Question and Answer

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 471, 2 July 1948, Page 11

Question and Answer

NE of the refinements of civilisation which radio has procured for us is the ability to participate in games without playing them. I am not thinking this time of the football commentary which blares through the house of a Saturday afternoon for the benefit of someone digging in the back garden. I am thinking of the old parlour game "Animal, Vegetable and Mineral," which through the compére, we can now play in absentia. Twenty-one and Out appeals to me particularly because we know all the answers (having been previously informed by "the Mystery Voice.") So it’s better than an ordinary quiz where we don’t always know the answers; and better than a Brains Trust where at times nobody knows the answer. In the latter category our local panel, 3ZB’s Let’s Be Frank, seems to specialise in the unanswerable. "What is the cure for Communism?" and Where is civilisation leading us?" are two of their recent questions- proverbial came!s which the BBC Brains Trust has learnt to put neatly on one side, but which our panel swallows whole. The trouble of course is that these question-and-answer games, like so many sports today, are played by experts, and all the rest of us are merely onlookers, We send in the questions. But in Twentyone and Out we send in the answer and the experts ask the questions.