The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: gamed121683 on January 05, 2023, 10:32:26 PM
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Hopefully, this question hasn’t been asked here before (or at least recently), but a reply in the "Kennedy Password+ Question…" topic inspired me to ask this question.
Which version of Password involving solving a puzzle do you feel was the more superior version: Password Plus or Super Password & why?
Let the debate begin!
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Plus, because of how Allen/Bill/Tom kept the game casual but moving. As others mentioned, Bert was a little too chatty at times. And as futuristic as the set looked, something about Super feels a little cold.
I did like Ca$hword, however.
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Alphabetics deserves a monstrous game board. We got a 13 inch TV set. Super has a great bombastic theme and the Cashword but damn, everything else falls flat.
There’s one think I liked from SP end game—at one point the two players were shot at a diagonal so that it looked like like their concentration converged on a single point rather than facing each other like the winners circle. I thought it added to the tension.
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Originally there were two Kodak Carousel slide projectors on the P+ set; one for the puzzle board and one inside the desk which was aimed upstage into a mirror and then to the screen built into the front of the desk.
These projectors emitted an awful lot of fan noise. Bobby Sherman was always chasing this fan noise and he experimented with a noise gate and different microphones. We always had fan noise, the bulk of which came from the projector used for the puzzle board. Eventually he got wise and that projector was replaced with art cards, which they should have been from the get-go. Two stagehands behind loaded the cards into the board. It was a big improvement, but we were still stuck with Dennis Roof's butt-ugly design with the checkerboards and stripes which looked gawd awful.
I don't know how they dealt with projector-fan noise on Blockbusters and Press Your Luck.
When I watch SP, I hear a lot of buzz in the audio from the neon tubes in the set. Apparently Bobby didn't much care. All they had to do was turn off the neon and buzz begone.
I've seen puzzle clues on SP which I wouldn't have permitted. It was easier to file a questionable puzzle under "Category 13" than to try to argue with Bobby Sherman about it. Bobby didn't keep track of the writers' output so it was easy to make a puzzle "disappear". Category 13 was my bottom-right desk drawer. Shhh, don't tell anyone.
I find the answers to puzzles harder to read on SP. For some reason the black lettering doesn't stand out against the yellow background.
Bert spent way too much time clowning around with the celebs or Gene Wood or the sound effects guy. He complains on air about various things, such as a late sound effect. Allen was showman enough to let those kinds of things slide.
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Super Password, without hesitation, though I enjoy both. Solely a matter of personal preference, but of every permanent host that Password has had, Allen is my second least favorite ahead of only Regis. "No opposites", while a challenge, makes for a less engaging, fun, and accessible-to-viewers show. Super Password's maingame scoring system was the best of the three used although I'm not fond of the cashword minigame. Meanwhile, the final season of P+ with 100-100-200-200....all the way to 500 is a legitimate chore to sit through (on more than one occasion, a game starts on one show and ends two shows later with the aid of some discarded puzzles). The decision to still award 80% of the bonus prize (-$1000 before the jackpot was added) with an illegal clue is also baffling both from a gameplay and a viewership perspective.
Meanwhile, Super Password's main theme is one of the best in the genre, IMO. And while Bert's hosting shtick isn't to everyone's taste, I always found it more endearing than not (especially to what some of his contemporaries were doing in the same time periods). The final couple of years when production crew and staff became more integrated recurring characters on camera add a very strong feeling of warmth that only occasionally appears on Tom's stint with Plus, and is largely absent during Allen's tenure unless he has the right celebrities (Betty) to play off of.
Because it often took so long to get to the bonus game during Plus' six months with the jackpot, by the time you're there again, any natural tension that should have built as it's gone unwon is lost; while on Super you get back around to it in enough time that said tension hasn't dissipated before being played again, resulting in either a bigger emotional release when won, or a bigger compounding when lost again.
Tom is definitely a little better at the "game" aspect of game show hosting, but Bert is probably a little better at the "show" aspect, particularly for the demographics tuning in.
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I like them both, so it's a hard pick. But I'd have to go with Super Password. Partly that's because that's the version I remember seeing as a kid, but there are some rules that I like better on SP than on P+.
I was never comfortable with how "form of the word" was handled on P+. It was different from all prior versions of Password. SP handled this much better. I also liked the Cashword. And I know Bert isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed his hosting. He just seemed to have more fun running the game, and he also had no problems with leaving his mistakes in the show, rather than having to edit around him. I also liked that he included Gene Wood or Tommy from behind the board, or the sound effects person. It just made it seem like a happy environment.
