As with most of the best gameshows on TV, the most memorable and popular ones are remarkably simple. On ITV, this is easy to see with Tipping Point, The Chase, and more recently the return of Deal Or No Deal.
Limitless Win is one of ITV’s more recent successes, but does feel a little more complex than your average game show to get the hang of. After the first series it felt to me like it was more polished, and simpler to follow, but perhaps that’s just an element of familiarity.
As it features Ant & Dec presenting, it was a near certainty that it would have huge appeal. Part of the show involves lifelines to make answering the questions easier for contestants, who have to give a numeric answer to each question in order to climb the limitless ladder.
The lifeline are:
The Four Lifelines
There’s a similarity with Who Wants To Be A Millionaire with the term lifelines, and like the show hosted over the years by Chris Tarrant and Jeremy Clarkson, they’re an important part of Limitless Win strategy too.
The first three have been in place since series one, with Take Two being added from the second series. Let’s take a look at each lifeline in more detail.
Odd Or Even Lifeline
Quite simply, when a contestant opts to use the odd or even clue, it’s revealed whether the exact answer to the question is an odd or even number.
This lifeline is great when they’re sure they’re close to knowing the precise answer, but want reassurance that they’re not one out.
It’s also helpful to use as a safety net to reduce the chances that they’ve guessed to high and are risking elimination from the game.
Range Lifeline
Playing this lifeline gives the contestants a maximum and a minimum number, so they know the exact answer falls somewhere within the range. For clarity, the range is inclusive, so if its a range of 10-20, that means the answer could be 10 or 20 or any whole number in between them.
This lifeline is probably best played when you truly have no clue about an answer and are running out of lifelines, because you don’t know how big the range you get will be. For that reason, it may not guarantee to put you in a position where you can be sure to avoid going out of the game.
More Than Lifeline
More Than is life the range lifeline with the maximum value removed. You simply know that the answer is bigger than the number provided.
This time it’s not inclusive, so if you get an 8 from playing the More Than lifeline, you know the answer is 9 or more.
Take Two Lifeline
The Take Two option was added in series two, and means Ant & Dec get to have a stab at answering the question after the contestants have given their answer.
Whoever provides the closest number to the exact answer without going over it will prevail, so if neither the players nor hosts have a clue what the answer is, Ant & Dec can be strategic with their guess to either reduce the chance that the players will lose a lot of lives, or go low to stop them being eliminated from guessing too high.
How Are Lifelines Earned?
Once the contestants answer at least one question correctly in the initial round to earn lives (five lives per question answered correctly), the limitless ladder is revealed, and the lifelines are placed on the board.
All contestants need to do is climb past a lifeline to activate them. They don’t need to land directly on them, simply climbing past that rung will suffice. They then become available for use from the next question.
The placements of the lifelines are said to be random, however they do seem to always have one or two landing low on the ladder, so their must be some weighting involved. As the ladder is theoretically infinite, if they were truly randomly placed, they’d more often than not be situated so high we’d never see them!
How Many Times Can Each Lifeline Be Used?
Each of the four lifelines is placed on the ladder in one location per game, so each pair of players can use them a maximum of once. Of course, there’s no guarantee that a given player will even reach the first lifeline, let alone all four, but more often than not they’ll climb high enough to at least unlock a couple.
More On Limitless Win
- How Many Episodes Of Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win Have There Been?
At the time of writing in January 2024, series three of Limitless Win was getting under way, scheduled to run on Saturday nights on ITV 1 up to the end of February. Earlier series were… Read more: How Many Episodes Of Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win Have There Been? - What Are The Lifelines On Limitless Win?As with most of the best gameshows on TV, the most memorable and popular ones are remarkably simple. On ITV, this is easy to see with Tipping Point, The Chase, and more recently the return… Read more: What Are The Lifelines On Limitless Win?
