Author Topic: Pyramid Clues (Read 13565 times)

clemon79 · « **Reply #15 on:** July 31, 2009, 11:46:17 AM »

[quote name=\'CarShark\' post=\'221553\' date=\'Jul 31 2009, 01:14 AM\']But Pyramid isn't just about "essence", it's a game of sounds, too. How much of the sound of the word can you give away without giving its "essence"?[/quote]
Actually, being a word game, it *is* about essence. Sometimes words have letters and sounds in common. That's how our language works.

Look, obviously if someone's being a schmedrick and trying "this word rhymes with key-fence", yes, you're gonna buzz them and rightly so. But otherwise, I think Tim's points about root-words, above, are right on the money. "-Saur" has a root meaning. "-Fence" does not.

JayDLewis · « **Reply #16 on:** July 31, 2009, 11:52:12 AM »

FWIW, Sorority/fraternity turned up on $100K(?) pyramid in the last 2 days and there was no cuckoo.

vtown7 · « **Reply #17 on:** July 31, 2009, 01:55:13 PM »

Thank you Jay, for pointing that out... I knew it had come up recently!

R.

Bill Neuweiler · « **Reply #18 on:** August 01, 2009, 01:07:28 PM »

Barry Jenner (Sp?) during a $100,000 tournament slurred a word in describing "Sterling". he made a sound like SURL and got cuckooed. Now, in the winner's circle I've seen these occour and not been buzzed. For "Things that are Stacked", the clue given was "Bales of Hay" and for "Things that Balance", the clue given was "The Scales of Justice". My gut reaction was that the celeb is about to get buzzed for the prepositional phrase rule, but in these cases they were not. Are there any english majors out there who can explain the differences between prepositional phrases and these kinds of clues?

BrandonFG · « **Reply #19 on:** August 01, 2009, 02:28:22 PM »

[quote name=\'Bill Neuweiler\' post=\'221650\' date=\'Aug 1 2009, 01:07 PM\']Barry Jenner (Sp?) during a $100,000 tournament slurred a word in describing "Sterling". he made a sound like SURL and got cuckooed. Now, in the winner's circle I've seen these occour and not been buzzed. For "Things that are Stacked", the clue given was "Bales of Hay" and for "Things that Balance", the clue given was "The Scales of Justice". My gut reaction was that the celeb is about to get buzzed for the prepositional phrase rule, but in these cases they were not. Are there any english majors out there who can explain the differences between prepositional phrases and these kinds of clues?[/quote]
"Bales of Hay" and "The Scales of Justice" are actual phrases, and that's how you commonly refer to them. Saying "Hay Bales" or "Justice Scales" sound awkward and don't make as much sense. With illegal prepositional phrases (i.e. Tony Randall's "stuffings in little bottles of pills"), you can easily switch that around to say "pill bottle stuffings", although you risk being too descriptive.

Unrealtor · « **Reply #20 on:** August 01, 2009, 02:31:25 PM »

[quote name=\'Bill Neuweiler\' post=\'221650\' date=\'Aug 1 2009, 12:07 PM\']For "Things that are Stacked", the clue given was "Bales of Hay" and for "Things that Balance", the clue given was "The Scales of Justice". My gut reaction was that the celeb is about to get buzzed for the prepositional phrase rule, but in these cases they were not. Are there any english majors out there who can explain the differences between prepositional phrases and these kinds of clues?[/quote]

I think it's not so much an English-language thing as that they accepted common phrases and proper nouns with prepositions in them. For instance, if I was judging "things that are clear", I would accept "the eye of a storm" but not "the glass in a window."

Twentington · « **Reply #21 on:** August 01, 2009, 04:29:09 PM »

[quote name=\'Unrealtor\' post=\'221652\' date=\'Aug 1 2009, 02:31 PM\'][quote name=\'Bill Neuweiler\' post=\'221650\' date=\'Aug 1 2009, 12:07 PM\']For "Things that are Stacked", the clue given was "Bales of Hay" and for "Things that Balance", the clue given was "The Scales of Justice". My gut reaction was that the celeb is about to get buzzed for the prepositional phrase rule, but in these cases they were not. Are there any english majors out there who can explain the differences between prepositional phrases and these kinds of clues?[/quote]

I think it's not so much an English-language thing as that they accepted common phrases and proper nouns with prepositions in them. For instance, if I was judging "things that are clear", I would accept "the eye of a storm" but not "the glass in a window."
[/quote]

That's one I've wondered about too. I've seen countless "x of y" clues go unbuzzed on 25KP/100KP and never fully understood why.

/wonders if anyone had their own not-family-friendly clue for "Things That Are Stacked"

aaron sica · « **Reply #22 on:** August 01, 2009, 04:33:19 PM »

[quote name=\'Twentington\' post=\'221663\' date=\'Aug 1 2009, 04:29 PM\']/wonders if anyone had their own not-family-friendly clue for "Things That Are Stacked"[/quote]

"Cousin Bethany"...