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There’s one think I liked from SP end game—at one point the two players were shot at a diagonal so that it looked like like their concentration converged on a single point rather than facing each other like the winners circle. I thought it added to the tension.
This also touches on a favorite of mine with bonus rounds - dimming the lights. I think that also adds to the tension. I miss when Wheel would do that (along with the drum roll) during the bonus round.
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Love them both, but I'd go with Super Password over Plus.
One of the little things that kind of annoyed me on Plus, which was corrected on Super, was that the password could literally be given in another language as a clue.
An instance in which Wesley Eure gave "agua" for "water" on Plus comes to mind, yet Tom Poston was zapped for giving "verte" as a clue for "green" on Super.
I also just prefer Bert's energy over that of Allen; there's an air about Allen that I find to be a little off-putting, a bit more so after having recently screened more of his Liar's Club.
He could come off as being a bit of a jerk, but I never got that from Bert.
The Cashword was also a fine way to add some intra-game variety.
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I'm torn here. PP moved along better but SP fixed a couple of PP's flaws. They allowed opposites to be given as clues again and if one team didn't guess the puzzle, the other team got a crack at it. So less puzzles were "wasted" and the game moved along. The cashword was a nice addition as well. Tom had started hosting Body Language shortly before SP so he wasn't available. Bert Convy was the next available host on Goodson's rolodex. He was a chatterbox at times, but he had a likeable personality and could laugh at his goof ups. Shame how he died.
Between Allen, Tom and Bill there was over 50 years of hosting. So PP usually moved along well. Making $500 the goal for winning stretched out the game and ensured that Alphabetics would not be played twice on the same show. That may have been why they did it with the escalating bonus. I remember one week on PP with Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows. They kept missing puzzles left and right. That was painful to watch.
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Because Bill Cullen hosted it for a few weeks, I'd go with P+. Prefer set pieces to monitors.
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My preference between the two is too close to call ‐- too many pluses and minuses for both shows.
I will say when SP first aired, I hated the set. Compared to other shows at the time, it looked too futuristic and I thought the plain slanted shapes strewn around the set looked ugly. I gradually got used to the set, but it still looked like a cheaper set.
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Plus, BARELY. And mostly by personal preferences. I like Allen/Tom/Bill a bit more as hosts. The show looked and sounded like classic Password still, merged with something different too.
Super had its advantages, though. Much of which was already mentioned. Returning opposites as acceptable clues (though if you wanted added challenge, you'd prefer Plus doing away with them). The Cashword. One strike in the end game = no grand prize. (that was one of the most convoluted things in PW+, of course...20% off for each illegal clue...)
EDIT: YES, YES about the "form of the word" whoops in SP too.
The computer graphics in the end game looked good...and when they changed it so it was a split screen view made it look more dramatic somehow.
Which reminds me...
There’s one think I liked from SP end game—at one point the two players were shot at a diagonal so that it looked like like their concentration converged on a single point rather than facing each other like the winners circle. I thought it added to the tension.
Okay, Pyramid had coexisted with the first 2-3 years of SP...still I wonder if someone caught on to the similarities between the Winner's Circle and the Super Password round and thus decided to change to the split screen?
One of the little things that kind of annoyed me on Plus, which was corrected on Super, was that the password could literally be given in another language as a clue.
An instance in which Wesley Eure gave "agua" for "water" on Plus comes to mind, yet Tom Poston was zapped for giving "verte" as a clue for "green" on Super.
A failed attempt, but I think of Lucy giving "platanos" for "bananas." Yeah technically two different things, but bear with me.
Tom had started hosting Body Language shortly before SP so he wasn't available. Bert Convy was the next available host on Goodson's rolodex. He was a chatterbox at times, but he had a likeable personality and could laugh at his goof ups. Shame how he died.
I was thinking Bill for a moment too...but he had Joker's Wild. Plus if SP lasted as long as it did, he'd sadly not finish the series too.
Oddly enough, I think Tom on PW+ started the trends that Bert would turn up to 11 on SP. The game and show was more loose and had more comedy when Tom joined, if that makes any sense. He pretty much addresses this in the blooper episode...could you imagine Allen doing what he did in that and other cases?
