"Is the Pope Catholic" - two teams ideally dressed in their Sunday best are presented with beliefs from different religions and they have to decide if it's Catholic or not. At the end the winners get to pelt the losers with fake foam boulders.
"Is the pope catholic" could be a game where the players must argue against an obviously true statement. Invent justifications that Canterbury never existed, that Belgium isn't in the European Union, or that your own head is made of wood and filled with jam. Other players get to question you. They get points if they stump you or catch you contradicting yourself, but you get points if you have a consistent answer.
I prefer Chris' original Nth degree idea better than the way it's implemented here. The way Chris said it, the points go to the last person to make a joke BEFORE things get rude enough to be cut. That way, people are incentivised to be as funny and relevant as possible without being truly offensive or ridiculously obtuse. By giving the points to the people who get cut because of their rude jokes in this, Tom is quite simply inverting that incentive and also keeping the audience from knowing why a single point is awarded. Unfortunate misunderstanding, that. Update: while re-watching this, I've determined the people who each spoke last (and got a laugh) before each of the cut jokes. Not only did Chris invent the Nth Degree, but he wins it as well.
The thing is that the only way the format works if it's the person before the cut joke is if the game is actually decided in the edit... you could have the format do double duty, so there's the bonus points trophy awarded at the end for rudest contestant but the real winner is shown with a "these are the scores" and "so x wins and y gets the golden cock" although the whole points thing is kinda whose line/I'm sorry I haven't a clue no one knows or actually cares what the points are it just allows extra gags
Also, it'd probably be even more amazing for the online content shown afterwards, showing what the actual cut jokes were - drive up the RU-vid channel's advertising money! I mean, it works for Dave...
@@johnydl You'd just do as they did here, and cut out any joke that obviously wouldn't make it past the watershed. It's pretty obvious; any joke that - even with beeps - is just too rude to broadcast. That's not even decided "in the edit"; it could just be the producers themselves saying down to the host's earpiece "That's too much!"...which brings an even better visual conceit to the process, of the host holding his finger up to the earpiece - on tenterhooks - as the contestants go further and further!
4Matt sounds more like a formatt that involves bringing their best something 4Matt. Best jokes probably. Begin the formatt with Matt (namesake of 4Matt) spouting off gibberish that the others reply in. You know, things like coracle oracle. Whoevers pleases Matt wins the 4Matt.
It might be fun to see a more clue-based Candle at both Ends, where both players need to guess the correct thing to draw as well as match their drawings.
The clue they should get is the middle part of the drawing. "what on earth is that supposed to be.... is that.... is that the middle part of a horse? but which way is it facing?"
I feel like for Burn the Candle at Both Ends the contestants should be able to communicate, but never about what they’re drawing, just where they’re drawing and how.
So basically what I've learnt from these experiments so far, as long as we have the four in front of the camera having a laugh, I don't really care which one of the experiments they decide to go forward with.
Agreed. They could start the show, "I'm Tom Scott, with me are the Technical Difficulties, and today we're reading the phone book and occasionally making a joke about the name we just read," and it'd still be hilarious
You know, OP, that's almost exactly how I got through the poetry section of my high school english class. We had to write a poem, and I wrote mine about how much I hate writing poetry.
My idea for "Is the pope catholic?": The contestants are given four question where the answers seem obvious, but for one of them it isn't. They have to find out which one.
The Nth Degree would be spectacular as a live show. Give the audience buzzers, and as soon as >50% of the attendees say it's gone too far, the person gets a point.
Matt's suggestion for "The Tail Wagging the Dog" is essentially describing "Two Of These People Are Lying", the new format they eventually went with. So this experiment may have produced some useful results after all!
I thought the nth degree would have been the person who makes the last joke before one gets cut wins, as in the worst joke you can make before it gets scrapped
Yeah, otherwise a contestant who really wanted to win could just do The Aristocrats ad nauseam. But that’s not how the Technical Difficulties approach their show, so these rules could still work for them, I suppose.
Someone else mentioned doing it like hot potato, where the last person to have a joke cut gets a kind of Dunce cap. Whoever has the cap at the end is the looser. Add in the points from jokes BEFORE those ones and you get a winner as well
I didn't expect this to turn out very good, but it did! (Though I hope the nth degree isn't a regular thing. Gary's Derek Acorah thing was funny because it was an isolated incident; a whole show with the best jokes cut out because people were _incentivised_ to get them cut would be annoying.)
