Join the new world

Hello, and welcome to eUSA Who Wants to Be a Millionaire! Tonight, one smart contestant will have the opportunity to play for not 1 million, but now 1.5 million mills! In case you're new to this program, allow me to explain how all this works.

First thing's first I'm a realist. No, actually, first thing's first, I'll ask what is known as the Fastest Finger First question. (THIS WILL BE DONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS REPORT ON WEDNESDAYS AND SATURDAYS FROM NOW ON.) You'll be asked to put four answers in the correct order. You'll want to submit your answer in the form "BACD OK" for example. We'll tell you what to start with when creating your order. The person who posts the correct Fastest Finger response first will have the opportunity to play for 1.5 million mills!

Now you're probably asking: what's a mill? A mill is 1/1000 of some unit of currency. In our case, it's 1/1000 of a Q5 food unit. So, our contestant will be playing for a top prize of 1500 Q5 food units. If our contestant wins less than the top prize, the top prize for the next episode will increase to 2000 Q5 food units, sort of like a rolling jackpot. But for now, the top prize is 1500 Q5 food units. This is the money tree:

Question 11: M1,500,000 (1,500 Q5 food)
Question 10: M750,000 (750 Q5 food)
Question 09: M300,000 (300 Q5 food)
Question 08: M150,000 (150 Q5 food)
Question 07: M75,000 (75 Q5 food)
Question 06: M50,000 (50 Q5 food)
Question 05: M30,000 (30 Q5 food)
Question 04: M20,000 (20 Q5 food)
Question 03: M10,000 (10 Q5 food)
Question 02: M5,000 (5 Q5 food)
Question 01: M2,000 (2 Q5 food)

Allow me to explain this. Our lucky contestant will be 11 questions away from winning the top prize. Each question has four possible answers. Give the correct answer, move on to the next level. Give the wrong answer, you're out of the game. Questions 1 and 6 are safe havens. That means that after question 1, the player will leave with at least 2 Q5 food (if he answers questions 2-6 wrong, he'll drop down to 2 Q5 food). After question 6, ditto, but with 50 Q5 food guaranteed.

Now, we want the player to win a lot of food, so we'll give him three lifelines to help along the way. Switch the Question is self-explanatory; if you use it, we'll replace the question you're stuck on with one of equal difficulty but on a different subject, which will hopefully be better suited to your answerability. 50:50 will remove two of the four answers, leaving one wrong answer, and, of course, the correct one. The lifeline exclusive to the eRepublik edition of WWTBAM is People Speak, described in detail below.

The game will be played on the IRCs. The eUSA IRC channel will be where the contestant and I will log in to play the game, but we'll actually play the game via PM. Why? Because People Speak will use the #usa-chat channel as a springboard to get our contestant help on the question. Idlers will have 5 minutes to give the contestant any advice they can on the question via #usa-chat. Anyone who provides the correct answer on that channel will be awarded 10 Q5 food units regardless of whether the contestant himself goes with that answer or not, so be on the lookout for a contestant using the People Speak lifeline.

There's one thing I forgot to mention: we may want you to win, but we don't want you to cheat. To prevent this, we've established a time bank of 8 minutes for the whole game. If you run out of time, your game is over and you leave with whatever money you've won up to that point. The clock only runs when a question is in play, and it stops for lifelines.

Look for the Fastest Finger question in the WHPR today and good luck!