Meanwhile, the final season of P+ with 100-100-200-200....all the way to 500 is a legitimate chore to sit through (on more than one occasion, a game starts on one show and ends two shows later with the aid of some discarded puzzles).
Also true....I can see how the extended version of PW+ main games could be a slog. SP did handle the $500 goal better, as you said. Kind of like Celebrity Bullseye going to Best 2/3 games when a main game on the show could be long depending on contracts and winning them.
What's y'all's feelings about SP doing away with Pass/Play?
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I'll go with Super Password by a hair. Both shows are very similar and I respect both hosts - I grew up watching them. Allen was more serious and Bert seemed like a really nice guy, but there were some days he didn't seem too interested in getting the game going. He even mentioned on a 1985 show that there was a cue card that stated "get on with it Bert". A show like Tattletales was a much better fit for him.
The themes for both shows were good, so I'd say that's a tie.
One thing I didn't like about it either show was the scoring format. We've discussed before how the $100 puzzle on Super Password really has no bearing on the outcome of the game, but Password Plus' scoring system wasn't much better. I agree that the changes made late in the run slowed everything down a little too much. I think a perfect scenario is one bonus attempt per show, but those changes sometimes meant you'd only get about three in a week. The "no opposites" rule took some of the fun out of it too.
I think the set for Super Password is slightly superior - it's better having the puzzle in the center rather than off to the side.
Having said that, I'll happily watch either show if I'm flipping by and they're on.
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It's pretty much a wash for me -- each show has certain demerits that are canceled by the demerits of the other.
Plus had a more interesting set and theme, but several gameplay aspects weren't the best approach, IMO -- the 10% reduction for illegal clues in the bonus round, the inconsistent judging (which we've talked about before), opposing teams not getting a chance to guess a puzzle if a team was unsuccessful after the fifth word. The rule about antonyms I can take or leave. The 1961-75 formats allowed for easier words to be inserted into gameplay, depending on how well a game was going, so it made sense to allow for obvious opposite pairs (big/little, wet/dry), but that was no longer possible with the puzzles. I can see why they wanted to make the clues more challenging, but I don't think it was strictly necessary.
Super corrected many of these issues (if you consider them such), but it also had a host whom I don't think was a perfect fit for the game. Convy wasn't *bad*, he just needed to rein in the chatter (which gave away puzzle answers on some occasions) and perhaps to demonstrate more authority.
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We've discussed before how the $100 puzzle on Super Password really has no bearing on the outcome of the game, but Password Plus' scoring system wasn't much better.
Having the first round be worth $100 does relegate it to basically a practice round, but it also sets up the rest of the game so that in order to win the game, you must win at least one round while giving the clues. Don't know if that was by design or a happy coincidence, but it does make it a good scoring system IMO.
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1) I can’t imagine anything by Mark Goodson as an accident.
2) same as any game show that doubles the stakes (and the difficulty)—it allows the player to gain comfort with the surroundings and playing the game for real.
3) if the show just did 200, 300, 400 with the Cashword interval you’re not getting Alphabetics to augment by its base value on a miss. I sure as hell wouldn’t. So you get “next time it will be for $12,500” or $6,000. Or new champion, new bank.
They may not be things we like or understand or how we do them, but in the 80s the company was setting the standard, even with clunkers like On a Roll, Oddball and TKO. The design was purposeful.
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This is a good question. If I were to choose based on what we got, I’d choose Plus by a hair. Better pedigree of hosts (Allen, TK, Cullen), better set pieces (especially from an Alphabetics standpoint), and tighter, more challenging gameplay (banning of opposites). I can’t get past the feeling that the Super Password set felt cold and bland. A couple neon lights here and there, better placement of the main game puzzle board, Chyron, better production quality later on for the bonus round, and not much else. Bert Convy never really did it for me. I wish NBC got Tom Kennedy before CBS did for Body Language.
I always wished they mixed some of the best elements from Password Plus onto Super. Better, more lively bonus round set for “The Endgame” (hell, the show as a whole) and banning opposites (I know I’m in the minority here; reinstating opposites did help to make the show flow more smoothly, so I completely understand why they did that). The shortcomings of Convy’s hosting have already been discussed, so I won’t go into it here. I will say that there wasn’t much in the way of seriousness when the jackpot started to exceed $25,000…a tone that Jim Perry handled well on his show just a few studios down and Kennedy himself could’ve easily handled (especially given his experience with Name That Tune and the final months of Plus).
