UK's [FALSE] £468,000 Loss

That's an amazing Millionaire run, especially on the last 5 questions!

Good to see that's finally returned to YouTube.

I made a post about this last week but I think I hit "Preview" instead of "Post" and lost it. I was wondering why it never showed up.

The whole thing irks me a bit for a few reasons. I get tons of comments on YouTube from people in other countries, including England, that bash our versions of the show saying questions are too easy and our contestants are too stupid, etc, whatever. First of all, I understand this was a celebrity game and I'm glad they took the money the second go round. That said, I believe it was a totally legitimate question.

Keep in mind this is the million pound question which is supposed to be the most challenging of the game. Jackpot questions generally follow a consistent rule - an extremely specific point in a ridiculously obscure subject. The answer isn't going to be something so blatantly obvious that two people believe they are 100% certain of it before the choices even appear, and that should have been the first red flag. To answer this question (without guessing or just knowing it from reading it somewhere or whatever) you need to know A) the latin motto of the United States, and B ) The translation of said phrase.

Breaking the question down: We (Americans) as a country have two mottos. "In God We Trust" and "E Pluribus Unum." The first is more widely known because it's printed on all of our money and is referenced much more, but it's not derived from any Latin. That makes it the perfect trap-answer for this question, which is 100% legitimate and very common to see in a question of this difficulty - you're going to have the correct answer and at least one other answer that's wrong but makes very logical sense. The latter motto is the one the question is referring to since it's quite obvious it's Latin, and it's still a very well known motto. I honestly don't believe they had the knowledge that was required to attempt a play at that question, and they lost because they fell for the trap choice.

All of that said, everything about the question was legitimate (to me anyway). It followed the formula that jackpot questions generally follow and they didn't think hard enough on the question after believing they knew the answer right off the bat. What really irks me about it is that if the same thing happened in the US, there's no way they would get another shot. Even if they did, we would never, never, never, EVER hear the end of it from other countries who would be bashing us nonstop. It just really struck me as killing the integrity of the game by letting them try again because "some people might think the question was tricky." (All I really got out of that was "celebrities messed up and lost money for charity after making a stupid mistake on a hard question so we are letting them try again.") When I heard him say they were getting another shot at it because of that, I just stopped watching.

Anyway, that's my rant. Just wanted to get that out there. =]

Mech

The point is still valid. Countries can have multiple mottoes (we do). While "In God We Trust" is labeled as the official one, "E Pluribus Unum" is also labeled as a motto of the United States. The question wasn't asking what the official motto is, but rather what the Latin translation is. For a question of that high value, it's perfectly reasonable to expect the contestant to know any and all mottoes, which ones are derived from Latin, and being able to translate them to find the correct answer. The contestants didn't seem to think about it that much and just assumed IGWT was correct, not realizing it's not derived from Latin -- something a question writer will prey on that far into the game.

Mech

We agree to disagree. In my eyes, the question is very clearly a trick question. E Pluribus Unum is as much the national motto as Annuit Coeptis or Novus Ordo Seclorum.