Are you sure that is your final answer?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? isn’t the phenomenon it once was — now when we think of game shows, we think of Steve Harvey acting shocked and appalled at the inevitable response to “What body part rhymes with ‘kagina’?” But Millionaire is still on syndicated TV every single day in the U.S. (now hosted by Chris Harrison from The Bachelor, obviously) and in about 25 other countries as well.
Which provides oh so many opportunities for people to bomb horribly.
The Internet finds and preserves said answers, like a digital, metaphorical amber. (A cousin of metaphorical gin and juice.) And then I, in turn, combed through as many screenshots and videos as I could find to pick these winners. Winners at losing.
Here are 11 screenshots of comically bad answers on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
1 | “And many more.”
It’s never good when even Meredith Vieira is scoring off you. She hosted The View, which means she’s highly adept at suppressing looks of “Wait, what did this person just say on national television?”
2 | Burger ring
In this woman’s defense, I’ve never heard of an anniversary ring before — but I’ve somehow heard of a burger ring less.
3 | The utensil hemisphere
If your spatula is rounded on the end (that might be a thing) and you squint so maybe the slits look like latitude lines, then I could see it being confused for a hemisphere — sort of. I think I’m meeting him about 80 percent of the way there, but he looks kinda broken up.
4 | I Pity the Fool
Man, George Washington is already such a beloved American figure. If he’d gone around saying “I pity the fool” he’d somehow even be more popular.
5 | Llamathrust
I’m not sure which answer this fellow ended up choosing. But the mere fact that he felt the need to ask the audience vividly demonstrates that the auto industry should really think about making those fake answers into real units of measurement. I immediately zone out when I hear about horsepower; I’d be on the edge of my seat listening to a salesperson discuss the engine’s world-class llamathrust.
6 | Mainezoil
If you’re on a daytime syndicated game show, theoretically that means you’ve watched daytime syndicated game shows. And I feel like Pennzoil does a ton of advertising in that realm. They’re constantly fighting Metamucil and “life insurance even though you’re old” companies for air time.
7 | Autosomal-dominant Compelling Hello-Ophthalmic Outburst syndrome
I was surprised to discover Millionaire didn’t make up that long, stilted syndrome name (backwards engineered to stand for “ACHOO”). According to Scientific American, it was devised during the “raging acronym fad” of 1978. I can’t believe I missed that fad. I would’ve thrived in that fad.
8 | The owl’s ink sac
“Paris Hilton” as the fourth answer feels a little forced, but, more important, it’s the clear sign this question was supposed to be a lay-up. Does anyone really think owls fly around squiring ink? “Owl” might not’ve even been one of the two options if she’d done the 50-50.
9 | Embalming fluid
Gotta keep on embalming those stones, right? You never know when they’re going to start smelling bad.
10 | Surge protector
After this guy botched his first question, the show rubbed it in…
111 | Ready?
Ever feel like every single person in a room knows something and you’re the only one left out? This woman had the rare opportunity to see actual empirical proof that was true.
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And finally, no list of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire moments would be complete without this (urban legend) picture…
Elephants: larger than the moon.