what if instead of celebrities. there were 2 teams of civillans playing;;.ala blockbusters--would it be more exciting? less exciting?
more difficolt?' less?

It's not a hypothetical; it aired on ABC as Junior Partner Pyramid, with parent/child teams. And it really, really didn't work, thanks in part to clues that made sense only to the two members of each team. Two related adults (as on Blockbusters) would have the same problem.

With two unrelated adults, who knows?

We put on a version of Pyramid last year at our school. As David said, it dosn't work due in part to inside info that the players use to get clues. Sure, it's funny when you get a box that says "Old Things" and a player says "Grandma Jane", but any other time just brings on a Whoosh effect.

"This is what we had for dinner at Aunt Martha's last night." "Pot roast!" <DING!>

And that is all you need to know about why it would be a horrible idea.

And if it's two strangers, it's just stupid. A bad contestant screws things up for everyone. (Yes, a bad celebrity does that too. You'll notice that Stewart had a go-to stable of regular celebrities, most of which were pretty good at the game.) Bad celebrities, you just don't invite back. You never know when a bad player is gonna come down the pike.

except for jamie farr


but i do see your point

See Poston, Tom.

They played a Pyramid-style mini-game on Supermarket Sweep late in that show's run, and it suffered the same problems. The teams used almost exclusively inside references.

Peter Lawford is an interesting example. In Pyramid's early years, he was a decent player, and was regarded as one of the best Password players as well. However, in 1979 he was washed up. Who knows why he was allowed to appear one week in '79 when he was either drunk, stoned, or both. In the one episode being traded around, Peter at first appears normal, but when he first speaks, his speech is noticeably slurred. During the gameplay, he gets hyper and can barely stay in his seat. He also got testy and frustrated when the player couldn't get the words on the first clues. Despite his inebriated state, he wasn't actually that bad of a player, although he didn't make it in the winner's circle.


I got an email from a contestant that was on that week, and she said the producers argued about whether to let him continue. One of the biggest issues, oddly enough was whether to allow him to appear without socks.

Then that's one of the few places where he didn't make it. Ba-da-bum.

Trouble is, "Pyramid" just can't get celebrities to play who are, indeed, celebrities. And even with lesser-knowns, they were briefing them beforehand, so the quality of play angle is shot.

Teams of strangers is the way to go. It's no less fair than pairing them with celebrities who may or may not be any good. This may involve reworking the front game to give us a chance to meet them, but I've never been wild about the front game anyway. It worked for "You Bet Your Life" and "Rich List" for, what, 20 years and one week.

I think the mere mention of "The Rich List" pretty much blows your own argument out of the water. :)

SO if we do this. with 4 strangers playing, i assume we dont switch partners between games do we?

Is it workable to have a rule that says "switch partners if one player sucks"? ;-)

Well, 1) we don't do this. But if we throw all foresight and common sense out the window and try it anyhow, then 2) you ABSOLUTELY switch partners, for the very reason I mentioned above.

But, see (1).

I've been debating whether to add this to this or the $1000000 Pyramid thread, cause it merges the discussion of both, but I'm putting it here to respond to Toetyper's recent addition. Gus's Million-Dollar Pyramid is ConnectiMatt's with the following modifications. Players are unacquainted civilians. After a WC, the team that played it is split up and re-paired with the losing players. Players leave after two main-game losses. (I've thought up the various re-pairing situations and scenarios' solutions, but I don't think it's necessary to detail them all here.) Each player plays the WC for their own prize. So for instance, say Player A and Player B as a team go to the WC. This is A's first trip, but B has already won twice. A win means A wins $50,000, and B goes to $250,000. I don't like the having to risk your winnings on a return or walk bit --- if they make it, they make it; if they don't, they don't. Excuse the lack of line breaks; anyone know how to add them in Opera Mini?

You've just doubled your prize budget. (That is not a criticism, just a reality.)

"Lurleen, how come that person wins more than that person for doing the same thing?"

"I dunno, Cletus, but I see a repeat of According To Jim starting up over at MyNetwork. Let's watch that."

Oh, come off it. That's completely preposterous.

No one would actually flip over to According to Jim. You know that.

:)

If a team gets to the top, there's no reason to break them up. Then you can simplify that part of the game.

