Sometimes three winner's circles...

[aaron sica]

There are some Pyramid episodes floating around out there (YouTube, tape trades, etc.) where, due to time running short, three winner's circles were played in one show. I recently came across a $25K w/ Bill Cullen in which BOTH front games had tiebreakers. Bill advised that if there wasn't enough time to play the Winner's Circle, each contestant would get $2500. This didn't come to pass - the second game didn't require a second tiebreaker. Did this ever happen on Cullen's version? I figure there might be enough "experts" to know...

[Kevin Prather]

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding your question, but if an episode had three WCs, wouldn't it stand to reason that the previous episode had one?

[snowpeck]

Three WCs would be because the previous episode ran extremely long, not because that episode ran short. So, pretty much every time there were three, the previous episode had only one.

And I know that doesn't answer your questions about Cullen's version, but it answers the question from the subject line about if there were ever an episode with one WC.

[aaron sica]

I probably should have specified on the subject line better...

I specifically meant Cullen's version because all those episodes were self-contained as they were bicycled, and ran weekly. On the daytime version, if only one WC gets played because of time, no big deal - all parties (except for Fridays, where the celebs went to the WC together) came back tomorrow. This was not possible on the syndicated version, which is why I wondered if it ever happened..

[BillCullen1]

IIRC, there was one episode of Cullen's $25K version where they had two tie-breakers in the second game. Cullen announced there was no time to do the WC round, and Larry Linville's contestant partner got $2,500. I don't remember which season. It may have happened on another occasion, but after 35 years, the memory is a bit fuzzy.

[pyrfan]

IIRC, there was one episode of Cullen's $25K version where they had two tie-breakers in the second game. Cullen announced there was no time to do the WC round, and Larry Linville's contestant partner got $2,500. I don't remember which season. It may have happened on another occasion, but after 35 years, the memory is a bit fuzzy.

Looks like it would have been the 1976-1977 season. I've got both 1975-1976 Larry Linville episodes, and that doesn't happen in either. His opponent would have been either Phyllis George or Kate Jackson.

According to my reliable New York sources, there was at least one other time on the syndie that there was no time for a second Winner's Circle. In the first year, Peggy Cass and Ed Asner tied so often in the second round that they didn't even have time to actually break the tie. The two contestants ended up splitting the $2,500. One of them was a young woman named Constance McCashin.


Brendan

[That Don Guy]

IIRC, there was one episode of Cullen's $25K version where they had two tie-breakers in the second game. Cullen announced there was no time to do the WC round, and Larry Linville's contestant partner got $2,500. I don't remember which season. It may have happened on another occasion, but after 35 years, the memory is a bit fuzzy.

Looks like it would have been the 1976-1977 season. I've got both 1975-1976 Larry Linville episodes, and that doesn't happen in either. His opponent would have been either Phyllis George or Kate Jackson.

According to my reliable New York sources, there was at least one other time on the syndie that there was no time for a second Winner's Circle. In the first year, Peggy Cass and Ed Asner tied so often in the second round that they didn't even have time to actually break the tie. The two contestants ended up splitting the $2,500. One of them was a young woman named Constance McCashin

I don't remember there being a "single" $2500 winner on Cullen - usually, if there were two tiebreakers, they rushed the winners over to the WC and managed to squeeze it in.  I do remember at least two episodes where they ended with a tie and the contestants got $1250 each.  For some reason, I was always under the impression that they wouldn't play a tiebreaker unless they thought they had enough time for the tiebreaker and the WC.