Depending on your age, you may or may not remember the old game show Password. It ran from the early 60’s to the mid 70’s. Since I was 4 when it went off the air, I suspect my exposure to the game came in syndication. In any event, contestants were paired with a celebrity and were charged with the task of guessing the ‘password’ when given a series of one word clues. If you did well, you qualified for the ‘Lightning Round’ where $250 was up for grabs.
Though Password is no longer on the air, the modern day version of the game is alive and well. Instead of taking place in a studio, the game is now set in my living room. I play it daily on my laptop. These days there is a lot more on the line than $250. If I am able to guess the magic password I get to access my bank account, open my emails, retrieve my voicemail, read articles from online newspapers, pay bills, update my webpage, upload photos to my virtual album, participate in internet forums and write on my blog.
Before becoming a contestant, I naively thought the game would be easy to win. Granted, the degree of difficulty was increased with the addition of user names, but I had a master plan that should guarantee success. I’d pick a user name that would work in all situations. Because it’s unwise to have identical user names and passwords on everything, I’d select different passwords for each function and make sure my choice was logical to the task.
Unfortunately, my strategy fell to pieces. The game’s producers assumed I’d try to take the easy route by sticking to one user name. They decided to make things interesting by informing me my user name wasn’t available in several situations. That meant I had to select some randomly. I didn’t view that as a problem since my memory has traditionally been pretty good. In those situations, I’d try to be as logical with my user name as I was with my password. Trouble was, what seemed logical 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years ago, isn’t necessarily consistent with what seems logical today.
Now that I have been playing the game for a few years, my head is spinning. There are days when I hit the jackpot on the first try. Other days, I’m lucky if I guess one of the two correctly. There are no longer celebrities to help you when you get stuck. The producers want to keep the game fun, so they’ve created ways to give you hints. They’ll generously send you a hint via email. All you have to do is come up with the email account you indicated when you started playing the game. Hmmm, I have 4 to choose from. If that doesn’t help, perhaps you can remember the phone number that seemed logical to reference. Hmmmm, only 3 to choose from there. Unless I happened to sign up for this part of the game before my last move; that would add 3 more numbers into the equation. If phone numbers and emails won’t work for hints, perhaps you could use the name of your best friend. Let’s see, who was I speaking to at the time? Ugh.
I’m beginning to feel I no longer want to play the game anymore. Trouble is, once you are a contestant, you are pretty much stuck. To make matters worse, the game keeps getting bigger and more involved. Almost everyone I know is playing. Passwords and passcodes are showing up everywhere. I wonder if the producers would consider adding vacuum cleaners and washing machines to the game. Now those are some passwords I wouldn’t be upset to guess wrong.
