Dan DeLisio Wins $250,000 on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”
Who Wants to be a Millionaire‘s nearly unprecedented run of six-figure wins this season continued this week in a big way. Dan DeLisio from Monaca, PA, won $250,000 on Friday’s edition. Dan is the third winner of the quarter million dollar prize this season. Dan, a Judicial Staff Attorney with the PA Supreme Court, walked away after seeing his $500,000 question. He joins Andrew Tyler and Ron Freshour in this year’s quarter-millionaire’s club.
Dan DeLisio finished round one with $56,600 and entered Classic Millionaire with one Jump. After Jumping over his $100,000 question Dan faced this quarter million dollar question.
The famous portrait of a pointing Uncle Sam was originally a magazine cover with the title, “What Are You Doing For” what?
A: Solidarity
B: Preparedness
C: Righteousness
D: Civility
Dan risked dropping to $25,000 and answered correctly with B, Preparedness. Dan then walked away on this $500,000 question.
Eagle-eyed viewers of Gone with the Wind will notice all but which of the following anachronisms in the film?
A: Radio tower
B: Electric streetlight
C: Electric lamp
D: Telephone booth
Photo courtesy Valleycrest Productions Ltd.
Unsure and not wanting to lose $225,000 on a wrong answer, Dan took home his $250,000. The correct answer was D. Congratulations to Dan on his big $250,000 win.
Again, Dan is already the third $250,000 winner and we’re not even halfway through the season yet. It seems every week, give or take one or two, there’s at least $100,000 won. With several more months left in the season are we going to have another $250,000 winner? Or, better yet, could we finally reach the elusive million dollar question? Keep watching to find out. Again, congratulations to Dan.
Photo courtesy Valleycrest Productions Ltd.
Until someone actually wins $500,000, what’s the point of reporting this? It’s a non-story considering how much it’s already happened this season. It’s only $250,000.
Out of the blind I thought the answer was D for the half million dollar question. It’s a type of question where you have to think which one is different from the West, and “Telephone Booth” is a little later in time than the other three.
I would have been right for $500K. The telephone wasn’t invented until 1876. ‘GWTW’ takes place around 1864-1865, ending with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’, where the great Atlanta fire happened.
As great as his win was, I just wish someone would go for the $500,000 already. Both the guy who just won the quarter million and the first guy to win it this season both reasoned out the $500,000 question but didn’t want to risk $225,000 by going for it. It is perfectly understandable why both of them walked since $250,000 is life changing money but still I just want to see a million dollar question already. Hopefully the next time someone wins $250,000 there’s at least enough time left for an audience member to face the million dollar question.
I can’t blame people for not wanting to risk 225K though
At least this show isn’t Americanized, unlike everything else like Minute to Win It, Million Dollar Money Drop, and Who’s Still Standing.
This is just my own opinion, but maybe part of the problem of why no one has even attempted the $500,000 question is that you have to risk $225,000 to answer that question in the first place. Maybe there would be people willing to answer the $500,000 question if they didn’t have to risk as much money.
Truth be told, I think the best solution is to replace the contestant’s $25,000 guarantee with their original bank from round 1. Say you had a bank of $56,600 (like Dan did) the $100,000 question would add $43,400 to make the $100,000. Answering the $250,000 would add $150,000 onto the $100,000, but answering wrong would only risk the $43,400 because the bank would stay at $56,600.
Using Dan’s game as an example, instead of risking $225,000 to answer the question, he’d only have to risk $193,400 because the $56,600 from his 1st round would be his to keep regardless of the rest of his game. It doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but maybe it would be enough to convince some future contestants to actually try and win $500,000 instead of being risk-adverse.
That is a great idea! And I bet that would work!
But regardless, congrats Dan on the great win and for Millionaire for having an awesome season! Now please don’t crash and burn in January or the second half of the season!
Someone winning six-figures on Millionaire is always newsworthy because we never know if it will happen for a while. Frankly, it’s just nice to see people making it into Classic Millionaire with lifelines again. This guy and the one lady who missed the Variety question were probably the two best chances we had of seeing a million dollar question.
This thread is really funny and a bit shocking. I’m glad to know that if any of you get on Millionaire that if you win $250K, which is the biggest regular non-going-through-special-hoops prizes anyone can win on any game show in America today, that it’s not worth covering. Also that if you get there to this point that you’re going to go for it because, “It’s only $250,000.” I mean what’s a quarter of a million dollars, anyway?
There’s really nothing wrong with the format. The monetary gamble is fine and there’s no reason to complicate it. Let’s be honest: the only person that has outright known the $500K question in like 7 or 8 years, before the clock, was Lyn Payne. Ogi Ogas took a complete guess based solely on the psychology of the writers, for the same monetary gamble, and won. The game is insanely hard as it should be for these giant sums of money. Over half the people who won $250K would have gotten the $500K question right. They just need an Ogi who is willing to gamble. Until then, I’m not complaining when someone wins $250K. It’s an ungodly amount of money and unbelievably exciting to see.
But (and this is just me) it’s NOT exciting to see a $250,000 win anymore because it’s already happened quite a bit this season. When it happens once in a while, it is exciting, but when it happens 3 times in 3 months, it becomes common-place and the new normal. It’s time for someone to have a spine and actually answer the $500,000 question (for better or for worse.) It will be exciting when anyone is actually willing to try and answer it. And it will be exciting to see them be right and win $500,000 or be wrong because they at least had guts and they would have my respect for answering the question.
In summary, I think (and it’s sad to say) that there will never be another $500,000 winner, not because of lack of knowledge, but because of lack of confidence. I hope to be proven wrong this season, but I can’t see it happening.
and when it happened much less, everyone was up in arms because it didn’t happen enough.
The prize structure and game rules are just fine, once again, this comes down to poor writing. This is a typical high-dollar WWTBAM question in the syndicated series.
Here we have a question that is not about knowing a trivial piece of knowledge, we have a question that asks the player to fully know three things while spotting something the writers just made up all on their own.
This isn’t about knowing what existed in the time period in which the story is set, it is about trying to figure out what made it into a shot of a movie by accident, and all four are entirely possible.
My GUESS would’ve been phone booth simply because that would be really difficult for a director not to notice creeping into a shot, while the others would simply be things so much in the background they would be very likely to be missed by a director. Sort of like when you see contrails in a period movie because a scene was shot outdoors and happened to have the bad luck of a jet flying around miles away and miles high in the sky. However, I would not have “gone for it” either.
I would always “go for it” on the $100K question if I can eliminate two answers, but still have to gamble. If I would happen to jump the $100K question, I would approach the game the same way.