The host puts a question to two people who are represented to us as geeks. “How many different editions are there of Vogue magazine across the world. The closest answer wins.”
You would not expect a geek to know the answer. I vaguely knew that there were lots of them, and so presumably did the first geek. He offered ’10’ as his answer.
You are going second. You don’t know have a clue what the real answer is. Any real geek knows what to do. First, flip a coin: higher or lower. If it lands ‘Higher’, say ’11’. If ‘Lower’, say ‘9’.
I would have gone higher
, even knowing nothing, because there are a lot of countries and a lot of languages. But perhaps our second geek had a vague memory that it was lower. So he should have said 9. If there were, say, 4 editions he would have won, being closer. If there were 9 issues he would have won, still being closer.
So what did he say? 4! What kind of an answer is that? If the correct answer had been 8 or 9 his opponent would have won.
As it happens, the correct answer was 19 so his initial up/down decision was wrong anyway. But goodness, surely a geek knows how to play a game.