If you followed my podcast plug series you know I’m a huge fan of the Demented Tower on the Demented Podcast. Here’s a strategy walkthrough based on my two attempts of climbing the tower.
I’ll be using the season three Battle Royal finale as my main reference. However, it might help your understanding of the game to listen to my qualifying round.
Over to the Battle Royale edition of the Tower, the biggest difference being that five players battle it out against each other.
Here were the standings going into the BR:
1) Joel – 191 Points (I got to take every chance I can to show off this score haha)
2) Dan – 164 Points
3) Dylan – 146 Points
4) Kai – 103 Points
5) Jason – 101 Points
I suggest you listen in and pause at the stops I’ll be writing about if you aren’t familiar with the game.
Introduction
The rules of the BR state that the leader board leader gets to choose difficulty level first. This time around I went with the same difficulty level that I had in the qualifying round. That option is to qo without any clues and instead get 40 stamina points added to the 100 you start off with.
My main reason for going with no clues is mainly that I have had very little help from the clues when listening to the show before being on it myself but there’s also a strategic aspect to the choice.
Having 40 points added make it almost impossible to miss out on the final question since the sub levels on the last level subtract stamina in each steps until being very revealing in the last stage. I’d had of course heard a couple of players not having enough stamina left on the last level so they couldn’t hear the obvious final stage so I decided to play it safe and what works once got to work again right?
Round 1 – Topics
Another perk for being the top scorer in the qualifying round is the Gift. The gift can either help yourself or hurt someone else. Unfortunately I did my first huge mistake here. The Gift can be traded in for a direct pass to the 2nd stage of the tower. For some reason I did go with that option which is really stupid since I’d get to pick category first. However, I guess I was to afraid/had to much respect for the 1st level that has slayed many victims.
As soon as I heard the categories I knew which one I’d gone for ”almost a solo act” of course thats the only one I’d make all the way through which is the safest way to advance to the next level.
The other categories were: Its good to be the king (I’d been out on the 4th one), Spellcheck (I’d been out on the first one *ouch*), Lady Liberty (I’d been out on the 2nd one). So I’d been eliminated on all other categories but its safe to say that going first I’d never had chosen any other category than the solo act one and then I’d still have had the gift…
Round Two – 20 Questions
Time for my favorite level, 20 questions. I always go with director (expert) because I’m somewhat of director name nerd after my studies in film history. My directors blind spot is definitively more recent ones and if I’m on the Tower again I might have to rethink this strategy.
I’ll break down this one question for question:
Q1 Is this director alive? YES <— Might be a more suiting question if Steve is the one picking the name.
Q2 Is it an American director? YES <— This is more of a dividing question to get a general sense of who it is. Could be misleading if its someone that has worked forever mostly in Hollywood but is Canadian (James Cameron, Michael Moore) just to mention one example.
Q3 Has he had a film out this year (2011)? YES <— This question I picked up from someone else and have stuck with since. However, there are enough non prolific guys out there to make it a dud question.
Q4 Did this director make his directorial debut in the 70′s? YES <— This is probably a question that could be bumped up a couple of notches since its a huge help for me to know when they started out. And to be honest it feels like 80% percent of the established directors started out in the 70′s or the 80′s so it should be to some help.
Q5 Has this director won an academy award for directing? NO <— Another question that probably could be bumped or altered by adding other Oscar categories. However, I do feel its smart to try to limit it to directing and writing since a lot of directors are executive producers not only on their own directorial features but others as well.
Q6 Is it Terrence Mallick? NO <— I really though it was him mainly for being a 70′s director that hadn’t won an academy award for directing but also since he is alive, he is American and Tree of Life was released this year.
Q7 Is this director an actor from the beginning turned director? NO <— Another question that probably can be a lot earlier since there are a lot of actors that now also direct George Clooney, Clint Eastwood, Sean Penn etc. one of few distractions on this question is Woody Allen who I had in my qualifying round.
Q8 Is this director famous for a certain genre of films? YES <— This is an important one but it can be really distracting in the way that yo might get too stuck on the genres wasting questions to pick it out.
Q9 Has this director been nominated for an academy award? NO <— This is another narrowing it down type of question. I guess its a coin toss asking this one before or after Q5.
Q10 Is this Directors preferred Genre Sci Fi? NO <— Such a crappy question. I wonder if I was thinking about George Lucas?
Q11 Did this director have a film released last year (2010)? YES <— In theory a good question depending on what you have already asked but this time it was a wasted one.
Q12 Is his preferred genre Comedy? NO <— Another f*cked up question. I must really have been struggling because I don’t know that much comedy directors.
Q13 Was his directorial debut between 1974-77? NO <— I don’t recall the exact thought behind this one but I think it was to eliminate a couple of directors I knew debuted in these years like Ridley Scott and George Lucas (I was wrong on Lucas by the way American Grafitti premiered in 1973).