Super Password deftly handled the bonus round rules in a more understandable way. One foul in the bonus round resulting in an automatic forfeiture of the jackpot made the bonus round more tense (and could serve as another valid reason to allow opposites again) and balanced the difficulty. I love the split screen technique they used later in the show and the use of Chyron throughout. I just wished they used more than a TV screen for the bonus round.
Last thing: I just want to touch upon what TLEberle said in his response:
if the show just did 200, 300, 400 with the Cashword interval you’re not getting Alphabetics to augment by its base value on a miss. I sure as hell wouldn’t. So you get “next time it will be for $12,500” or $6,000. Or new champion, new bank.
I was always of the thought that if progressive jackpots have to be a thing, it should never increase by base value. It should be upped by $1000-$2500 per miss, and should be the champion’s jackpot alone. Maybe chuck the latter if it makes for better television, but base rate jackpot increases never did it for me.
The Inquisitive One
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I've always liked both shows the same. Yes, there were moments on SP where I thought Bert was chatting it up a little too much, but as I said in another post, he was following orders and stretching where he was asked to stretch. As for Password Plus, I compare Tom's hosting of PW+ to the way he handled You Don't Say, a similar show. (He would acknowledge in his last interview that it was basically a Password knockoff.) I didn't really care for PW+ new scoring format, and the Alphabetics increasing jackpot had odd penalties for illegal clues. SP did better by completely disqualifying the bonus money and only getting $100 a word.
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About all the"Getting a better Super Password host" talk...after seeing that episode from the ABC run, as well as a certain excellent podcast's show on the 1/3/1983 game show premieres, I was thinking....could Betty White have hosted SP? This would be relatively fresh off of her Just Men! Emmy win, which Goodson could tout when promoting the new show.
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What you gain in a competent host you lose as an excellent player who can likely fill in any time there is an emergency. Bert would be a capable player but not missed.
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What you gain in a competent host you lose as an excellent player who can likely fill in any time there is an emergency. Bert would be a capable player but not missed.
True dat. Plus a little thing called The Golden Girls would take a lot of her time, to say the least.
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I'm the weirdo that loves playing Password puzzles over Alphabetics, so the more puzzles, the better, even if they went dead. For that reason, I like Plus more. Watching Super Password, it seemed like it would take forever to start a game. Bert would talk to the celebs, then talk to the contestants, and it felt like five minutes had passed before we were shown the first word. It felt like Super Password got through half the puzzles Plus would get through in an episode and all I'd feel at the end of an episode was that I was shorted out of game content.
Plus was definitely super flawed. Everyone's mentioned it here. Allowing a puzzle to go dead without giving the other team a chance was a massive oversight. And their judging was *wildly* inconsistent. What they defined as an "opposite" was loose or tight depending on what it was. They were also way too lenient in taking forms of the word for the actual password.
In the end though, I love playing along to the password and the puzzles, both by myself or watching with friends, so in the end, give me all the Password Plus.
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I like Both versions i think Plus has the lead
Bert was better suited for Tattletales and Match Game both were shows he can have fun with.
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Plus was definitely super flawed. Everyone's mentioned it here. Allowing a puzzle to go dead without giving the other team a chance was a massive oversight. And their judging was *wildly* inconsistent. What they defined as an "opposite" was loose or tight depending on what it was. They were also way too lenient in taking forms of the word for the actual password.
No doubt about it. The first mistake was not having a word authority.
The no-opposites rule came about on impulse because Howard Felsher had a bug up his b*tt and felt antonyms made game play too facile. It was not well thought out. One time a player was buzzed because Howard felt that "cat" was the opposite of "dog". Allen challenged that call on the air.
The form-of-the-word sound effect was a big step up in SP.
The "dead puzzle" problem was a big problem for us which was solved in SP. We had a policy that the 5th clue had to be absolutely "gettable", else we'd have yet another dead puzzle. Howard once approved a puzzle with "footwear" as the 5th clue (answer: moccasins). I felt the players would never guess "footwear" and Bobby was at CBS for a taping of Match Game. I drove to CBS and brought it up with Bobby and the clue was changed to a more "gettable" word.
I think the quality control of the puzzles was better on P+.
