Hello all,

Several years ago on the UK’s ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ a tennis question became famous. In a set of singles what is the theoretical least number of times you can strike the ball to win the set (without retirements, point penalties etc.)



The person in the chair said 24 and, as they thought it was the correct answer, his money doubled from £16,000 to £32,000. He was also allowed to continue and won £128,000. There was a massive public response saying the answer was 12 as he could win the other points through double faults.



This however is still not the correct answer. What is the correct answer and how can this be done?

Looking forward for your answers :shrug:

Man I wish my brain could handle this right now!! :lol:

You might have to give me until morning to think about this one! :D

Hey by the way and welcome to the board :ok:

Thanks Trisco :D

Id say zero .
Every time you throw up the ball to serve, a strong gust of wind just happens to catch it and land it in the opposite court for an ace. It happens so fast that noone even notices . :wacko:

Sorry, Ill have another go at this when Im not so tired :unsure:

Well I guess you could foot fault all your serves before striking the ball and then if your opponent double faulted all the way through it could get to 6-6 (in theory) without you having hit the ball once legally and then in the tiebreak it could get to 6-5 through double faults (with yours still being foot faults) so your serve would be next. Then you could hit an ace and win the set.


So my answer is once, although is a foot faul legally striking the ball??

wow! That would be a hell of a set to sit through.

ermmm hang on..

they serve double faults and you serve clean winners.. umm 24 isn't it??

15, 30, 40, game - 4 strikes

6 games to a set

24 strikes

Well if your opponent just served double faults then all you had to do was ace you would just need to win three of your own service games so that would be 12 shots.

But chappy said that isn't the right answer, that's why I went with my ludicrous stab in the dark with the foot fault answer..... it's a toughie that's for sure.

Sun, have you come on this board to torture us? ;) We are fragile as the recent events showed.

12 it is unless a bird grabs the ball when you are about to strike it and drops it on the other side of the net. Watch the Hawk! not the lines!

This is going to drive me MAD !!

Just got this from the tennis rules section on the BBC.

So technically my scenario above is correct as the foot fault is called "before the ball is struck". So you only have to strike the ball legally once to win the set.

The question is in the theoretical sense,how many time YOU as a player can strike that ball minimally in a set to win it. And by my logic which seems to be along the lines of Lex, it is 24. 12 aces or unreturnables and 12 winning returns or shots that dont come back.

24 :shrug:

But in the original post the guy has said he is not looking for 24 or 12 (4 aces each time from youand your opponent always double faults), so I can't see what it can be, unless my rather ludicrous foot fault theory is correct, but there is probably another perfectly simply answer we are all overlooking. :wacko:

I think your answer is correct Gav. Now I understand why you have been promoted to mod, unlike us simple mortals who get everything wrong. ;)

ps - needed a bit of editing.

:D :D Well I have green blood like Spock. I still think we are overlooking something more obvious and simple and sunar4e will come up with an answer that will leave us all :doh: :doh:

yes. Or else, sun vini, vidi and we losi!

The question is does he know the answer himself?

I guess the foot-fault scenario is possible, but that seems like a stretch and it could be intrepreted to fall under the "without retirements, point penalties etc." exclusion.

Unless I'm missing something obscure, I think 12 really is the best answer, if you have an opponent who can't get a single serve or return-of-serve in play.

BTW, did anyone see Sport Mastermind yesterday? One of the topics was Professional Israeli tennis - I got about 5 right...

Professional Israeli tennis???? :unsure: My word that is a very specialist subject!

Anyway sunar4e where are you with the answer? Why do you torture us so? :wacko: :wacko: :wacko: :P

Hi guys,

Gav has got the right answer which is 1 strike - well done! :clap:
Very good reasoning but you can't foot fault unless you strike the ball, the fault without hitting the ball is by swinging at it and missing completely which is a fault. :runs:

Yeah - it was a rather bizarre topic but a few of the questions were quite easy.

Ahhh I see.... so I was close....but no cigar.

So essentially for that set to happen we need a tennis player with poor sight or for it to be a very very windy day. :)

Hmmm . . . I guess that works, but if you can't even manage to hit your own service toss in 58 tries, you might want to take up a different hobby.

Before anyone quibbles with my number of 58, I was thinking that was the number of whiffs you'd have to have to get to 6-6 and 5-5 in the tiebreaker, without successfully striking the ball on a serve attempt. But I realized after posting, that it's possible you could get your one successful serve in earlier in the tiebreak and win 7-4, with one fewer serve overall. So it's possible you'd only have to whiff it 56 times.

:phew: Glad I got that straight. :D