P+ Question

[TimK2003]

Was watching the midday airing of Password Plus today (4/27).  During the credits Gene Wood stated that because nobody guessed a puzzle correctly, it was a thrown out, a new puzzle was used and the program edited.

Considering P+ usually leaves in unanswed puzzles, and lets the audience guess them as a no-harm/no-foul, what would necessitate them to edit it out altogether? 

I think Gene said it was originally the first puzzle of the show, so it shouldn't have been a timing issue.

Any theories?

[jcs290]

Taking a wild guess at this. There are some unanswered puzzles that are entertaining to watch, and some that aren’t. There was one where the answer was “candy” and some of the clues were “dandy” “liquor” and “quicker.” Of course everyone in the audience, at home, and Willy Wonka fans far-n-wide were screaming the answer on the inside, while the contestants struggled and strained as time went on.

Then there are some puzzles that are probably complete duds. Poor clues, poor clue giving, poor guessing, and an answer so misconstrued that probably even had Allen scratching his head. Those usually end up on the cutting room floor, I’d imagine.

[chris319]

When in the run was this show produced or aired?

It's hard to remember an incident from 40 years ago, but consider that discarding and completely replaying an unsolved puzzle extends the time in the studio and this costs money. That would explain why this practice was subsequently abandoned.

If a puzzle had bad clues or was otherwise flawed, it didn't make it to the studio and thus wasn't played. I saw to that.

[DoorNumberFour]

Could it be that it was the first puzzle of a game, and leaving it unsolved still rendered the score 0-0?

[Kevin Prather]

Could it be that it was the first puzzle of a game, and leaving it unsolved still rendered the score 0-0?

But historically they didn't edit those out.

[whewfan]

I think what they didn't want was to have more than one unsolved puzzle per show, because having two, especially back to back, would just drag the game out. Also, when Allen blew the solution to the puzzle, those were edited out, because he didn't handle those situations very well. Tom Kennedy and Bert Convy were both a little smoother at handling their own mistakes, so their accidental revealing the solution to the puzzles was left in.

[aaron sica]

When in the run was this show produced or aired?

According to Buzzr's files, it was December 14, 1979.

[chrisholland03]

There's an episode out there from early in the run where it takes 3 puzzles to progress to the next game.  They were definitely more edit-prone toward the end of the run. 

[Neumms]

On Plus, if the partners who guessed the 5th password whiffed on the puzzle solution, it ended, right? On Super today, Bert went to the other team. Did the rule change before Plus ended or come in with Bert?

[ivoryman1986]

On Plus, if the partners who guessed the 5th password whiffed on the puzzle solution, it ended, right? On Super today, Bert went to the other team. Did the rule change before Plus ended or come in with Bert?

That change with the other team getting to guess the puzzle came in when it returned as Super Password. There was a time a few weeks into the format change in which the game took 12 puzzles to finalize the end result in a span of 3 episodes and through the entire Password Plus run, only the team that guessed the 5th password gets 2 chances to guess the puzzle.

[That Don Guy]

Were there that many episodes where they didn't play the end game? For some reason, one thing I remembered happening was, the episodes on pretty much every school holiday started with a new game, included a missed puzzle, and they had to rush to play the end game before the episode ended.

I am thinking that they may cut a missed puzzle out if it would have meant not playing the end game at all that day.