I became reluctant to make suggestions to the big-shot G-T executives who were full of themselves and had been producing game shows for 400 years back in New York. Whenever a player guessed a puzzle on the first clue it was always surprising and exciting. I suggested to Howard that we award some kind of bonus for one-clue solves, but the suggestion was ignored. So much for making suggestions to the higher-ups.
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Super corrected many of these issues (if you consider them such), but it also had a host whom I don't think was a perfect fit for the game. Convy wasn't *bad*, he just needed to rein in the chatter (which gave away puzzle answers on some occasions) and perhaps to demonstrate more authority.
Honestly, it was moments like this that endeared me to SP. I love Allen Ludden, but his hosting was akin to the person in the friend group who kept you on itinerary during the trip, for better or worse. Sure, you’ll be up in time for free continental breakfast, but you’re probably not having any fun adventures off the beaten path either. Even Dick Clark, as a scholarly as he was on Pyramid, has his moments, and seeing how completely opposite Allen and Bert are in how they approach Password, it’s a testament to how difficult it is to find someone who can strike a happy balance on a show like this.
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Password Plus to me is the one I prefer. Bert was too chatty too often and gave away puzzle answers much more often than Allen ever did. Password was Allen's baby and when it came back in 1979 as Password Plus, I never saw a more overjoyed Master of Ceremonies than Allen. He truly cared about the game.
The caliber of celebrities on Plus seemed to be overall slightly better to me than on Super Password. I don't recall if Greg Morris ever appeared on Super Password, but I loved him on Plus. One of my favorites, as well as Elizabeth Montgomery. Just seemed like the celebs on Plus were of a higher echelon both in star power and in the ability to play the game and not clown around (e.g. Marty Cohen on Super Password).
I was okay with the 20% penalty for Alphabetics because it was more often than not no fault of the contestant when a celebrity gave an illegal clue.
One thing about Plus though that made me cringe to high heaven was when they would have their all-star charity weeks and they would have the celebrities acting in character (e.g. Vicki Lawrence as Mama, Carol Burnett as Eunice, Denver Pyle as Uncle Jesse, etc.). Hated those weeks big time.
One thing about Super Password that I did rather like, and it was a novelty, was they had their Tournament of Losers, those who won like $0 or just $100 perhaps return to play. They also had a Tournament of Champions I believe at least once, something Plus never had.
Overall I'd say I prefer Plus about 70 to 30 over Super Password. Bert was more jovial, but to me Password was a more cerebral game and exercise and with big prize money at stake, there's a time for clowning and chatting and a time not to. Allen seemed to have much more respect for the game and the franchise as a whole.
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I confess I like Super Password better.
1. Ludden beats Convy, but I’m impressed with how Bert hosted totally differently yet very well. A new direction was smart following Ludden the icon, but it could have gone as badly as John Davidson replacing Dick Clark. Bert handled his occasional mistake with welcome self-effacing humor, and I enjoy his byplay with Gene Wood.
2. I love the Cashword.
3. I find that P+ had more weeks with lousy pairs of celebrities.
4. I hate the P+ set. There are drawbacks to Super’s but nothing as bad as the checkerboard puzzle board. The on-screen graphics helped, too. Neither set was as impressive as Password All-Stars, though.
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I'll add on another reason why I prefer the first two or so years of Plus: the progressive jackpot does nothing for me. I'm very happy for the people who won 30/40/50K on Super, but it felt a bit gimmicky. I think a flat 10K in 1984 would've been fine.
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I confess I like Super Password better.
1. Ludden beats Convy, but I’m impressed with how Bert hosted totally differently yet very well. A new direction was smart following Ludden the icon, but it could have gone as badly as John Davidson replacing Dick Clark. Bert handled his occasional mistake with welcome self-effacing humor, and I enjoy his byplay with Gene Wood.
2. I love the Cashword.
3. I find that P+ had more weeks with lousy pairs of celebrities.
4. I hate the P+ set. There are drawbacks to Super’s but nothing as bad as the checkerboard puzzle board. The on-screen graphics helped, too. Neither set was as impressive as Password All-Stars, though.
Allen also expressed disdain for the checkerboard puzzle. I don't dislike it, but I do like it better than the previous yellow board. The first board was colorful enough, then neon was added to give it more pizazz, I guess, but for me it also looked "tacked on." It's a good thing they went with one color for the set in general, because changing one color might've given unintentional attention to the swastika patterns in the negative space of the pluses.