Let me throw this out there for a 60-minute show:
Two pair of strangers play the front game: two 60-second rounds, each giving once and receiving once. Winners to the winners' circle.
Two different pairs of strangers, same deal.
Third game, the losing pairs of the two games are rejiggered. They play the two-round front game (or a one-round front game), winners to the winners' circle.
Then, the returning champs play the winners' circle. (They get to skip the front game.)
Whoever gets to the top of the Pyramid comes back the next day. If nobody does, then it's dollar score to determine the champs. A pair plays for more money each step of the way. Maybe it's $100K your first big win, then $200K more for your second, then $300K, then $400K for a total of $1M. But if you don't have high score some week, you take what you've won and you're gone.

Pyramid is such a great game that it would be foolish to change it from the original. If you want to make it a million dollar show, do it on network prime time, secure a million-dollar a show budget from the network. Classic Pyramid with recognizable celebs. The way to get the million is to clear the pyramid plus three additional categories, which would appear just above the top of the pyramid, and would flip over to reveal the million dollar grand prize. In order to get the million, one would have to get nine in the WC rather than 6.

Even though the fastest time for 6 categories is :26, by the one and only Billy Crystal, can :60 be enough for 9? How about :90 for 9?

When Pyramid was conceived nearly 35 years ago, 10 categories in :60 would have been done, but ended up being considered too difficult, which led to the bottom 4 boxes being covered up.

And with $1 million at stake on a show like Pyramid, whether or not that person wins the money depends on how careful the celebrity is when giving clues; an illegal clue could wipe out almost everything.

Italy is getting both versions soon. :) I'll tell you how it works out.

What about seven categories in 60 seconds, with the scoring similar to the half-zero game in Cullen CR and the TPiR Grand Game?

First clue gets you $1, then $10, all the way up to $1M. Consolation prizes of $10K or $100K aren't bad. A cuckoo means you lose a zero and the chance to win a million.

The thing just wouldn't look like a Pyramid, that's the problem.

Believe it or not, that's actually the least preposterous thing about Lemon's statement. People'd be much less likely to pick up that each contestant is playing for a different amount that switch to Jim. Believe it or not, there [i]are[i] people that watch that.

Since they closed the Video Clips thread (and opened a new forum), I'm continuing a discussion that was going on there. Uncamark said,

(I assume this is the thread he meant.) That must have been very early in the run. I'd never seen a tiebrekaer category like that. In fact, I saw a game go the other way: There was a technical snafu with one of the categories early in the game, so they let the team choose a new category.* When it was down to one category instead of two, they gave that team the choice of the remaining category or words that start with T.

* If I'm thinking of the right incident, the item was supposed to be "a pow-wow", but it was in their system as "pow-pow."

Also continuing talk of tiebreakers that other thread, I remember a second tiebreaker used in an early $25K episode (it was played after the break,) the categories were "words that begin with the letter Q" and "words that begin with the letter Z." I'm not sure I heard of a better example of things that were intended to not create a third tie.

Also impressive there was that, after the second team got their 7th answer right on the buzzer, Dick declared another tie without any apparent edit. Given that Pyramid was not afraid to make a point of going back and checking the tapes, I was surprised to hear that, and can't imagine it happening in this age of stop downs any time anything goes the slightest bit off.

That's almost the same exact concept I brought up (I wanted the original 6 instead of 7 categories).

I honestly didn't see anything wrong with it.

Someone brought up the fact that it awards players a max of $100K for losing.

By the same token, a player on Millionaire would be awarded a max of $32,000 (or however much it is in syndie) for missing a question and essentially losing the game, 'cause they sure as hell aren't winning the game.

Are you suggesting that because an uncommon letter is more likely to produce a 7 of 7? (I'm just trying to make sure I'm following.)

I think my logic was more that they were playing the mental game -- that people might think of Q and Z as "hard" letters because they're uncommon and psych themselves out.

Since we are talking about tie-breakers, when Pyramid had to first to 7 in the shortest amount of time aspect, I recently thought of some aspect of that tie-breaker that seemed unfair to me. When the first player gets 7, the clock stops after that player has give the complete answer. Whereas, the second player only has to begin the answer before the buzzer and he wins. If this isnt the case please correct me.

The two most probably explanations:
i) You're right, and it is unfair. (I would point out, however, that the team it hurts had the advantage of getting to choose their letter.)
ii) I often thought that the time as announced didn't quite jibe with what I saw counting down, invariably with a shorter time announced. This is partly because they're looking at a different clock, but now I wonder whether it's also because the time I thought I saw was when they finished and they were actually measuring when they started.

I'm pretty sure the time the other team had to play with was always a second shorter than what it "should" be so as to avoid a "time tie" as it were. As was said above, the second team has that mini advantage of being able to start an answer before the buzzer. Kind of makes up for the lost time, however inconsequential an amount that may be.

