I haad a problem submitting parts 2-11. I kept getting an error message, so I'm going to put all the parts in a blogpost and llnk to it. Sorry I'm on it.

http://www.poe-news.com/forums/sp.php?pi=1002351835

Links to all 11 parts, plus a link to the episode of THIS AMERICAN LIFE that inspired me to hunt this down.

I heard about this guy on This American Life. Great story.

Any gameshow with a code to be cracked probably deserves to be.

The unwelcome thief of "Press Your Luck" ... you don't want to meet that guy.

Owned. Ownage.

The Game Show Network version is unbelievably thorough. Go to This American Life if you just want the basic the basic story.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/mil lion-dollar-idea

You know, it's true, throat cancer is the ultimate whammy.

He really did press his luck, didn't he? Having hit the jackpot once, he kept trying to hit it again. In the meantime, I'll bet he never did get to a doctor about that problem with his voice.

That radio station contest that wound up costing him so much? That sounds pretty fishy to me. If the idea is to get people to tune in, you can do that just as well without giving out a real serial number that you know to be in circulation in your listening area. After all, once somebody has won the 30 thousand, the incentive for people to tune in is gone. I'd love to go back and see if anybody actually won that. I'd be surprised if anyone had.

Quite a few years ago I remember hearing about something similar happening here in Canada. One lottery had switched from the usual balls to a computer's randomized numbers. One guy had warned the people in charge that a computer's numbers aren't truly random and could be predicted. They dismissed him and said predicting the numbers would be impossible.

So he went out and predicted the winning numbers, won a bunch of money and they withheld it from him. I wish I could find a story on it, however any search terms I try and enter into google just give me websites that try to sell bogus lottery prediction software.

These stars are for the ridiculous Titanic/Iceberg analogy.

That was oddly fascinating. Thanks for posting it!

And poetv's icecream truck week continues...

I had just been watching a documentary on Albert Fish from A and E, and it started out with ten minutes of stupid filler about Dracula and the Wolfman and Elizabeth Bathory and anything else they could drag in. Pure nonsense. It's quite a contrast to see a documentary on a fascinating, obscure subject filled with detailed information... FROM THE GAME SHOW NETWORK! Of course, they had all that archived footage, so it's not like they had to do much digging.

I'd like to see some more of that final interview, the one where his throat was fucked up. This is the only recorded instance of Larson talking about how he figured out the board.

This is fascinating and all, but is it really necessary to like, crucify the guy for being smart enough to crack a really faulty system implemented on a game show?

I mean, fuck. They go so out of their way to paint this black, grim, satanic picture of the guy and all he did was screw the network out of 100k. As if they wouldn't make that money back or something.

These are for Janie's sweet frustration at trying to overcome a ,000 deficit with 2 spins and for the description of death from throat cancer as "The Ultimate Whammy".