Here's an actual case where understanding computer science would have been immensely helpful...

> The motivation for this aberrant behavior was a contest put on by a local radio station. Each day a disk jockey would read a serial number aloud on the air, and if any listener was able to produce the matching dollar bill they would win $30,000. Michael reasoned that 100,000 one dollar bills was 100,000 opportunities to win the prize, giving him a statistical advantage. And even if his scheme proved fruitless he would just redeposit his money, so he figured he had nothing to lose.

> Michael and Teresa spent each day rifling through piles of cash looking for matches, pausing only for such distractions as eating, bathing, and excreting. They soon realized that it was impossible for two people to examine that much money in the allotted time

(sort then binary search)

It's a triumph of regulation that he got his money. It would have been very natural for CBS to cite technical difficulties or find some other way to change the rules of the game, but US game shows in this era were terrified of the FCC, who were given strong powers to enforce fairness in game shows after some frauds in the 50s [0].

Those laws are still on the books, of course, but I expect game show producers have got better at working around them in the small print, while regulators haven't kept up.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950s_quiz_show_scandals

It is hilarious how much effort some poeple will go to to make money through scams when they could spend the effort doing something sustainable. Or at least once you get away with one scam, use it for actual business, don't blow it on testing your luck again and again!

Highly recommend at least skimming the full episode.

https://youtu.be/WltjaxiowW4?si=KkVJPy_e7ALQulE-

I imagine there was a mechanical, rotating drum with metal contacts to "randomly" trip the scoreboard. There would have been 5 such patterns on the drum. I even imagine a human was operating the drum, choosing among the five possible patterns.

I could be wrong but this was early in the era of popular computing — and interfacing with high-current lamp circuits would have been a challenge for most. The other compelling reason to believe it was mechanical is that having only 5 patterns seems really lame if there was software driving it.

Why only 16 of the possible 18 tiles would ever have the Whammy, I have no speculation.