Is it just me? It seems that, in the Winner's Circle, the men who are good at giving clues are the ones who come up with a "home-run" clue, which is usually dependent on familiar phrases or titles. (I didn't create that term; I think I saw it in another thread that's been active recently. I might even call them Charlie Siebert clues.) For example, in TERRIBLE THINGS, a home-run clue is "Ivan." I haven't noticed it on Password, but if I'm right about Pyramid, I'd expect it to be true there as well.

Conversely, there have been many occasions when I've seen two women get something on what seemed like the flimsiest single clue. (I don't mean they're bad clues, just that I wouldn't expect the first clue to be enough all by itself.) That suggests to me that the good female receivers are good in part because they're able to pick up on non-verbal cues, and perhaps that the good female givers give off those signals.

To be clear, I am certainly NOT saying that either men or women are better at the game. I'm only suggesting that perhaps they play it differently.

I think this is the heart of the issue, and gets to the different way that men and women think/

The intuitive nature of woman makes them better players at Pyramid. After a while on the '80's revival, it seemed that most of the contestants were women, and darned good ones.

I call baloney.

As long as you don't call salami...'cause apparently, there wasn't any.

/I'll just head off to the Chamber chamber now...

To be honest, as much as I like Pyramid, it always bugged me that there weren't more men contestants. If a man appeared on one episode, I'd always find myself rooting for him because if he lost it would probably be a week before another man appeared.

If Brendan is reading this (he's an expert on the show), IIRC he once told me that at a contestant audition, there seemed to be equal numbers of men and women trying out. It seems the show favored women contestants. We've also discussed before how they always avoided having two men play against each other, even if a man champion was on for several days.

It's in the chamber next to this other chamber. So it's the next-chamber Chamber chamber chamber.

I think the tropes of daytime television could've played a role in contestant selection.

Is that better or worse than the Chair?

Worse...much much worse.

/A low point in game shows

Because, as Matt O. says, everyone should be an expert at something...

All three times I auditioned for the show, there were about an equal number of men and women trying out, but the female players tended to know the rules much better than the male players. One guy in particular got buzzed four times in six categories when he was giving clues to his partner.

I checked my records of the 100 biggest-winning contestants on all versions of the show, and men account for less than 20% of the list. Of course, I don't know if that's about par for the course for other shows, too.


Brendan

Certainly not for Millionaire or Jeopardy!, to name two. Just because four out of five of the biggest winners are women doesn't mean much of anything. Did Pyramid have an equal balance of men and women as contestants? Not that I could tell. And even so, that just shows that particular women were adept at the game, or were able to get into the big money tournaments. So many games shows are like a golf tournament: they show who was better on that particular day, not who is the better player overall, because that's impossible to determine.

The story about someone being zapped four times just proves that a single male auditioner should have been over at Set for Life instead. There have been plenty of male contestants who have done just fine: one managed to win the $100,000 receiving only eight clues from his partner.

I don't buy Jimmy's "assertion" about how women being more intuitive makes them better Pyramid players, and frankly I'd be happy to leave him to his stereotypes back in the 1950s. If anything, "female intutition" would make them a better contestant on Match Game, not necessarily Pyramid.

In the '60s, most shows I've seen always pitted a man against a woman. Starting in the '70s, shows like Password, Pyramid, Match Game, Card Sharks and Price is Right always had many more women contestants, so on those shows it's probably true.

I think when this topic has come up in the past we've figured it was because many more women were watching daytime TV in the '70s. By the '90s, there were a lot more men contestants on shows like Price is Right and Trump Card. I think it's because more women were in the work force by then, and with differing shifts you'd likely see a more even number of both watching game shows. Everyone concur?

Another question Brendan...on the '80s versions of Pyramid, what's the longest a man contestant ever was champion? I can't recall seeing a man on there more than three days before being defeated. Did any make it all five days?

Now there's a thought... if equal numbers of men and women tried out, but the women watched the show more often, they'd have a better feel for the game.

Let's break it down, shall we?

$25,000 Pyramid (Clark) - 64 undefeated five-day champs: 10 men, 54 women
$100,000 Pyramid (Clark) - 30 undefeated five-day champs: 4 men, 26 women
$100,000 Pyramid (Davidson) - 13 undefeated five-day champs: 2 men, 11 women

The odds were a little better for the $100,000 tournaments -- at least in the Clark version. 9 out of the 36 tournament contestants were men, including 3 of the 12 winners, or an exact 25% each. They fared a little worse on the Davidson version. Men were completely shut out of the first four tournaments, but there were two in the final one, including the eventual winner, so men made up about 13% of the contestants for the tournaments but 20% of the winners.

The only times I can remember seeing two male contestants as opponents on the show were during special weeks: two $100K tournaments, the first $50K tournament, and one week with blind contestants.


Brendan

I remember noticing that, on Now You See It, they never had two men in the same group of four new players under that format. (I too found myself rooting for the man whenever the returning champion was a man, just to see them face each other.) I assume that NYSI and Pyramid were doing essentially the same thing. With so few male contestants, NYSI, probably put each one in a different group for the week, while Pyramid would only schedule one per week and if Monday's defending champion happened to be a man, the new man wouldn't appear till the previous one lost.