Bamboozle!

For the music festival please see The Bamboozle

Bamboozle Is a quiz game featured on Channel 4 Teletext once page 140 now page 390; generally geared towards teenagers. It is 'presented' by Bamber Boozler, who derives his name from that of former University Challenge quizmaster Bamber Gascoigne, and his appearance from Magnus Magnusson, host of the quiz show Mastermind from 1972 to 1997. The game uses Fastext keys to select the desired answer from a choice of four.

The game originally had 25 questions, later reduced to 15 and currently 12. After each question set there is a score table with themed responses according to how many questions you got right. On particular dates the quiz is themed, for example Halloween featured related questions and images of skeletons and spiders and Guy Fawkes Night featured firework based questions. Saturday's quizzes are presented by Bamber Boozler's son, Buster and are generally easier than the weekday editions. Bamber also has a wife, Bambette, who normally appears when a question is answered incorrectly, and a daughter, Bonnie, who fills the same role when Buster presents the quiz. At one point in the quiz's history the red, yellow and green keys were sensible answers and the blue was generally reserved for a stupid response although this was sometimes the correct one. This has now stopped and all the keys have sensible answers.

A version of Bamboozle also now exists on the Digital teletext from ITV with only five questions.

The makers of Bamboozle have recently introduced a weekly competition whereby a viewer may contribute the questions to Bamboozle. As well as having their questions used and names mentioned, the winning contributors also receive a £20 WHSmith gift voucher.

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. The decision by the new broadcast teletext franchise holders (Teletext UK) in 1993 to opt for X25 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 has operated in largely unchanged since 1993.

Bamber Boozler's appearance was constrained by the limitations of the Level 1 WST (World System Teletext) alpha mosaic display format. In fact his appearance is largely based on Johnnie Walker - the organizer of a pub quiz league in Nottingham in which the developer of the original Bamboozle format played.

Bamber also resembles the actor Tom Bosley who appeared in the popular American sitcom called Happy Days.

A page has recently been created at http://bamberboozler.com. This site does not appear to be official and only consists only of a picture of Bamber and a counter.

This site is not official as I own www.bamberboozler.co.uk.