A good friend of mine from abroad recently came to my hometown in Dublin, so of course we were gonna get together. He told me the hotel and room number to where he was staying so we arranged a time, so I went to go and meet him.

I arrived at the hotel and got into an elevator, the doors closed, and I pressed the number three button for to go to the third floor as obviously enough my friend's room is on the third floor. A large mirror panel to my left within the elevator seemed to alter just as soon as those doors did close. This mirror soon no longer showed my reflection and the elevator quickly darkened.

My reflection was replaced by the appearance of a man, a man I did not recognize and not only that, but he held a microphone in his right hand. It had appeared that this mirror doubled as some sort of a television screen. I thought this was strange as no one is going to be in an elevator long enough to watch any sort of television programming. Anyway, it appeared that a game show was about to begin and this man I had seen was the host.

'Time now to introduce our next contestant on the elevator game show' spoke this man.

An elevator game show, I thought that this was even stranger than just having a television in a lift. He started to introduce the next contestant by describing that person.

'A thirty-four-year-old chef from Dublin, Ireland'.

I am thirty-four. I am from Dublin. This elevator game show host then announced my name, I thought 'no this is too weird, surely he can't mean me'.

He then continued 'you pressed floor number three, so you have three rounds in which to beat the elevator game so let's go to floor number one'.

I had pressed three, this is too weird. The lift began to move making its way up to the first floor.

'Your first game is a maze, you have five minutes to get to the center of the maze, if you succeed, you will win ten Euro for each remaining second on the clock.'

The door opened and on front of me ... instead of seeing a regular hotel corridor with doors and room numbers, I could see there was a giant size maze. I must be dreaming, there is a giant maze on the first floor of this hotel I was in or rather a giant maze replaced the first floor of the hotel I had entered.

'You better hurry, the clock is ticking.'

What could I do but play this game? So, as mad as it seemed, off I went. Right, right, left, straight, left, crap ... dead end. Thirty seconds had passed. Back, right, left, right, with many timers located at various points around me I could see that time just seemed to tick by ever so quickly.

Twenty-five seconds left, I went right again and down the end of that walkway was a lift, was this the lift I got out of? No, it had a sign over it which reads 'center of the maze'. Eighteen seconds left so I moved quickly got to the lift, twelve seconds left when I pressed the button to open the lift and the surrounding clocks stopped with ten seconds remaining. The elevator in front of me opened, what else was there for me to other than to get in.

'Congratulations, ten seconds left therefore at ten euro a second you win ... one hundred Euros, now to floor number two for your second game.'

The elevator moved up a floor, the door opened and in front of me there were three boxes, each being numbered from one to three.

'Now' said the game show host, 'an easy game, in each box there is an envelope, each envelope will contain a letter, one reads - game over - choose that and your game is simply over, another reads continue game, with that the game simply moves on, and in the other 'continue and double winnings', all you have to do is pick a box.'

I choose box two, now I have never considered myself to be in any way lucky though when I opened the box I choose, the envelope inside read continue and double winnings.

'Excellent, you now have two hundred Euros, time for the third and final round.'

The elevator moved up to the third floor though once it did, the doors did not open, instead on the mirror which doubled as a television screen, appeared small, squared boxes encapsulated in one larger box square. Some of these small boxes where blank and in others there were numbers.

'Simply complete this Sudoku game within six minutes and you are a winner.'

The clock started. Sudoku, huh, I like Sudoku, it was a touch screen game, I began but it wasn't as easy as I thought it may be and like earlier time seemed to pass very quickly. Into the last minute and I still had quite a bit to do but once I found a number which had me puzzled it was more or less fill in the blanks from there. I completed it with only eight seconds to go.

'Eight seconds left on the clock and your Sudoku is completed and correct. One hundred Euros per second remaining, with your previous rounds you win one thousand Euro in total. Thank you for playing the elevator game show.'

The elevator opened on the third floor of the hotel, and I got out. It had taken me nearly fifteen minutes to play the game but according to my watch only a few seconds had passed. An envelope lay on the ground outside the lift. I looked around for a moment or two then picked up this envelope. It had exactly one thousand Euro inside, all crisp fifty-euro notes. My winnings, I guess.

I met up with my friend and off we went but when we got back to the lift, I thought I'd take the stairs down though he took the elevator, and when I got to the lobby, my friend had an envelope in his hand. I guess he had been the next contestant on THE ELEVATOR GAMESHOW...