ISTR reading (on Wikipedia, so take that for what it’s worth) that people had complaints about the video quality of The Tonight Show back in the early 70’s, when they were still taping over old episodes.  That would seem to back up what you guys are saying.

I'm struggling to find my copy, but one of the first bible oddities that jumps to mind is from Celebrity Name Game: if one team managed to play a perfect round 1 and 2, and racked up the $3,000 before Craig's clue-giving round, the goal would simply increase. I'm 90% certain it was to $4,000 instead of 3, but alas, my copy is on some backup media that's not at arm's reach.

I don't have a copy of that set of rules, but from notes I made at the time, if one team reached $3,000 by the end of round two, then round three wouldn't be played. (I remember seeing some show-logo-backed cards lying around the office with words/phrases printed on them -- I assume the producers would have thrown together some sort of audience game to fill the time. Of course, seeing as no team ever went ten for ten in a single round over the course of three seasons, it was a safe bet they wouldn't need the backup game.) It was only in the extremely unlikely event of a $3,000–$3,000 tie at the end of round two that the goal for round three would be increased to $4,000.

At least by the time I was doing it, he was essentially reading a mini Fame Game (emphasis on mini) off his monitor. My memory tells me he was ad-libbing around that, but namely for color, and less for fact(s).

I wasn't around for season one, but I think during that first season, Craig was left on his own to completely ad-lib the round three clues. By the time season two started, he was given clues to read to help keep him from giving an inaccurate description that a contestant could claim led them away from the correct answer. But yeah, if he wanted to go "off script," he was free to do so.

So a legal play would be to spin X00, call consonant at X00 each, buy vowels, then call another consonant at X00?

Correct. It’s not in the rules, and they paused to think, but confirmed yes.

Regarding the Round 3 rule in CNG - I don’t understand how they would explain that on air. “You got the $3,000, so now we’re raising the bar.” I’d rather see what they did on Karn/O’Hurley Feud when a team reached 300 after question 3 - just break up Fast Money into two segments. (Nowadays, they switch out the question for one to ensure this won’t happen).

Quote from: mystery7 on September 25, 2025, 04:46:33 PM

All of them. I'll have to ask my sources what the truth is since the announcement about the switch was made less than 15 minutes before air.

Oh my. I'll have to look that up. I don't care who you are, that's funny right there.

The timestamp on the tweet announcing the special was getting kicked to YouTube was 11:24pm Eastern. It then racked up a whopping 26,000 views over the weekend. Now to take a big sip.of.ginger beer and see what kind of online numbers Jimmy Kimmel's Tuesday night monologue did.

Quote from: TLEberle on September 24, 2025, 06:35:41 PM

A rules Bible would be meant to cover what do you do in edge cases like revealing the wrong monitor, or stunt equipment falls apart. Since most game show contestants are agreeable and desire piles of loot, you don’t really need to devote a ton of time to “whoever was last in control shall choose the next category except in case of sudden intestinal mutiny or violent death in which case the standby paramedic shall choose.”

I don't know what you mean by this, and I'd be curious if you could rephrase -- because it sounds like the first observation contradicts the second.

I'm struggling to find my copy, but one of the first bible oddities that jumps to mind is from Celebrity Name Game: if one team managed to play a perfect round 1 and 2, and racked up the $3,000 before Craig's clue-giving round, the goal would simply increase. I'm 90% certain it was to $4,000 instead of 3, but alas, my copy is on some backup media that's not at arm's reach.

-Jason

Semi-related question - how much was Craig guided with coming up with clues vs. coming up with his own?