Lesser-known Pyramid rulings

[Twentington]

So we all know that giving the word, or part of it, is a cuckoo/burble on any version of Pyramid. But for some reason, I thought of some rarely-explored wrinkles to that rule.

I remember a contestant once getting the cuckoo on "He has an 'S' on his chest" when describing "Superman", and Dick explaining that you're not allowed to give the first letter; conversely, another contestant was not cuckoo'd for reminding their teammate "No, it begins with [letter]" during a tiebreaker, since they'd already been spotted the first letter at the outset. Also, I remember a contestant getting the cuckoo for saying "It rhymes with [some other word]", followed by Dick explaining that it was an illegal clue.

Does anyone remember these or other similar wrinkles in main-game Pyramid rulings?

[Joe Mello]

IIRC Spelling and rhyming were always no-no's. As for the one tiebreaker you cite, it sounds consistent with every other "starts with" category in that the giver is allowed to say what the word/phrase starts with.

[Twentington]

IIRC Spelling and rhyming were always no-no's. As for the one tiebreaker you cite, it sounds consistent with every other "starts with" category in that the giver is allowed to say what the word/phrase starts with.

I remember a few "You may/may not use ____" reminders, but I don't remember any other time where it came up in a "starts with" category.

[Mr. Matté]

One of the little front game quirks as explained was that you weren't allowed to say "It's like _____," but I think they only enforced that for rhyming words (ie for "Puppy," you can say "It's like a kitten for dogs," but not "It's like 'guppy'").

And there was the inconsistent "no singing" rule from Richardsmid where occasionally the singing was just bleeped out and other times the cuckoo sounded (usually rounds with the addendum at the start that singing was explicitly not allowed).

[Allstar87]

One of the little front game quirks as explained was that you weren't allowed to say "It's like _____," but I think they only enforced that for rhyming words (ie for "Puppy," you can say "It's like a kitten for dogs," but not "It's like 'guppy'").

Luis Avalos got cuckoo'd for something similar. His partner was struggling to guess "beagle", so he went "it's not a bagel, it's a..."

I remember Luis played pretty poorly the entire week, but that incident stuck out most in my mind.

[Adam Nedeff]

I did a runthrough for the GSN Pyramid. The show was loaded with rules about what constituted illegal clues. I can't remember most of them off-hand, but I can remember thinking "It wouldn't occur to me to do any of this anyway." One rule that I do still remember: You can't refer to anything that is present in the studio but not visible on camera. (Example, the word is "Blue," you can't point and say "That security guard over there is wearing this color.")

[whewfan]

You could sneak in a "sounds like" however, if you were to say, for "beagle", "I put lox on my _____", then you could say "it's a breed of dog", and hopefully your partner will catch on.

[Twentington]

You could sneak in a "sounds like" however, if you were to say, for "beagle", "I put lox on my _____", then you could say "it's a breed of dog", and hopefully your partner will catch on.

Which of course can backfire. I remember Vicki Lawrence getting flustered on "whiskers" when the contestant was using clues about beards and whistling, and it just wasn't clicking at all. I think they spent at least 15-20 seconds on that word alone before Vicki pulled a "Screw this, I'm outta here".