I am often able to tell the name of songs on the radio from as little as a stanza, and I can generally memorize a song I like after hearing it just once, sometimes twice if its particularly complicated.
Wheel of Fortune esp moment
- Thread starter Magical Realist
- Start date
I am often able to tell the name of songs on the radio from as little as a stanza, and I can generally memorize a song I like after hearing it just once, sometimes twice if its particularly complicated.
Obviously, what this woman did is not extraordinary. After all (no offence!), Kittamaru did it too! That is, the first person who responded to this thread managed to do the same thing. It may have taken longer, but the actual task was the same.
I, too, stopped the video at the 35 second mark and thought about it.
That first word is a giveaway. "x'xx". And the clue revealed that the first word doesn't contain the letter L.
Think about that. How many words follow that pattern? Before the first clue, the only word that came to mind for me was "I'll". But after the clue, the 'l's were ruled out, so what other word fits? I can only think of "I've". So, we have the first word.
Next we look at the remaining word lengths: "I've 3 1 4 7 5 4".
The third word can only be "a" or "I", and "a" is far more likely. So: "I've 3 a 4 [xxxlxxx] 5 4." (And bear in mind that there are no more Ls. And we know it's a common phrase.)
Word number 2 has to be something like "had" or "got". I can't think of many other possibilities that fit. So: "I've had a 4 [xxxlxxx] 5 4" or "I've got a 4 [xxxlxxx] 5 4."
At this point, I think either your have a flash of inspiration (where you just "see" the answer), or you don't. That "L" in the longest word is actually useful, too.
So, all in all, not too remarkable. If she hadn't got it, somebody else surely would have after one or two more letters.
I, too, stopped the video at the 35 second mark and thought about it.
That first word is a giveaway. "x'xx". And the clue revealed that the first word doesn't contain the letter L.
Think about that. How many words follow that pattern? Before the first clue, the only word that came to mind for me was "I'll". But after the clue, the 'l's were ruled out, so what other word fits? I can only think of "I've". So, we have the first word.
Next we look at the remaining word lengths: "I've 3 1 4 7 5 4".
The third word can only be "a" or "I", and "a" is far more likely. So: "I've 3 a 4 [xxxlxxx] 5 4." (And bear in mind that there are no more Ls. And we know it's a common phrase.)
Word number 2 has to be something like "had" or "got". I can't think of many other possibilities that fit. So: "I've had a 4 [xxxlxxx] 5 4" or "I've got a 4 [xxxlxxx] 5 4."
At this point, I think either your have a flash of inspiration (where you just "see" the answer), or you don't. That "L" in the longest word is actually useful, too.
So, all in all, not too remarkable. If she hadn't got it, somebody else surely would have after one or two more letters.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
It wasn't an insult. You declared that you could not do what I described - something that many people find perfectly natural. Thereby, you defined yourself as being slow. I certainly wouldn't have mentioned it if you have not identified it yourself. It's not an insult, it's an objective assessment of your capability made by yourself, not by me. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but insisting that everyone else must be equally slow is coming close to being an insult.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
No dearie..Calling someone slow IS an insult. Don't do it here, and don't do it in public or you might just lose a few teeth.
Veiled threat?
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Hindsight is 20/20. So after all that figuring, which probably would take you what maybe 5 minutes?, were you able to guess the phrase?
Even the experienced game show host was amazed by this. Ofcourse it's extraordinary.
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Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
I repeat: I merely confirmed what you had, yourself explained. Let's just review that :
1. You are unable to duplicate the type of performance illustrated in the OP.
2. Many people are able to duplicate such performance.
3. Several members have commented on their ability to do so.
4. I have offered you a simple, plausible mechanism for doing so.
5. You remain unable to either accept the mechanism, or to duplicate the performance.
6. By your own admission you lack the ability to process data at speed.
7. You are, therefore, by your own admission slow.
Lot's of people are slow. I wouldn't worry about it.
Now, as to your opening "No dearie", that is implicitly insulting. If it make you feel better, run with it. Perhaps we can now return to the central point: there is nothing extraordinary about the achievement of the contestant in the video. It is skillful, certainly. It is fast - obviously. But it does nothing more than utilise basic human skills. There is no need to envisage anything else.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
Moderators am I allowed one little curse here? No?
For ****'s sake. He's a game show host! Games shows - with a couple of exceptions - are not targeted at MENSA membership. He's meant to pump up the excitement. Get the audience going. Give people their money's worth. What else would you expect!
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Yes..it make me feel better. Me Tarzan..me so slow..
Full Definition of SLOW
1
a : mentally dull : stupid <a slow student>
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slow
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Threatening another member now?
It took me about... I dunno, three to five seconds tops? Generally, pattern recognition like that is something that either comes to you *snaps fingers* just like that, or it doesn't come to you no matter how much you glare at the screen.
The operative word there is "she". Women are renowned for arriving at correct answers without any conscious figuring. Men, ITOH, tend to be more deliberate and aware of the process by which they reach a conclusion. That you cannot imagine it would seem to be part and parcel with being male.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
I disagree. Magical Realist made two distinct statements:
The first was to demand that I refrain from delivering what MR believes to be an insult to anyone on this forum.
