Pass the Buck

[TLEberle]

Somebody is making the choice. It depends on who it ends up being for Pass the Buck, Rodeo Drive, It’s Anybody’s Guess or even Chain Reaction. The one issue with nominated lists is how long can a show go on—this was a question similar to Pointless. It may be that nobody has heard of Port Moresby, but if one smart aleck names it, the capital of PNG goes from a jackpot feeder or winner to a one point answer.

[clemon79]

Endgame wise, I've thought about pairing up the contestant with a random/arbitrary studio audience member so that it's still "guess what the stranger picked" but it's a less stingy stranger.

You essentially just described the Super Match, except they get as many guesses as they want in I-can't-remember-how-many-seconds-it-was.

I figure it's probably going to have to be much lower stakes, but I'm fine with that.

I'm not sure how it gets lower than $5000 in the 1970s on network TV without looking super cheap or like early-'70s Pyramid.

Let me make it clear: I like the show too. I like it as a party game. I just recognize the holes in the format big enough to drive a Mack truck through, and I think the fact that they just aren't fixable in a practical way is the reason we're not waxing poetic about its fifteen-year run today.

[chrisholland03]

Speaking of driving a truck through...

I 100% see PtB as a Bill Cullen vehicle.  The format was a loose construct that allowed him to quip, banter, and engage the contestants.

[Clay Zambo]

Having just watched the GSV pilot of "It's Anybody's Guess"—a show I had utterly forgotten about—it occurs to me that this show may have solved the problem of obscure answers to lists, since the point wasn't so much that audience panelists naming the items as that the contestants had to predict whether or not they'd be named. I'm a fan.

[TimK2003]

Speaking of driving a truck through...

I 100% see PtB as a Bill Cullen vehicle.  The format was a loose construct that allowed him to quip, banter, and engage the contestants.

ISTR a weird maingame round where the contestants had to come up wirh a famous entertainment quote, but in order to survive, BIll Cullen had to correctly identify the person who said it.

I know Bill was very knowledgable in entertainment and always wanted the contestants to do good, but if he would brain fart on an easy quote, a contestant could be penalized for a perfectly good response.