Q14 Is his preferred genre Drama? NO <— Another really stupid question, I’d still be guessing on this one if the answer had been yes.
Q15 Is his preferred genre Horror? YES <— Finally, to be honest I probably should have gotten this genre already when hearing that the director didn’t have any academy award nominations.
Q16 Did this director direct Scream 4? YES <— Don’t really want to go into this one but my reasoning behind it at the time was that I wanted to ELIMINATE John Carpenter because I was less certain it was him. However, this still wasn’t more stupid than passing the Gift to Jason.
Q17 Is it Wes Craven? YES
On the other categories I would have done worse I think. The only ones I’d have a reasonable chance at was the character John McClane (I believe Kai wasted two questions!!!) and the film which was Black Swan that eliminated Dylan. When it comes to the actor Glenn Close the clue was brilliant ”Not Far” but since I don’t use clues I’d probably wouldn’t have gotten her.
Round Three – Patterns
Time for patterns which I also have a hard time with. Yet again picking first I went with the easy category unfortunately I haven’t seen Rango, Hard Rain or Flood and it was ages since I saw O Brother where are thou. So I was really saved by how the last question was formulated. When it comes to the other two difficulties in this round I would have been equally lost. So it was to bad I didn’t keep that Gift to hurt the others.
Round Four – Show and Tell
In round four I again went with easy just to try to limit the gap between me and Dan hoping that he wouldn’t get his scene. Since there is unlimited guesses I fired away guesses based on the scene description and in the end when it was obvious what film it was I wasn’t able to come up with the title due to a brain freeze. Also I probably wouldn’t have gotten Dan’s scene since its ages since I saw Run Lola Run.
Round Five
Time for the final trivia question where Dan got the option to answer it himself for sole championship or let me answer it for maximum shared championship between us. He choose to go himself, the question was that Anakin Skywalker aka Darth Vader was played by five actors true or false? For the record I’d gone with true on it.
However, this wasn’t the end of the mine and Dan’s eternal fight on the Tower. It all culminated on the first episode of the new season.
As you heard we got to play the last trivia question again and this time Dan choose to let me answer for sharing the championship. Unfortunately I’m not that versed with Potter and should have gone with my gut feeling in stead of changing my mind in the last second. On this last one its always a 50/50 chance you get it but its always fact based somehow which is good but if you make that far I can’t really help you. I do hope I’ve helped pointing out some good strategy moves on the earlier levels though.
Thanks for listening/reading such a lengthy and dry piece. =)
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting read. I certainly can’t argue with your results, but you do seem to make some interesting/difficult choices along the way. Though the decision to forgo all clues and take the 40 points has proven to be your best move to date. Occasionally the clues could really save people a lot of points, but I’m probably more with you where they don’t help me much at all until it’s over with.
As said my biggest mistake to date is one you pointed out directly after I did it. When it comes to choosing Director on 20 questions I might reconsider it if I get the chance to be on the Tower again. It feels more and more like its gonna be about more recent directors which is something I’m not very versed on.
Jason is a whiz when it comes to 20 Questions. He knows exactly what to do. He chooses Movie and then figures it out in about 6 moves. It’s pretty genius, actually.
I would say the best option outside of a Battle Royale is to go for 1 clue/20 stamina. That way you have extra stamina, plus a clue just in case you really get stumped. You NEVER need to use a clue in the first round. It’s a waste of stamina, and in a normal game, you can’t lose in that round. You also should never use a clue in Round 3, because the last film will almost always give it away.
Anywho, this was a fun write-up, Joel!
Thanks for chiming in Nick you might be right that the one clue strategy is good when playing the regular tower. I still champion going with +40 stamina and no clues in the BR. At least for schmucks like me and Dylan that obviously never get the clue until we hear the answer.
In reference to your first 20 Questions question, I almost always write the questions these days. Since Nick does the editing and the recording, it makes sense for me to shoulder part of the load in producing the podcast, which means that I tend to write the scripts and the questions. The clues are generally Nick.
However, I do try to take in the tastes of the guests. While I might throw in an older film now and then, I try to, in general, pick films, actors, and directors that are 1980-present.
I guess Dead or Alive is a dud question I’ll make sure to erase it from my question sheet.
Well, that’s ”in general.” I’m not saying I won’t throw Billy Wilder out there one of these days, but if I do that, it will more likely be for someone who knows Billy Wilder.
I would point out that I know Billy Wilder really well, but that would ruin my chances of ever getting him on the show.
Like Joel, I’d do much better with older directors.
What would really throw people off is using a female director. Have you done that yet? I’ve noticed everyone assumes the director is male, at least in the shows I’ve listened to.
I have thought about this too and have had that question on my rooster but have felt so far that its probably a wasted one. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a woman on there.
It’s a little galling that your score on The Tower was more than twice mine
Well it helps when having 40 extra stamina points when starting out… =)
Try that next time and you cant go below a hundred.