Well, that's because they did it wrong :P The way Chris explained it, the point was supposed to go to the last joke *that made it into the video* before one had to be cut, not go to the joke that had to be cut. Like a Vickrey auction, but for jokes :)
IceMetalPunk And that format would also demand strategy, coaxing the other panelists to say the things that get cut in order to receive the point for having the joke directly before. It would also cause great moments where the panel dances around the joke everyone wants to say, to such an extent that even the audience knows what the joke is, even though it hasn't been said.
Matt's proposal for "the tail that wags the dog" of "people have to invent an apocryphal story about a phrase" sounds like a plausible progenitor of "Two of these people are lying"
Not gonna lie, I think The Nth Degree has potential... keep throwing topics out for jokes and when one gets *just* too bad throw them a graduation hat, the person with the hat at the end of the show loses and gets a forfeit [same as Tom's prizes, but in a worse setting like a ride in Stephen Mulhern's Mucusy Membranes]
I had literal* tears of laughter over the drawing of the horse. * That's literal literal, not the ersatz figurative literal that the kids are so fond of these days.
1. I specifically said *"When* literal loses its literalness," not "because". 2. Sarcasm doesn't matter to this discussion. You don't hear people sarcastically say "Yes, I _literally_ did blah blah blah" unless they said they did blah blah blah and someone else asks if they were being literal. 3. Language evolves. If the hyperbolic usage becomes common enough, it has become an accepted usage. And yes, "literally" will still literally mean literally. So does "really," but that's not what people think of when you use the term.
"Is the Pope catholic?" You describe three wild stories from history, all true, all related to religious figures, and you have to guess which one pertains to the Pope
It's been 3 years and it's only just occurred to me that Matt's description of a "Tail wagging the dog" format is basically Two of these people are lying. Guess they really did find a new format from this experiment!
Throwing my hat into the ring, a format where one person gets an answer they must create a question for and another receives a question they must create an answer for. Their creations are said back to back and the other two have to guess what the original question is. Could call it something like "question me not!".
it's easier to win though - you just start out with a way way way too far joke and instantly cut it off - the last person making a joke that doesn't get cut would need more precision and would slowly and carefully 1up another - also of course it would mean we get to see the winning joke
They can do even better - drawing half a bycicle, like that one designer (Gianluca Gimini) that asked people to draw a bycicle and then render some of the weird designs.
I just realized that the Nth Degree idea is basically a Vickrey auction for jokes. You get points for being the second-worst joke, but no one knows what the worst joke will be until the points are awarded :)
Once you guys figure out your next format, I would LOVE to see "The nth Degree" added on as a side bit to give bonus points. The only trouble is then you'd start heading for those kinds of jokes sooner and more often...
I agree. Had me in tears by the horse, but consistently laughing out inappropriately loud though the kids were asleep. 11/10, would watch more of this sort.
"How the might have fallen" is clearly a show of clips of celebrities falling over. "You've been framed" but about people we really want to see injured. I actually kinda like this format :p
This one was excellent, the meta humour, the many opportunities for spontaneous bits like the horse drawing, the vast variety of potential jokes. Its going to be hard for the next experiment to beat this one for me honestly.
Dead cat bounce: it won’t be a regular show, would have to be a segment on a larger show, but whenever a celebrity royally screws up their reputation you invite them on so they can try to at least slightly repair the reputation they torpedoed. Of course the penance has to match the offense. If they were caught on tape making fun of poor people, they have to do a hundred hours in a soup kitchen. If they said something insulting about their fans, they have to basically do a live Q&A where the moderators actively encourage hard questions
Took me until 1:26 to realize that "format laboratory" _was_ the format. Originally, I thought the name was a bit more straightforward, since the Tech Diffs are obviously experimenting with their own format at the same time. Inception!
9:11 similar to a game we played in highschool where you'd draw a person/robot/animal and you'd sort of agree someone would start with the head and shoulders and fold that over (so that a little bit of the neck ends were visible so you could join up your drawing to theirs) and after you folded it over you would pass it to the next person to draw the torso, then pass it back to draw the legs and again to draw the feet. At the end you unraveled it and saw what you had made. It was quite fun seeing a robot torso with a giraffe head and stick figure legs when the page unfolded 😂
I want you to know I just posted "That doesn't how boats is" without any context on Facebook, and I guarantee all my friends are now confused. Worth it.
Loved it! Actually, I have no words to express how I enjoyed seeing the creativity flow. Because of all the creative ideas it turned out to be so much more than just a nice format.
I love that this video is barely 3 hours old and yet there are 253 comments already. So I'm not the only one constantly watching RU-vid waiting impatiently for new Matt and Tom videos.
