WWTBAM Bored

25 years ago today, February 27th, I played my playoff round for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on the phone. I had been trying for a year and a half, and this was only the second time I had been picked for the five-question playoff. I had ten seconds per question, so I had to write as the question and answers were being read, and then I had to put the answers in the correct order using my phone key pad. I couldn't make a mistake since there was no backspace function, and I wouldn't have had time to correct a fat-finger mistake anyway. So I was feeling the pressure. I figured I had to get all five right to have a shot at getting on the show. Here were my questions as taken from my notes (the first one makes me sad now since the subject just passed away):

Q1: Arrange these words to form the name of a popular actor:
1. Beek
2. Van
3. Der
4. James

Q2: US States by postal abbreviation geographically starting in the
east:
1. MT
2. CT
3. IA
4. HI

Q3: Periods of time by length, starting with the longest:
1. Day
2. Leap year
3. Olympiad
4. Score of years

Q4: Songs by when they won the Grammy for "Song of the Year,"
starting with the earliest:
1. "Streets of Philadelphia"
2. "My Heart Will Go On"
3. "You Light Up My Life"
4. "We Are the World"

Q5: Authors by birth, starting with the earliest:
1. Don Delillo
2. Miguel de Cervantes
3. E.M. Forster
4. one of the Brontee sisters

And on March 7, 2001, we taped this: https://youtu.be/iUlFCRDuceg?si=4TM1B4Qz7iZ61OOR

And finally, the episode aired March 11, 2001 and featured scruffyclaus as a contestant with Frank Tangredi as his phone a friend along with me as contestant and astronomer as my phone a friend. The full episode is here: https://youtu.be/zDUbz6JMxBU?si=HCx0zW3frTnJGBh4

Here's the video embedded:



--Bob