Loogaroo · « **Reply #23 on:** August 01, 2009, 06:07:16 PM »

[quote name=\'Bill Neuweiler\' post=\'221650\' date=\'Aug 1 2009, 12:07 PM\']Barry Jenner (Sp?) during a $100,000 tournament slurred a word in describing "Sterling". he made a sound like SURL and got cuckooed. Now, in the winner's circle I've seen these occour and not been buzzed. For "Things that are Stacked", the clue given was "Bales of Hay" and for "Things that Balance", the clue given was "The Scales of Justice". My gut reaction was that the celeb is about to get buzzed for the prepositional phrase rule, but in these cases they were not. Are there any english majors out there who can explain the differences between prepositional phrases and these kinds of clues?[/quote]

I think it has to do with the fact that the word "of" can indicate a unit or increment as well as have a prepositional use. "A suit of armor", "Lots of children", "A barrel of monkeys", etc., are all phrases that use the word "of" but use it to denote how much of the object is actually being described. Using "of" to indicate a segment of a larger object, as in "the middle of the road", "the bottom of a well", "the end of a gun", etc., uses the word in a prepositional context and as a result is an illegal clue.

Granted, this is all completely suppository (in more ways than one), but that's the gist I've gotten with how legal it is to use the word "of" in the WC.

TLEberle · « **Reply #24 on:** August 02, 2009, 03:30:09 PM »

[quote name=\'CarShark\' post=\'221553\' date=\'Jul 31 2009, 01:14 AM\']But Pyramid isn't just about "essence", it's a game of sounds, too. How much of the sound of the word can you give away without giving its "essence"?[/quote]When has anyone associated with the show said "Pyramid is a game of sounds"? Yes, you're allowed to give a clue to a homophone or homonym of the word, but your partner still has to say the word on the screen. It just doesn't matter if they say "No" or "know." (poor example, yes, but it is the one that came completely to mind.)

You may give away as much of the essence of the word as the judge deems acceptable. There is no Supreme Court of Game Shows that you may appeal to if you think the judge was wrong. Sometimes the judge will do something contrary to precedent, or something that seems absurd, but that's all it is. The rules of Pyramid are created not created so that they'll make sense and follow the English language: they're created to make it so that the game isn't easy enough that people are winning the $10,000 at every attempt.

CarShark · « **Reply #25 on:** August 02, 2009, 04:40:38 PM »

[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'221719\' date=\'Aug 2 2009, 03:30 PM\']When has anyone associated with the show said "Pyramid is a game of sounds"? Yes, you're allowed to give a clue to a homophone or homonym of the word, but your partner still has to say the word on the screen. It just doesn't matter if they say "No" or "know." (poor example, yes, but it is the one that came completely to mind.)[/quote]Dick Clark sometimes said "we deal in sounds" when situations like that happen. That's what led to me saying that at first. Also, I believe he said that in the Things You Change and Exchange confusion mentioned in an earlier thread. I want to say it happened with Jo Anne Worley in the Winners' Circle on the nighttime show, but I'm not sure at all.

TLEberle · « **Reply #26 on:** August 02, 2009, 04:48:54 PM »

[quote name=\'CarShark\' post=\'221723\' date=\'Aug 2 2009, 01:40 PM\']Dick Clark sometimes said "we deal in sounds" when situations like that happen. That's what led to me saying that at first.[/quote]I didn't know that. But I think he means the homophone issue. Perhaps this is just my way of looking at the game, but I would give more latitude to the clue-giver, and only disqualify the clue if it became very evident that a rule was broken. The examples you gave would not have caused me to push the sounder.

Loogaroo · « **Reply #27 on:** August 02, 2009, 06:29:42 PM »

In one of the "What Not to Do on Pyramid" videos on YouTube, there's a clip of Ed Begley Jr. at the Winner's Circle trying to give clues for "Things that are Clean". At one point, he says "A Kleenex", and doesn't immediately get buzzed. He then repeats the word, and gets buzzed the second time. In the post-mortem, Dick says that the judges probably would've let him get away with it the first time, but in repeating the word they felt he was leading too much to the sound.

Moral of the story: they'll let you get away with a similar sound if it doesn't appear as if you're using the sound itself as the clue.

Robert Hutchinson · « **Reply #28 on:** August 03, 2009, 11:13:44 PM »

I suspect that Dick Clark's explanation was not correct there, actually. It just took a moment for the judge to go "oh right, that's where the name Kleenex comes from".

I've seen the judge miss (or allow, depending on your point of view) cases where the clue giver says the entire word as a homonym, simply because it wasn't noticeable or a mistake. Like (and this is not a good example) saying "this would be a little insect that stings you" for "bee", especially if you tend to say "this would be" for every description.

Kevin Prather · « **Reply #29 on:** August 04, 2009, 09:10:27 PM »

In response to the first question, I've seen "Table settings" get buzzed for "Things you place" in a tournament, so the noun/verb argument doesn't hold.