[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Aug 31 2003, 07:52 PM\'] What makes it odd compared to today is that play moved so slowly that they routinely NEEDED to go to a commercial in the middle of a round. BTW, I remember that they originally didn't actually show the contestants turning their backs, but somebody (probably Chuck) said in an interview that it was always the practice. [/quote]
The commercial in the middle of a puzzle was a part of the NBC Daytime run from 1975-89, stopping when the show moved to CBS. Some of the earliest syndicated episodes had commercial breaks in the middle of a puzzle as well.