I come back to this every so often and every time I get a new idea out of these suggestions. This time: Dead Cat Bounce: A one-off with a bunch of crazy inventor people - perhaps Adam Savage and the like - are each given a stuffed cat with the goal of making it bounce the highest after being dropped from the same height. All they're allowed to use to modify the "dead cat" are things from a landfill, thereby making all of those "dead" things bounce one more time. Perhaps even the participants could be at the end of their careers (so... not Adam Savage then... 😅), but that might be too meta. 🙈
"Is the Pope Catholic" sounds to me like some sort of quick fire round involving well-known "facts" and whether or not they are actually common misconceptions.
Dead Cat Bounce: Similar to the apprentice, but the aim is to cause the business to go under. Richard The Third: A quiz show where each round is centred around one person who is misrepresented in popular history, one round in each episode is on someone represented in a Shakespeare play.
Your "burning the candle at both ends" resembled a group interview step for engineers by Schlumberger. We had to make the tallest structure possible (out of tape and paper), without talking, and the leaders got swapped around midway through. I know it's really a metaphor for working with foreign language labor, but it's true. I did not get hired, but I'd still not be employed by them at this point because they scaled back operations quite a bit.
I would totally like adding “nth degree” to any new format upon which you all ultimately decide! Even with the censors, it was really funny and allows more funny reactions to be shown
I have a dream. In this dream, the day Tom ends his not-a-youtuber career, we get all the cut-outs in a one great mash-up. It would probably cause the channels to be took down (I don't have a clue, thats a guess) but some of us would manage to watch it and it would be worth the price.
tbh I would almost watch everything with you 4 in it. Just sitting around a kitchen table talking about odd things. Just like the Parkbench, but that is a bit more of a "light version" of the Technical Difficulties.
Idea I came up with for "Break the Ice", that I just realized would have a maximum amount of times it could be played, is were the people are put in a room where they have been told they needed to solve something but not what it is. It would be indicated that Only one person can win and that some actions may disqualify them. What they would need to solve would be them not talking. An alternate is that there is a puzzle in the room where they need to at least pair together to solve it, or some of the individuals only have half of the solution.
Honestly I think it should be the joke said just before the one that has to go to the cutting room floor should be the winner because the contestants keep toeing the line and the one who goes the furthest without going over is clearly the best
The best part about the nth degree, is people on the show would try to cancel each other, and the general public would be confused if the are telling the truth, lying, or misunderstood something, since we wouldn't hear the joke in question since it got edited out.
I have no idea if you'll read this and presumably it won't make any difference anyway, but that was brilliant! It was what I imagine being down the pub with you four is like!
TIMESTAMPS: 0:00: Intro 0:47: "The Nth Degree" 3:41: "How Are The Mighty Fallen" 4:50: "Break the Ice" 6:33: "Dead Cat Bounce" 7:30: "Richard III" 8:10: "Burn the Candle at Both Ends" 11:11: "Is the Pope Catholic?" 12:19: "The Tail Wagging the Dog" 12:55: Outro
Surely “The tail wagging the dog” (if a panel show) would be two teams of 2 or 3 with a host in the middle, but the teams are the ones that have to guide the host through the show. To make it a game though, both teams have a general script “host will monologue and introduce the teams, host will ask some trivia questions, host will invite one member from each team to participate in a physical challenge.” but additionally the two teams have a different list of objectives, with points values attached. One team might get a point for every time the host says “burger” while the other team is trying to get the host to say “sunshine” as many times as possible. There might be points for making the host pick up or use a certain prop, or be standing on a particular part of the stage at a particular moment. Like the game taboo, obviously the teams have to use a certain amount of discretion, and maybe they lose points at the end of the show if the host correctly guesses what they were trying to do (maybe the host gets 3 guesses at each teams objectives at the end just before the scores are revealed). I also imagine that the trivia and games happening throughout the show still also count towards the total, but are not worth heaps in comparison to the “puppet master” objectives.
Every time I revisit this episode, I laugh so much at the drawing challenge that I need my inhaler & I have tears running down my face. For the love of pete, please revisit this! Matt... you could turn that into an at-home game!
Think this might be the funniest one yet, imo. I think you should do, well, this pretty much. List a bunch of phrases as shows or whatever, ramble over it and then whoever makes a joke that needs to be cut gets a point. Maybe even throw in that drawing round.
I can just see the four of you, drawing half pictures for the rest of the afternoon. Lololol You would think someday, you could get someone to throw money at you to produce one of these shows for real. Love you guys.
