That’s what you call a high flyer.
“Who wants to be a millionaire?” went into the next round on Monday evening – and one candidate managed to amaze moderator Günther Jauch (66) with his skills.
Candidate Konrad Krug has two job titles: he works as a mathematician and journalist. Jauch had stumbled across information in the description of his guessing fox: “I’m reading something about her that I’ve never come across before.” were able to write their Abitur thesis!”
Krug excelled in math – not so much in other subjects
Krug recognized his passion for calculations very early on, as he said: “It’s kind of a crazy hobby, mathematics. Sometime in fifth or sixth grade, I learned something about the Pythagorean theorem. That you can use it to calculate distances. I thought that was kind of great. That took me away.”
His math teacher had recognized his talent back then and had him solve eleventh grade problems. In the other subjects, it was rather mediocre. Krug revealed: “In everything else I wasn’t a very good student.” And not only that – Jauch revealed: “Let’s make it short: In the ninth grade you stayed seated.”
A mathematics teacher took the talented Berliner under his wing
Nevertheless, the student passed his math exam in the ninth grade. Jauch could hardly imagine how to deal with such a gifted child. He wanted to know from Krug’s mother Silke, who was sitting in the studio: “How is it as a mother? When a ten-year-old always calculates distances as a hobby?”
The candidate’s mother recalled: “He liked doing it and he was always happy to explain a lot to me. And if I didn’t get it, he always said: Mom, watch out!” A habit that Krug still hasn’t broken. He admitted, “I still do to this day.”
Despite his talent, Konrad Krug had to pass the 500,000 euro question – it was about geography. Jauch wanted to know: “The northernmost point of which federal state is furthest to the south? A: Saarland, B: Saxony, C: Baden-Württemberg, D: Bavaria?” Krug tried his telephone joker Jano Sobottka, who puzzled: “I would say the Saarland. But, that’s a 70 percent thing.” Krug groaned, “Yeah, me too. That sucks.”
He decided to play it safe and take home the previous profit of 125,000 euros: “That’s too hot for me.” He would have been wrong with his following tip “Baden-Württemberg”. The answer from his telephone joker was correct: the Saarland.
Konrad Krug still had the biggest win of the evening with his 125,000 euros: candidate Dominic Seefeld had to be satisfied with 64,000 euros, the postal worker Ulrike Gapp can continue to gamble with 16,000 euros so far next week.