It is the French public’s favorite puzzle. Since its launch last year on France 2, “100% logic” has been an audience success each time it is broadcast. Last Saturday, against the France – Gibraltar match, the game presented by Cyril Féraud even achieved its best score with 3.56 million viewers (compared to 5.7 million for the sports match broadcast on TF1). The week before, by bringing together 3.5 million people, the program even beat “Star Academy” (3.2 million). This Saturday, for the last issue of this autumnal salvo, “100% Logic” has a good chance of once again disillusioning the telehook of the first channel. Its success is not an enigma: the game, adapted from the British format “The 1% Club”, allows viewers to play at the same time as the candidates on set. No need for great general knowledge, as the subtitle of the show reminds us, “the answer is under [nos] eyes “. You just need to use your sense of observation and deduction… Easy to say, some questions are particularly tricky. 20 minutes was interested in their development. Jérémie Atlan, director of entertainment at BBC Studios France which produces the program, gave some clues.
Who writes the questions?
The question writing team is a small committee. The show’s editor-in-chief, Marie-Hélène Brisson, works with two or three editors experienced in the particular turns of phrase and formulations that make the show stand out. “But the producer, the program coordinator or I can suggest questions,” indicates Jérémie Atlan. Once written, they are read, reread and reread again, notably by Cyril Féraud. »
Where do ideas come from?
To develop the questions, the team delved into puzzle books. “She will also see what is done in primary schools where we can find quizzes of this type. They take inspiration from them and complicate them – or not,” explains the entertainment director of BBC Studios France. Sometimes, a question can be inspired by a trivial, everyday occurrence. We are thus told the example of the producer who played with a tease (a game consisting of a checkerboard where you have to move the fifteen tiles to reconstruct an image or put the numbers back in order) and said to himself that it could serve as the basis for a question. “Once, I was in a traffic jam with colleagues and we were wondering which car should move first for the traffic jam to start clearing: we made it a question for the game,” says Jérémie Atlan. Some questions created by the BBC, which produces the original format in Britain, are translated or adapted. “But I forbid Marie-Hélène from delving into questions of general culture or going too far into the mathematical logic that the other versions are fond of. We want to have a wide spectrum of different logics per broadcast so that everyone, from children to grandparents, can play,” underlines our interlocutor.
How do you know if a question will receive 95% or 1% correct answers?
Once the questions are written, they are tested in three stages. The production works with the Kantar institute which first submits them, in groups of fifty, to a panel of 200 people. “They come back to us with an initial rate of correct answers. They are then sent to a panel of 1,000 people and returned to us with another correct response rate. Finally, they are offered to a panel of 2,000 people and come back with a third rate. This allows us to determine at what point in the game to ask each question. The results are quite close, for example, a question comes back with 45% correct answers on the first panel, 51% on the second and 48% on the third,” says Jérémie Atlan. And to clarify: “We never know, when we write them, nor when we send them, what percentage of people will respond well. Sometimes we imagine that a question is particularly daunting and that almost no one will have the answer and it comes back to us with 8% correct answers. » Most questions come back with a correct answer rate of between 35% and 70%, we are told. It is then necessary to simplify some of them and complicate others so that they match the questions with more than 85% or less than 10% correct answers. The task is arduous, it can take two weeks to refine them.
How many questions are planned per show?
“A maximum of thirty-eight questions are played on air per show,” says the entertainment director of BBC Studios France. Despite everything, production plans fifty, just to leave some margin in the event of a bug. “That never happened. During the very first filmings, there were sometimes technical problems but these never caused any problems for the candidates. »
What would happen if all the contestants answered a question wrong and ended up eliminated in the middle of the game?
“During filming, we get stressed every time a question is asked,” confides Jérémie Atlan. Accidents happen: we expect only two or three candidates to be eliminated and in reality we lose twenty at once. The risk is that we no longer have enough participants at any given time. But this scenario has never arisen and we don’t want it to arise. » The mechanics of the game make it possible to limit risks, particularly during the sequence where those who have stumbled on a question can benefit from a repechage with an additional question, or when, as the final approaches, those who remain in the race can pass their turn. But even without these safety nets, the nightmare so feared by production is unlikely to materialize. “The English tell us: “Trust the statistics”, trust the statistics: if you test and retest the questions, there are no flaws,” continues Jérémie Atlan. It makes…one hundred percent sense.