly, both of their opponents will lose a life, but an incorrect answer means that the contestant will lose one of their own lives. Some of the questions asked in this round will be impossible questions (for example, "Which two boroughs of New York are connected by the Golden Gate Bridge?" - that question is impossible because the Golden Gate Bridge is in San Francisco). If the first contestant to buzz in thinks that a question is impossible, then they may say "Impossible" instead of attempting to answer the question. If they are right in identifying the question as impossible, then both of their opponents will lose two lives each, but if they stuff up on an impossible question, either by attempting to answer such a question or by wrongly calling a possible question impossible, they will lose two of their own lives. When a contestant loses their last life, they are out of the game, and the last contestant with any lives remaining advances to the second part of the final, which is the £10,000 question.
Before the £10,000 question is asked by the host, he will first reveal to the contestant what its category is. The contestant will then be shown nine answers, which will appear one by one. Three of the answers are right, three are wrong and three are impossible. After all of the answers are revealed, the host will ask the question, and the contestant will then have 10 seconds to choose the three answers they think are right. They must choose three answers within this time to have any chance of winning money, but they have to choose carefully because only their first three answers will be accepted. After they make their choices, the host will reveal whether their chosen answers are right, wrong or impossible. If they choose any impossible answers, they will leave the game with nothing. If they avoid all of the impossible answers but choose some of the wrong answers, they will win the money in the daily prize pot. If they choose the three right answers, they will win the £10,000 prize, which will be delivered by a chute in the bottom of the studio's giant exclamation mark sliding open and the coins falling out of it into a hopper beneath it. Afterwards, any remaining right and/or impossible answers are revealed.
The variations to the starting pool of contestants and gameplay are as follows:
SEASON 1 30 contestants compete across all 15 episodes. A contestant retired once they had received the £10,000 question on two occasions, in which case they were replaced by a new contestant to keep the pool at the same size. If a contestant chose an impossible answer to the £10,000 question, then they would be asked a second question for another chance to win either £10,000 or the daily prize pot, and would only leave the episode with nothing if they chose an impossible answer to both questions.
SEASONS 2 AND 3 The starting pool was reduced to 24 contestants, and the entire pool was replaced after every ten episodes (two weeks), meaning that three different pools of contestants competed in each season. Each contestant had only one shot at winning any money from the £10,000 question, and had to retire and be replaced after they received one of these questions, which meant that there was at least one new contestant every day.
SEASON 4 The pool of 24 contestants was replaced each week (after every five episodes), and the contestant who retired after receiving the £10,000 question was not replaced, meaning that the number of contestants in the pool was gradually reduced from 24 on Monday to 20 on Friday.
SEASON 5 ONWARDS The starting pool on Monday was reduced again to 21 contestants, with this number again decreasing during the week down to 17 on Friday.
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