A 32 Year Old Crystal Maze Mystery Solved - The Golfball from an IBM Selectric Typewriter (Thank you @Chrissie_c)

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.

Never had a clue. Always thought they were a cap or stopper for some kind of equipment. Then @ElongatedCrab on Twitter was asking the same.

I was watching the crystal maze and there was a puzzle where you identify items by only touching them

What the hell is this thing? I can see it and I have absolutely no clue pic.twitter.com/Gp1fpaA725

— 🦀The Long Crab🦀 (@ElongatedCrab) April 12, 2022

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.

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

— Chrissie Caulfield (@Chrissie_c) April 12, 2022

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?

Series by Series - My Favourite Games, '90s Edition

 "My favourite game?" It's a question that could have several different responses. Resident Evil. Kerplunk. That song by The Cardigans where the video had her driving. But there was always games that would pop up on The Crystal Maze where young me, and old me, would pay a little more attention. Games that I would enjoy watching being played a little more than others. Maybe I found them more creative or just more fun. So, here's some games I just felt outranked the rest of each series offerings.

Series One (1990) - Timebomb

The first series, none of the games were all that complex. It was a new production so everything felt a little bit simplistic. Whether it was simply dropping a ball bearing in a hole with utmost precision, or having to identify objects by touch alone, the games weren't yet the most imaginative. So my choice for series one is the game that went a bit further in setting a scene. Timebomb saw the contestant have to connect coloured wires to pictures of objects to create a link. For example, a yellow wire to a picture of some pages. Yellow Pages. But rather than just have a timer counting down the time allotted for the game as with all games, there was also a nuclear bomb in the room counting down too. Fail to complete the game and... the lights got turned up. Last 30 seconds the bomb started smoking, the tension built, there was a bit of imagination here, a milligram of plot, and I still like seeing it even though I know no-one ever beat the game. 

Crystal Maze Games That Were Too Hard To Win

One problem I've got with TCM since it came back, too many people going home with a prize. It's partly down to 50+ gold getting a middling prize but, and there's a mild spoiler for the US version rapidly approaching here so keep on reading at your own peril, out of 10 shows there was at least 3 and maybe 4 top prize winners.

A 100+ gold winner should be a treat, a rarity, there shouldn't be nearly half a series of winners. People are clearly winning too many games and earning too much time. A little conversation I had the other night started at frogs and ended up at games that were never won and as such, here's the '90s games that were never won, and should be looked at so as to stop people winning quite so often. I'm not including any of those one-off games made for a kid's Christmas Special as it's a lot easier to be an unbeaten game if only one small person has a go.

Series 1 - 1990

Nuke Defusing - A nice simple two minute game sharing a room with a nuclear bomb. It needed defusing by connecting the correct coloured wire to the associated image on the wall. For example connecting the YELLOW wire to a picture of some PAGES, or a GREEN wire to some FINGERS. The trouble comes in knowing what word was meant to be shown by the image, while it was meant to represent fingers, it's clearly a picture of a hand. With a two minute time limit, there was an explosion every time. Or the lights were turned up. Same thing.

Rascals Announces The Crystal Maze Eastern Zone Mini Game

Here's a pleasant surprise for us at the blog, we've received a press release:

Rascals, the makers of The Crystal Maze Board Game and the Mr & Mrs Board Game, is pleased to announce the release of The Crystal Maze Eastern Zone Mini Game.

Fort Boyard PS4 released in UK tomorrow!

After a slight delay, Fort Boyard for Playstation 4 will be released in the UK tomorrow, Friday 5th July 2019. This is the closest to The Crystal Maze on the Playstation we will get yet. (Here's hoping for that one day). The game is already available to order on Amazon UK right now. My copy is arriving tomorrow. Very excited to see TCMs sister show on the Playstation for the first time ever.