The furore stirred up by Network Ten's ill-advised and sexist questions on Wednesday night's Family Feud is just the latest chapter in the rich history of infamous, embarrassing and just plain dumb moments produced by game shows over the past 60 or years.
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There seems something uniquely calculated about the genre to produce these talked-about incidents in super-abundance.
Maybe it's the relentless pressure of producing often several hours of content each week or perhaps it's the simple fact that ordinary folk do the darndest things when stuck in front of TV cameras.
Here's our pick some of the classics of the genre from more than 60 years.
Family Feud
One of the longest-running gameshow formats, Family Feud occasionally turns up contestants that make you fear for the future of humanity. So it is here with a dumb and dumber father and son team who believe "frog" and "alligator" are three-letter words. Host Richard Dawson is left almost speechless.
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Wheel of Fortune
Sure, TV studios are alien places to most people. Add to that the exciting possibility of winning big and you could almost forgive some of the answers that spring from contestants' lips. But how to explain the young woman who asked for a "K" on Wheel of Fortune when presented with the impenetrable clue "E_CLUSI_E NIGHTCLUB"?
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Deal or No Deal
It's fun to see people win big on but most of us would admit if pressed that there is also much fun to be had from the schadenfreude generated by the spectacular fails. And for a demonstration of sheer, world-class mendacity it'd be hard to go past this effort from one Richie Bell. Richie could have trousered $600,000 but knocked it back. Then $400,000 was on offer, which was still not enough for our Richie. Yup, you guessed it, he went home with barely enough for a single scratchie (although, he'd almost certainly lose on that as well).
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The Newly Wed Game
"What's the one thing you would hate to hear your wife say about your last girlfriend on coast-to-coast television?" asks host Bob Eubanks in this classic, long-running show.
The sign held by the wife read: "She is a hooker".
Don't you just hate it when that happens?
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Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
John Carpenter is known as the first bloke to crack the million on the US version of the show when he correctly answered that Richard Nixon had appeared on the TV series Laugh-In. What is particularly impressive is the cool/irritating way in which he pulls off his feat in 1998.
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Jeopardy!
What is a tool that is synonymous with "an immoral pleasure seeker". The correct answer is, or course, "rake". What popped out of Ken Jennings' mouth on the 2004 episode of Jeopardy! was the word "ho", which, frankly was a pretty good guess. What makes it all the more amusing is the evident outrage on the face of host Alex Trebek.
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Wheel of Fortune
Look at this phrase S_LF-PO_T___T. You might hazard a guess that the answer is "Self-portrait" – and you'd be right. Contestant Lolita, in one of the all-time strangest answers on Wheel, opts for "Self-potato". We don't need to tell you that there never has and never will be a thing called a self-potato.
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Family Feud
Just occasionally, the humble game show can provide a revealing insight into the psyche of contestants, as this clip so disturbingly demonstrates. Challenged by host Steve Harvey to name something a burglar would not want to see on breaking into a house, contestant Rod, without pausing for a millisecond screams, "Naked grandma!", fatally forgetting that he's on national TV, not his therapist's couch.
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