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Plus was definitely super flawed. Everyone's mentioned it here. Allowing a puzzle to go dead without giving the other team a chance was a massive oversight. And their judging was *wildly* inconsistent. What they defined as an "opposite" was loose or tight depending on what it was. They were also way too lenient in taking forms of the word for the actual..
I think it is worth discussing. It makes sense that if the guesser can’t sole the puzzle the giver can swoop in and save the day, but why should the other team ge5 to steal the pot? There are five chances to win control and I don’t recall many times when one team kept control with five bang-bang guesses?
I can see giving the other side a chance to win money that isn’t part of the score, but Password isn’t Family Feud.
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:)
I confess I like Super Password better.
1. Ludden beats Convy, but I’m impressed with how Bert hosted totally differently yet very well. A new direction was smart following Ludden the icon, but it could have gone as badly as John Davidson replacing Dick Clark. Bert handled his occasional mistake with welcome self-effacing humor, and I enjoy his byplay with Gene Wood.
2. I love the Cashword.
3. I find that P+ had more weeks with lousy pairs of celebrities.
4. I hate the P+ set. There are drawbacks to Super’s but nothing as bad as the checkerboard puzzle board. The on-screen graphics helped, too. Neither set was as impressive as Password All-Stars, though.
Allen also expressed disdain for the checkerboard puzzle. I don't dislike it, but I do like it better than the previous yellow board. The first board was colorful enough, then neon was added to give it more pizazz, I guess, but for me it also looked "tacked on." It's a good thing they went with one color for the set in general, because changing one color might've given unintentional attention to the swastika patterns in the negative space of the pluses.
Something tells me I’m in the minority, but I LIKED the checkerboard looking puzzle board. Especially when they were still using the slide projector to show off the words. It wasn’t until when they switched over to the art cards, I started to notice the “tackiness” of the pattern! Isn’t that weird?
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One thing about Plus though that made me cringe to high heaven was when they would have their all-star charity weeks and they would have the celebrities acting in character (e.g. Vicki Lawrence as Mama, Carol Burnett as Eunice, Denver Pyle as Uncle Jesse, etc.). Hated those weeks big time.
I'm with you there. I thought it was a dumb idea.
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Something tells me I’m in the minority, but I LIKED the checkerboard looking puzzle board. Especially when they were still using the slide projector to show off the words. It wasn’t until when they switched over to the art cards, I started to notice the “tackiness” of the pattern! Isn’t that weird?
I think they needed to decide on either the checkerboards or the colorful slanted lines covering the words. Having both was just too busy IMO.
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3) if the show just did 200, 300, 400 with the Cashword interval you’re not getting Alphabetics to augment by its base value on a miss. I sure as hell wouldn’t. So you get “next time it will be for $12,500” or $6,000. Or new champion, new bank.
A question that's gone through my head several times - what if Cashword was moved from the $200 puzzle to the $100 puzzle? Obviously solves the issue of the $100 puzzle not meaning anything, but does that make up for any other issues it causes?
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3) if the show just did 200, 300, 400 with the Cashword interval you’re not getting Alphabetics to augment by its base value on a miss. I sure as hell wouldn’t. So you get “next time it will be for $12,500” or $6,000. Or new champion, new bank.
A question that's gone through my head several times - what if Cashword was moved from the $200 puzzle to the $100 puzzle? Obviously solves the issue of the $100 puzzle not meaning anything, but does that make up for any other issues it causes?
Nah, I like the idea of the $100 puzzle being a "warmup". There's no real stake in it and someone still gets paid from it. Also, I like the idea of being able to play a max of two puzzles with each celeb.
The $100 puzzle is just fine, IMO. No reason to remove it.
3) if the show just did 200, 300, 400 with the Cashword interval you’re not getting Alphabetics to augment by its base value on a miss. I sure as hell wouldn’t. So you get “next time it will be for $12,500” or $6,000. Or new champion, new bank.
Travis, I love how I can always count on you to find tweaks to make game shows tougher and cheaper.
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I’m not saying I would do that—I would rather a flat amount that won’t ruin the company every day. If I have the chance at two end games per day I’m going to slow the growth. It wouldn’t be my first choice. (*) I understand why Plus was $5,000 day in day out and why Super wanted the ebb and flow of the fluctuating pot, but they also banked on only playing the end game once a day.
