For the record, the lowest winning total I've found in the Toss-Up era is $6,550.
Is that lowest winning for the whole day? I know one $100k winner won only $5,500 in the front game.
Yes. I know there were quite a few episodes until about season 23 (when they started having Prize Puzzles daily) where someone won only $5K-$7K in the main game, but won the Bonus Round. The lowest post-BR total I've found since then is $7,907 (in a pretty dismal game where they racked up four Bankrupts in the Jackpot round alone).
I can't remember for sure if they did it their first time at Radio City (and all the Youtube videos to check such have been taken off), but I'm leaning towards it not being the case.
Another thing I noticed is that, until 1989, almost any bonus puzzle more than two words long would be split across three rows, even if it could fit legibly on two. (I even saw the answer WIN LOSE OR DRAW use
all four lines.) The next-to-last Radio City episode in 1988 had such a three-line puzzle, although all the two-liners I saw from those weeks were in the middle. (However, the camera angles were a bit wonky.)
Three-line bonus puzzles pretty much stopped after season 6, although I've found at least three after that point. This could be because starting in season 7, they started using
much shorter answers in the BR. I chuckle a little when I see someone make it to the BR on a mid-90s episode and their bonus puzzle's only three or four letters long.
/and none of said letters are RSTLNE
//nor the CDMA that they picked
ETA: Did they do the "top two rows" thing on the season 13 road shows (Seattle, Hawaii, Atlanta)? I know they didn't on the San Francisco episodes in season 14.
