More Concentration!

[Mike Tennant]

I'm hoping for something other than that poor orange Chevette soon!

So was the second Double Play contestant on last night's show. She said she wanted it in blue. Jack told her she could pick whatever color she liked.

[Eric Paddon]

Has anybody kept records on how often there's a car win on this version as opposed to, say, Classic Concentration? My first thought was there would be lots more wins on the latter, but it may be pretty much the same.

In the course of the first 30 episodes aired, I have only five car wins marked.     It was always obvious that they were trying to make it deliberately tough with some of those Double Play puzzles though at least once I remember a case of one that theoretically should have been easy but the contestant whiffed.

[calliaume]

In the course of the first 30 episodes aired, I have only five car wins marked.     It was always obvious that they were trying to make it deliberately tough with some of those Double Play puzzles though at least once I remember a case of one that theoretically should have been easy but the contestant whiffed.

That makes sense. I think I remember Adam Nedeff writing that originally Pyramid was budgeted for two Winner's Circle wins a week, so this was probably about one win a week or so.

Double Play had its fair share of "forget it" puzzles. It also probably had a lower win ratio than Classic when the latter had two car games per day. At least there theoretically anybody should have been able to win (even with the 35-second base time to start), but it was a much tougher game to master--one or two bad calls, the contestant loses track and the whole thing goes to pieces.

[Eric Paddon]

Mentioning Pyramid, I also checked the charts I have for the June-November 1978 run that aired on GSN and allowing for the fact that some weeks were incomplete in that stretch, there was indeed never more than two wins per week, and out of 85 shows or 170 times at the Winners Circle, there were 22 wins (and two of those were Friday $5,000 tie wins with the celebs playing for the two contestants who'd both come back on Monday).

[Bryce L.]

I think I remember Adam Nedeff writing that originally Pyramid was budgeted for two Winner's Circle wins a week, so this was probably about one win a week or so.

Pretty sure it was "one win per eight episodes", since in one of his books he talks about CBS executives freaking out when Rob Reiner managed two wins during the premiere week in 1973.