-Jason

Also to add to the tiebreaker question...the earliest episode of Pyramid that I have (1982), the tiebreak was played after the break. On the '85 episode ($100,000) I mentioned earlier, they were played before the break.

1) What it commonplace earlier in Pyramid's life to play the ties after a commercial?

2) Does anyone know when the switch to "ties before the break" took place?

It's been forever and a day since I saw this on USA's repeats, but I really want to say between late-1983 and early-1984...maybe right around the time they started showing Winners Circle montages again.

The problem with the time is the lack of decimal seconds. To make the buzzer sound when the clock hits zero, the display needs to change almost a full second after the actual time (for instance, whether there's 0.9 or 0.1 seconds left, the clock reads 1; also, when the time starts, there's a one-second delay before it ticks down to 29). This means that if a team takes 13.9 seconds to complete their tiebreaker, the clock would display 18 seconds. This leaves 13.9 seconds for the second team to complete their round: the clock shows either 13 or 14 (depending on whether you could even input decimal seconds or whether the producers rounded up or down). The sum of the two whole number times is either 31 or 32 seconds, giving the appearance of inequity.

And before you ask, I began pondering this issue since I was in the 4th grade...

Didn't Davidson's $100K try to fix that by going to a decimal clock at least for the tiebreakers?

Erm, if a team took 13.9 seconds, there would be 16.1 left, and the clock would correctly show 17, not 18. And what I remember from my years watching the show regularly is that if a team got the last word right as the clock was ticking, or anytime up until about 2/3 of the way through the following second, that the second team would get 29 seconds minus what was left over. If at the end of a second, they'd get 30 minus the remainder. Ergo, if a team took 13.9, the clock would display 17, and since it was most of the way through the second, the other team would get 13. This leads me to believe that they were compensating for the length of the last answer and the judge's reaction time by bumping the second team's time down by between about .6 and 1.6 seconds.

Of course, this is just a semi-educated guess. If someone knows for certain, I'd love to hear about it.

I don't recall that, but in hindsight they should have done it on the $50K! (I recall reading that they had a three-way tie at the end of one week.)

Oops, my bad. Now that I think about it, there were instances when the math made sense (added to 30). I do recall the clock used was an eggcrate readout with only whole numbers. I'm kind of curious how the rounding was handled.

Oddly enough, a rule I would have followed was if one of the two letters offered was "obscure", take that one. For example, if it was a choice between a B and an X, I'd take the X. I found words beginning with the "obsure" letter always seemed easier to get.

Totally. Because there are less of them. That's why I asked. Two obscure letters are very likely to produce at minimum one 7-out-of-7.

"...the answer to this question will begin with an X. Everyone's now running through the TWO words they know (that begin with an X)."

--Bill Cullen, "Blockbusters"

I always thought, re: the '80s tiebreakers, that they were keeping more accurate time in the booth or wherever, and that they rounded the on-screen clock to the nearest second to minimize the difference between it and the actual timer. That's just another unsupported opinion, of course.

No disrespect to Peter Lawford, but my recollection is he was never a strong Pyramid player - mediocre at best, even when he was cold sober.

I remember Phyllis George was HORRIBLE her first time out, but they did invite her back, and she did improve.

One of the best first-timers I recall was Lynn Swann - and he did well because he was a fan of the show to begin with.

Wasn't Peter Lawford one of the celebrities that just "didn't get" Password? Like, the one they actually had to let stop playing because he didn't get it?

No, no! He was great. He set the Lightning Round record, in fact. Can't speak for his Pyramid playing, however.

'Kay, then maybe someone else can refresh my memory...who was the celeb on Password who so didn't get it to the point that they stopped down and replaced him?

I could have sworn that was the original "You Don't Say!", not "Password".

A celebrity (the name escapes me) just wasn't getting the idea of the game, and I think humming the Lone Ranger theme song as a clue for "Lone Ranger" was the last straw.

And also IIRC, he went home at his own request.

Might have been...and it would make more sense for it to be You Don't Say!, since they had that convoluted "you're not cluing the name directly, you're cluing a word that SOUNDS LIKE the name..." thing going on.

It was "You Don't Say!" A male celebrity (never identified by Tom when he tells the story) was given the name "John Wayne" and whistled the theme from "The High and the Mighty" instead of giving a clue. Tom tried to explain the game once more, only to have the celebrity argue, "But he was in that movie!" They finally stopped tape and sent him home.

The way you put it just now actually explains it better than they did (at least how I've always heard it). It's a fun game to play, but it's murder getting people to understand it without saying "let's play Pictionary instead."