My issue with turning the $100 puzzle into the bonus opportunity is that the contestant who is coming in fresh has that disadvantage of not getting reps under the lights.
(*) Actually my first choice is new champion new jackpot.
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I never watched Super Password when it was on NBC but I've seen more than enough of it on Buzzr, as well as Tattletales.
Bert was great with the celebs on Tattletales but he's painful to watch on SP. Oy, what a chatterbox! He says "good clue" for just about every password and never fails to broadcast when the light bulb flickers on and he knows the answer to a puzzle. Also way too much clowning around with Gene Wood and Geoff Cooper (sound effects).
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One thing about Plus though that made me cringe to high heaven was when they would have their all-star charity weeks and they would have the celebrities acting in character (e.g. Vicki Lawrence as Mama, Carol Burnett as Eunice, Denver Pyle as Uncle Jesse, etc.). Hated those weeks big time.
I'm with you there. I thought it was a dumb idea.
I think you guys missed the joke then. That was clearly a callback to the original Carol Burnett Show Mama's Family sketches where they would frequently play Password.
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Perhaps, but having McLean Stevenson and Joanna Gleason simultaneously be their "characters" from "Hello Larry" was a joke of the unfunniest kind (just like that show). They ended up abandoning the whole approach mid-week.
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Nothing could beat the Uncle Jesse (Dukes of Hazzard) vs. Sgt. Getraer (CHiPs) week. There were zero connections between the two characters/shows.
Wait...it was the Eldest Show Characters' Week on Password Plus. Must've slipped Tom's mind.
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Perhaps, but having McLean Stevenson and Joanna Gleason simultaneously be their "characters" from "Hello Larry" was a joke of the unfunniest kind (just like that show). They ended up abandoning the whole approach mid-week.
That's just an example of how desperate NBC was to get Hello Larry over. Hell, at that point NBC was desperate to get anything over in prime time.
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This thread is showing me that it's a real shame we never got a fully battle-tested version of Password to enjoy, with the best of all worlds coming together in one format. We all clearly like a lot of things from both of these versions of the show.
These days, I'd have to give the edge to Password Plus. When I come across it on Buzzr, I often stay for the entire episode or hour, whereas I frequently don't stay for Super Password. By and large, the guests on Password Plus take the game seriously while still having lots of fun. That said, when my college classes fell around GSN's then-daily hour of SP, I was really enjoying the groove they were in at the part of the run -- 1988.
But yes, still lots of stuff worth tweaking on both shows. I imagine the Alphabetics penalty came from a good place -- they didn't want celebrities costing people THAT much money -- but in a world where Pyramid got by just fine without doing it, it looked odd on Password Plus. Ca$hword on Super Password is a great idea, but looking at the back of people's heads for the entire show as they turn to see the puzzle is not.
-Jason
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I think the real pity is that ABC Password doesn't survive to let us experience that version of the show in full and add to the overall discussion since it was the first attempt to liven things up from the old CBS format. Even though the random episodes expose what some of us see as weaknesses, perhaps if we'd been able to experience the full run of that show unfolding what we think of as flawed in that format maybe wasn't as flawed based on our impressions from just a handful of remaining shows.
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Lately I've noticed that Bert Convy seems to have an aversion to the word "Alphabetics". Was this by decree or was Bert just being his airheaded self, referring to it only as "the end game".
Some of the bookings on SP were really from the bottom of the barrel o' celebrities. That said, we never booked JoAnne Worley when I worked on P+; I wonder why. We should have. We were too busy booking Nancy Lane and Judy Norton Taylor.
Bert was great on Tattletales but Super Password wasn't his forte. Some day I'll count the number of times he says "good clue" or words to that effect and we can do an over-under here.
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Lately I've noticed that Bert Convy seems to have an aversion to the word "Alphabetics". Was this by decree or was Bert just being his airheaded self, referring to it only as "the end game".
ISTR that the endgame on SP shared its title with the title of the series. Super Password *was* the endgame.
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Lately I've noticed that Bert Convy seems to have an aversion to the word "Alphabetics". Was this by decree or was Bert just being his airheaded self, referring to it only as "the end game".
ISTR that the endgame on SP shared its title with the title of the series. Super Password *was* the endgame.
I was more bothered by Convy rarely calling the words "passwords" myself. (similar to how Bob Eubanks never called the "big bet" by name)
But yeah, on SPW, it was always (the) Super Password (Round).