The Hot Seat curse refers to a superstition on the Millionaire Hot Seat show in Australia. Every time that a contestant gets to the million dollar question, they answer it incorrectly and plummet AU$249,000, leaving them with only a measly AU$1,000, even if that particular contestant knows the correct answer (in Jeff Tarr's case). The curse is made even harder to break by the factors of contestants not having the option to walk away, so if they flunk out, they flunk out, and that they also have a strict, tight time limit to answer the question, which, if it runs out, will cause the contestant to flunk out, having the same effect as an incorrect answer, resulting in the contestant losing prize money anyway.
It wasn't until the August 29, 2016 edition of Hot Seat when South Australian man Edwin Daly finally won the AU$1,000,000 prize by answering the million dollar question correctly about Banjo Paterson, ending the curse. However, since then, only Antony McManus has since been able to repeat this achievement. On October 1, 2018, the Hot Seat curse claimed another victim, as Craig Anderson answered his AU$1,000,000 question incorrectly.