Trick or cheat?

Old formulae are desperately re-worked in order to fill the endless hours of television time. (Did you know that the BBC broadcasts five hours of TV every hour, in this country alone?) The mathematician and code expert Simon Singh, whom I bumped into the other day, suggested I watch Beg, Borrow or Steal (BBC2, Tuesdays) because he felt it illustrated some interesting intellectual problems. It comes straight after The Weakest Link and is in many ways a knock-off, since participants not only need to know the answers, but are also encouraged to swindle each other.

There are five contestants. They are asked clutches of four questions, some moderately tough (‘Which is the fastest animal on two legs?’). Only people who get all four right win any money. If they don’t know all four, they can go off in a huddle with one or two others, and barter the correct answers. Or else cheat by giving the others wrong information (‘I think you’ll find that’s an emu’).