I was watching an episode of The $25,000 Pyramid where the celeb gave good clues for WHAT A ... USES, but was unsuccessful. (I want to say it was Jamie Farr.) In the post-mortem, Dick gave the same clues but said \"his ...\" instead of \"a ...,\" and the contestant got it. It seems like this was a rule change compared to the New York era. I have a vague recollection of either Joan Rivers or Patty Duke getting the buzzer for saying \"his\" something in listing THINGS USED BY A CAVEMAN, with the explanation that since \"his\" refers to the caveman, it was descriptive. Can anyone tell me for sure whether the rule was different then?
I don\'t recall that you couldn\'t say \"His....\" in the context of \"His club\". However, I am not sure the judges would allow something like \"His pre-historic club\", because that would be more descriptive.
\"His\" or \"her\" were never disallowed in the L.A. versions. In fact, as early as November 1982, Dick suggests to a contestant who opted to give in the Winner\'s Circle that using \"his\" before the clues would have been a better way to get THINGS USED BY A KNIGHT.
This is the first I\'ve heard of a loosening of the rules after the Pyramid\'s West Coast transplant. I doubt there were any other such rule loosenings in the Bob Stewart era (anyone know of any others, or was this the only one?).
This is the first I\'ve heard of a loosening of the rules after the Pyramid\'s West Coast transplant. I doubt there were any other such rule loosenings in the Bob Stewart era (anyone know of any others, or was this the only one?).
I can\'t think of other specific rule loosenings during the 80s, but there is some evidence of it on the 1973 episodes that circulate. The Ballard-Deacon episode has the strange WC where the category is \"Things You Wrap\", the contestant says \"Things you unwrap\", yet he doesn\'t get credit for it and they end up playing a replacement category. I can\'t get into the judge\'s head 40 years later, but I suppose the logic was that even though the contestant said the key word (\"wrap\"), wrapping and unwrapping aren\'t synonymous.
On one of the Duncan-Asner episodes from five months later, however, one WC category is \"Something You Press\". The contestant replied to Anser\'s clues with \"Something ironed\", which was accepted and won her $10K. That seems to go too far in the opposite direction of permissiveness, since press/iron aren\'t entirely synonymous -- you might press an elevator button, but you wouldn\'t iron it.
In the THINGS YOU WRAP example you mentioned, though, the contestant later says, \"Things with wrapping paper on them.\"