Secondly he provided some advice that if I practiced this in public I was liable to be physically attacked. (My extensive experience is that this is not the case.)
So the first was a request, the second was advice. Neither was a threat.
Game show hosts are paid millions to be amazed. It is as surprising as a politician lying, or a comedian telling a funny joke.
Magical Realist:
Here's where you started this thread:
The evidence for that includes:
1. Other people (even some on this forum) did the same thing.
2. There are a number of other examples of the same kind of thing happening on other game shows.
3. Having a flash of inspiration on something like this is a common enough human experience that we should all be able to relate to.
I'd be extremely surprised if you, personally, have never had the answer to an obscure question just "come to you", seemingly out of the blue. Then again, with your usual magical thinking you probably put that down to your own personal ESP.
As for "some kind of subconscious computation ability we all may have", there's a lot of evidence that, indeed, we all do have an ability to do some complex processing of information subconsciously. In fact, try to work out how, exactly, it is that you can recall anything. What was the name of the first man on the moon? There. Did that require a conscious thought process, or did the answer just pop into your head, seemingly out of nowhere?
Savants show heightened ability to do certain types of mental computation, but this seems to be an exaggeration of abilities that we all have to a lesser extent. And usually, savant-like ability comes at the cost of other brain activities.
As a matter of fact, I didn't work out the whole phrase from the clues - only the "I've got a ..." part. But, I'm Australian and that phrase is probably not in as common use where I live as it is where the TV show was made.
Let's imagine that there was a 1 in 20 chance that somebody would put the pieces together like the woman in the video. Then, you wouldn't expect me to do it, based on the probability. But you'd expect that somebody reading this thread would repeat the feat, and look what happened - Kittamaru did it in quick time.
I realise that mundane explanations involving chance are not as fun as conspiracy theories and miracles. You think you live in a magical world where you like to believe that miracles happen regularly. But in fact you live in a non-magical world where chance and statistics rule.
Here's where you started this thread:
The answer is: this is an unusual occurrence, but not one with astronomical odds against it.
The evidence for that includes:
1. Other people (even some on this forum) did the same thing.
2. There are a number of other examples of the same kind of thing happening on other game shows.
3. Having a flash of inspiration on something like this is a common enough human experience that we should all be able to relate to.
I'd be extremely surprised if you, personally, have never had the answer to an obscure question just "come to you", seemingly out of the blue. Then again, with your usual magical thinking you probably put that down to your own personal ESP.
You've never had a hunch yourself?
As for "some kind of subconscious computation ability we all may have", there's a lot of evidence that, indeed, we all do have an ability to do some complex processing of information subconsciously. In fact, try to work out how, exactly, it is that you can recall anything. What was the name of the first man on the moon? There. Did that require a conscious thought process, or did the answer just pop into your head, seemingly out of nowhere?
Savants show heightened ability to do certain types of mental computation, but this seems to be an exaggeration of abilities that we all have to a lesser extent. And usually, savant-like ability comes at the cost of other brain activities.
It took me 5 minutes to write the post, but the reasoning was there when I first watched the video (first 35 seconds).
As a matter of fact, I didn't work out the whole phrase from the clues - only the "I've got a ..." part. But, I'm Australian and that phrase is probably not in as common use where I live as it is where the TV show was made.
Let's imagine that there was a 1 in 20 chance that somebody would put the pieces together like the woman in the video. Then, you wouldn't expect me to do it, based on the probability. But you'd expect that somebody reading this thread would repeat the feat, and look what happened - Kittamaru did it in quick time.
It's an unusual occurrence, but not extraordinary.
I realise that mundane explanations involving chance are not as fun as conspiracy theories and miracles. You think you live in a magical world where you like to believe that miracles happen regularly. But in fact you live in a non-magical world where chance and statistics rule.
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Indeed. In fact, guessing a phrase is nothing. Consider the outfielder. He sees a pitch, he sees the batter hit the ball from hundreds of feet away, he sees the ball in flight for half a second - and he takes off running, going to the point where the ball will land after its ballistic trajectory. Does he calculate the drag coefficient, the ever-increasing effects of the wind, the offset caused by the slightly lower gravitational gradient in Denver? No - he just starts running, based on intuition. Yet all the above (drag, gravity etc) goes into that intuition. Pretty remarkable.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
This is why, in my description of the mechanism for realising this kind of insight, I mentioned in particular getting in the zone and passing the work off to ones subconscious. One has to consciously stop thinking consciously.
I've only watched the video as far as the L being placed.
My guess is "I've won a four/five/nine million/billion something something"
Now I'll see how close I got.
Not too close. Never mind.
On the other hand, if the answer was "I've won a four/five/nine million/billion something something", I would have been very close.
Every year in the UK a competition is held to find the best crossword puzzle solver.
I bet that if you took that roomful of people, one in ten or more would be able to solve that question given one letter L placed, and being told there was no R.
On the other hand, if the answer was "I've won a four/five/nine million/billion something something", I would have been very close.
Every year in the UK a competition is held to find the best crossword puzzle solver.
I bet that if you took that roomful of people, one in ten or more would be able to solve that question given one letter L placed, and being told there was no R.
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