7 days in 'Saber y Ganar'

Over the years, my sentimental relationship as a viewer of the program has been sporadic and, above all, summery—due to its broadcast schedule, not very compatible with a typical workday—. But if 2020 has given us anything good, it has been time, and a good part of that recovered time I dedicated to watching the contest whenever I could, enjoying a television space that, as a viewer, immerses me in a kind of neuronal spa, through a cultural bubbling of slow cadence and always pleasant temperature.

Hooked again on the program and encouraged by my fondness for games in general and Trivial in particular, I began to warm to the idea of competing. One of the strange incentives to do so was to confirm that Juanjo Cardenal, the famous voice-over and symbol of the contest, really exists, whose interventions, always off-screen, seem to come from another dimension.

The Cuban poet José Martí said that "there are three things that every person should do during their life: plant a tree, have a child, and write a book." At 33 years old, I still have the tree, the child, and the book pending, but without a doubt one of the stellar moments of my life has been participating in the mythical program created by Sergi Schaaff and presented by Jordi Hurtado.

Hooked again on the program and encouraged by my fondness for games in general and Trivial in particular, I began to warm to the idea of competing

After two previous forays as a television contestant (inThe Great Dictationand inCatch Me If You Can, both on TV3) gratifying from a recreational point of view but totally unfruitful financially, as I didn't win any prize, this new attempt was the definitive rematch in the most difficult contest, in an insane gamble for the epic.

Once the online form to participate in the program was filled out, events accelerated. A few hours later, I received a call from an unknown number and, already thinking about how to reject the unrejectable mobile phone offer they were going to propose, the afternoon suddenly lit up, upon discovering that, on the other end of the line was not "Samanta, from Vodafone", but "Marisa, from Saber y Ganar".

The call was divided into two differentiated acts: a personal interview and a knowledge test that would determine my aptitude to compete. Marisa warned me that the questions would be formulated without options, but that I could ask for them if I was not able to give the correct answer at first. The contest, in a way, had begun.

The first question made me seriously reconsider if all of that had been a good idea, since before the question "What river flows through Warsaw?" my brain's search engine yielded no results. Upon requesting options and reducing the possibilities to Vistula, Oder, or Moldova, I intuitively opted for the first one and that initial success gave me some breathing room.

Over 20 minutes, open-ended questions like "Titles of Dostoevsky's works" followed, along with closed ones like "Who was the creator of greguerías?". A varied telephone test crowned by a mental calculation test. At the end of the interrogation, the correct answers outnumbered the mistakes in a sufficient proportion to be classified as "apt", which officially made me a future contestant, on a date yet to be confirmed, theoretically around April. But the initial plan was altered and the recording date was moved up to February 17, so the time available before the contest was reduced from four months to less than one.

How to prepare for a contest like Saber y Ganar?

The answer is complicated.

During those weeks, I reviewed all kinds of lists: from Nobel Prizes to Academy Award winners, passing through the Kings of Spain or the venues of the Olympic Games. At night, Ramón y Cajal, Robert De Niro, and Carlos IV ran the 100-meter dash in Helsinki'52, creating encyclopedic traffic jams of unconnected data in my head.

In a contest like Saber y Ganar, whose difficulty I would rate as extreme, you never know what to expect. So, in the days leading up to the recording, I opted to focus on the world's capitals, a great classic of quiz games. I wanted to feel secure in at least that category and reached the acceptable point of only hesitating with some capital in the Caribbean Sea or Oceania.

Nauru, Yaren. Dominica, Roseau. Tuvalu, Funafuti.

I was ready.

But no capitals came up.

Although one of the few geography questions I had to answer during my time on the show deserves to be remembered. Once the category of the question was announced, Jordi Hurtado specified that it would be about Chad, and "N'Djamena," its capital, immediately lit up in my head like a big neon sign. I was eager to show that I had done my homework, but Juanjo Cardenal's deep voice began to formulate the question and, in fractions of a second, I realized that the effort invested in reviewing the world's capitals had been in vain.

The question to be solved was: "What is the most famous mountain range in this country?"

Knocked out by the question and unable to give a sensible answer, my response time ran out and the rebound went to Jorge, one of my rivals, who, without hesitation and looking directly at the camera, replied: "Tibesti."

In a contest like Saber y Ganar, whose difficulty I would rate as extreme, you never know what to expect

Thanks to answers like "Tibesti," the man from ZaragozaJorge Sanz has managed to stay in the contest for 38 programs, far exceeding the category of Magnífico(a rank granted by the program to all contestants who reach 7,000 euros in prizes) and showing off in each intervention a wardrobe of knowledge capable of providing the most unexpected data.

The third contestant's lectern was occupied by another familiar face: David Díaz, with 113 programs behind him when I landed on the show. Yes, 113.

David is one of the "final bosses" of TV contests, a walking encyclopedia who works as a technician at the Tax Agency, but dedicates his free time to mercilessly crushing his rivals on television sets. His brilliant career in Saber y Ganar already allowed him to be a Magnífico and become a Centenario (an honor reserved for the very few contestants in the history of the program who have reached 100 consecutive programs, the limit set by the contest's management).

But David's return to the Saber y Ganar set has an explanation: his victory earlier this year in the special editions of Magníficos earned him the prestigious title of Súper Magnífico; and what's even better: the right to re-enter as a contestant in the daily edition.

David is one of the "final bosses" of TV contests, a walking encyclopedia who works as a technician at the Tax Agency

As an updated fact: David is still on the program and has already reached 130 editions, firmly presenting his candidacy to enter the Olympus of the Bicentennials, in which for now reigns the "triumvirate" of contestants formed by Óscar Díaz, Manolo Romero, and Víctor Castro.

Jorge and David. David and Jorge. Very tough rivals against whom I had to face throughout seven programs that I will loop for my grandchildren. Saber y Ganar is a difficult contest, very difficult even, but that is precisely the charm.

Competing on TV has something of fiction, like a pleasant limbo away from the earthly world, which for a few moments reduces life's worries to a game of questions and answers. It is a space with its own rules, in which the gap between the moment of recording and that of broadcast entails a confidentiality agreement that contestants must respect, to avoid spoilers and respect the tension of the televised present.

Contest segments like La parte por el todo, La calculadora humana, or El Reto are great classics of television history, and the indefatigable presence of Jordi Hurtado at the helm of the program has been part of the country's sentimental landscape of after-dinner hours for decades.

The indefatigable presence of Jordi Hurtado at the helm of the program has been part of the country's sentimental landscape of after-dinner hours for decades

The presenter and soul of the contest, object of endless jokes about his eternal youth, is a prodigy of energy and charisma who fills the screen with her inexhaustible interpretive resources. About to complete 25 years presenting the contest, his pact with joy in each of the programs is a glorious exception in a time defined by the rapid obsolescence of television formats.

The formula for the success of Saber y Ganar is an non-negotiable commitment to culture in all its forms and fidelity to its origins. Here there are no artifices, wildcards, or millionaire prizes. The goal is to answer correctly, one question after another until the end, almost for the love of art.

If one day television definitively turns off to make way for other screens, let it do so with a Saber y Ganar program. We will come out winning.