It's 1989, and series one is in production ready to broadcast in February 1990. The Crystal Maze is still finding its feet. They're producing a big elaborate game show and they still aren't 100% on the best way to do and present everything. When you watch it through now, there are little varied elements that stand out as slightly off. Maybe there's a music cue out of place, or there are bits of games that are slightly changed in later plays to account for something that just doesn't quite work. The games aren't quite as big yet either. When looked at against games from later series, they're a little basic. Not that there's anything wrong with that, the creativity will come in time.
One game that can be seen as a little basic was in Industrial and involved the contestant identifying small items by touch, needing to get 4 out of 5 correct to win the game. It was all fairly simple, small items. Wood shavings, tools, toys, things that should be easy to guess. However, for the last 32 years, I've had no clue what the hell these things were meant to be.
I was watching the crystal maze and there was a puzzle where you identify items by only touching them
— 🦀The Long Crab🦀 (@ElongatedCrab) April 12, 2022
What the hell is this thing? I can see it and I have absolutely no clue pic.twitter.com/Gp1fpaA725
Well, a quick retweet later and mystery solved. And I could never have figured this out with a lifetime of guesses.
It's the 'golf ball' head off a golfball typewriter.
— Chrissie Caulfield (@Chrissie_c) April 12, 2022
Instead of keys that had the letters on them IBM Selectrics had a golfball-type thing that was electronically controlled to select the right letter when a key was pressed. https://t.co/EGLMWRLqrd
That's been itching at the back of my head for decades, so thank you @Chrissie_c
It's such a random item though, anyone else reckon they'd have eventually figured this out by touch alone?
