Fans of Dropout’s ever-evolving game show/psychological experiment, Game Changer, can now test their humanity against the bizarre CAPTCHA challenge featured in the series’ most recent installment, “Beat the Buzzer.”
Game Changer host and semi-benevolent tormentor Sam Reich sought to separate the bots from the humans on X, where he shared a link to the minigame. An inoperable version of the episode’s titular buzzer sends players down a rabbit hole of 3×3 CAPTCHA grids that pose questions such as the objective “select all images where the sky is cyan” to the slightly more subjective “select all images where it is Sunday morning.” In typically Game Changer fashion, there is a tongue-in-cheek logic to even the more subjective presenting propositions. The “select all images containing zebras that are white with black stripes” particularly tripped up and frustrated fans, allowing them to replicate a small sliver of the equal parts maddening and amusing Game Changer guest experience in the comfort of their own homes.
Erika Ishii, who bested the CAPTCHA challenge in “Beat the Buzzer,” proudly bragged that they are not a robot when resharing Reich’s original post. Evidently, this is more than can be said about some who tried their hand online. However, those whose humanity prevailed in the irregular CAPTCHA – either of their own accord or by copying Ishii’s homework – were greeted with a working version of the Game Changer episode’s sacred buzzer.
In “Beat the Buzzer,” Ishii, Rekha Shankar, and Becca Scott were pitted against one another in a game of rudimentary trivia, with alley-oop questions such as “What is the main ingredient in guacamole?” and “What is the powerhouse of the cell?” The Game Changer twist came when the players had to track down buzzers hidden throughout the studio to answer, with some locked behind confounding puzzles and minigames such as the CAPTCHA one. While an added wrinkle could have emanated from the memory aspect introduced during the fetch quest period, the contestants ultimately respected the art of buzzer-hunting and offered assistance to the explorer, who returned to their podium victoriously.
The 8-bit Game Changer maze minigame featured in “Beat the Buzzer” was already released for fans to play online in a similar fashion after the episode “Deja Vu.” A version of this game first appeared in the game show’s Groundhog Day-esque time-loop episode but was repurposed in the Game Changer‘s most recent installment to incorporate the eponymous buzzer. Other tangible puzzles in “Beat the Buzzer” included checking out a library book entitled Press Me by Richard Buzzer, placing a phone order at Buzzer Pizza, sinking Aabria Iyengar’s Buzzer-ship, and assisting the witchy Persephone Valentine in her buzzer brew.
