From TES issue 53 (September 2008)

Series 1/2. Level 1.
SIMPLE STARTERS

In series 1, it was common practice to start off each quest with a simple little puzzle in the grey room with four doors, which I’m sure you all know well. The aim of the puzzle was inevitably to open one of the doors, or to discern which door to take, thus ensuring further progress. This was undoubtedly designed to ease the team into their quest with an easy task that was not at all taxing, although judging by the amount of time it took David and his friends to get to grips with their simple starter, this may have been a slight miscalculation. Still, seeing as this was the very first Dungeon room in the very first episode of Knightmare, we mustn’t judge David and friends too harshly.
Both David and Maeve had the task of walking on letters to create a word that would open one of the doors, which they both did during the course of the first episode. Consequently, the challenge of walking on letters did not appear again in Knightmare after the very first episode, at least until Ben attempted the Great Causeway in the later part of series 6. David’s word was OPEN; Maeve’s was SESAME. The next dungeoneer, Simon, had to unite three parts of a golden key, which then opened one of the doors, while Danny’s team had the unique experience of choosing between the four doors by means of one of Folly’s cryptic riddles.
Helen had a very similar task to Simon’s, except the key was not even broken up into pieces this time – one simple step and the door opened! Conversely, Richard had a couple of jobs to do as his simple starter, first by bridging the pit with a metal grille in a different room, then by choosing a symbol to unlock one of the doors in the more traditional starting chamber. This scene featured the first appearance of a Fire Exit, which the team obviously did not want to take. The choice they had was between a simple lock-and-key, the symbol of a bomb and the symbol of a chalice. They chose the chalice, as Treguard told them to look for a sign symbolic of a true quest – the Holy Grail, obviously.

The simple starters made a brief return in series 2, although they were not used with such ruthless regularity, as the programme became more varied in its content and style. The first dungeoneer of the series, Martin, had to choose between the four doors in the traditional starting chamber, using a clue from Folly to follow Gretel through one of the doors. The second dungeoneer, Claire, also had a choice to make in this room, between the symbols of a skull, an eye, a knight from a chess set, and a Fire Exit. Sensibly, the team chose the knight, although the door did not lead on to Combat Chess, as one might have expected it to.

Here the simple starters pretty much stopped, and the starting chamber became dark blue for the rest of the series, even cropping up in level two on occasion. Akash, Neil, Julian and Anthony all entered the blue starting chamber quite early in level one and had to make a choice about which door to take, which invariably involved avoiding the Fire Exit, but it was a far cry from those nice little puzzles in series 1, which could even be seen as a precursor to puzzles such as the causeways and the rune lock.

Difficulty: 3 Simple starters were simple, on the whole.
Killer Instinct: 0 They would never allow a quest to end this early!
Gore Factor: 0 A simple life force job, I’m sure.
Fairness: 10 A nice little puzzle to ease the team into the quest – nothing to complain about here.

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