During the final question of Showdown this week, the display on my Playmaker went freaky in a way I've never seen before. It looked like it was scrolling rapid-fire through the Categories Round, over and over. While it accepted my answer on the Final, the display kept on fritzing and continued doing so after the game ended. Anyone else ever seen such a thing?

Very weird...! Many of us have had strange experiences with our Playmakers. Perhaps not as weird as your's, but nonetheless strange. Here are a few:

- About twenty or so of us were playing "SIX" at Friday's a number of years ago. All of us got every question wrong through the entire game, even when we all absolutely knew the correct answer.

- Not all that long ago at Buffalo Wild Wings another group of players would hit an easy answer immediately. One or two would get the 1,000 points, while everyone else all got exactly the same score. The scores they got were not anything close to 1,000. They were all something like 749. No one got the "Answer Now" warning. This happened a number of times during the game.

- Of course there is always the Playmaker mystery of a box that says it's 99% charged, that goes dead on you in 20 minutes.

There is a theory that some Playmakers may have some kind of ghost-like entity that dwells somewhere within them, that enjoys playing pranks on trivia players. If one believes the reports of World War II bomber crews about gremlins screwing up their aircraft, and causing inexplicable engine problems, perhaps there may be something to this theory.