Password Plus 4/8--Judging?

[calliaume]

Three questionable calls within five minutes with (toupee-free) John Astin, and his partner, Chou Chou. (I'm not going to block it with a spoiler reverse for a 41-year-old episode.)

1) For the password "Peter," John gives the clue "Pierre." It's accepted. Is giving a word in a different language as a clue acceptable? (We know about France/French.)

2) For the password "relatives," Chou Chou gives the clue "relations" (it may have been vice versa). I'm not 100 percent convinced the two words aren't derived from one another (although I can't find anything to confirm it in MW).

3) For the password "airplane," John gave the answer "plane" and didn't get a form-of-the-word signal (so of course nobody guessed it; the other contestant tried "longer" and "extended" as the clues, thoroughly confusing Patty Duke).

Am I missing something? The show had been running at least nine months by that point; I would think the judging would have been a little quicker.

[KrisW73]

I can speak for the first question as a couple of nights ago I heard Espanol given for Spanish.

[Blanquepage]

1) I believe giving the password itself in another language was still legal throughout Password Plus, however it was illegal on Super Password.
I distinctly recall Tom Poston giving "Verte" for "Green" and getting zapped.

2) They're both based on the word "relate," but not considered forms of each other? Just my guess, maybe Chris could chime in.

3) No way to prove John wasn't using a homophone of "plane", perhaps? Technically, he could have also been saying "plain" or "plein"

[JMFabiano]

Also, form of the word wasn't given a formal alarm until Super Password ("whoop-whoop")  I don't recall if PW+ used any kind of off-screen prompt when this happened.  Usually they tended to just accept most FOTW answers and gave the correct bell.  Which I guess is what didn't happen here.

[BillCullen1]

I believe Allen explained once on PP that Dr. Reason A. Goodwin was no longer there, so people like Howard Felscher were making decisions  on the fly. That would account for inconsistencies in the judging.

[Eric Paddon]

I think because they wanted to highlight the new puzzle format of the show so much, they weren't anxious to bog the password playing down with the precision that they did in the previous version.  Of course after a bit they decided they needed to toughen the password playing a little bit by eliminating opposites as legitimate clues.

[calliaume]

I believe Allen explained once on PP that Dr. Reason A. Goodwin was no longer there, so people like Howard Felscher were making decisions on the fly. That would account for inconsistencies in the judging.

In The Box, Bob Stewart was quoted as saying the first time a ruling from Dr. Goodwin was needed, he... opened the dictionary and looked up the word. "We could have hired a girl to do that twice as fast."

Inconsistencies in judging would, to me, be unacceptable. You can't have a form of the word be okay one week and not the next.

[thomas_meighan]

Three questionable calls within five minutes with (toupee-free) John Astin, and his partner, Chou Chou. (I'm not going to block it with a spoiler reverse for a 41-year-old episode.)

1) For the password "Peter," John gives the clue "Pierre." It's accepted. Is giving a word in a different language as a clue acceptable? (We know about France/French.)

2) For the password "relatives," Chou Chou gives the clue "relations" (it may have been vice versa). I'm not 100 percent convinced the two words aren't derived from one another (although I can't find anything to confirm it in MW).

3) For the password "airplane," John gave the answer "plane" and didn't get a form-of-the-word signal (so of course nobody guessed it; the other contestant tried "longer" and "extended" as the clues, thoroughly confusing Patty Duke).

Am I missing something? The show had been running at least nine months by that point; I would think the judging would have been a little quicker.

My personal take, if I were judging:
--"Peter" and "Pierre" are acceptable for each other since they're just different enough not to give the password away. Names are a minefield that would probably have to be judged on a case-by-case basis; if the password were "Henry" I would accept "Enrico" or "Enrique" but not "Henri."

--"Relative" and "relation" are probably OK for each other. Dictionary.com actually gives different Latin words as origins for the two ("relativus" and "relatio", which have the "re-" root in common that often denotes "back" or "again")

--"Plane" really should have been accepted as correct for "airplane," given the confusion that resulted when it wasn't taken.

Sometimes it seemed like they couldn't decide how strict to be. There was an incident in January 1982 with Marcia Wallace, Bert Convy, and the password "Harry." After the clues "hirsute" and "furry," the contestant guessed "Harry," which first was accepted and then rejected based on a slight pronunciation difference. They even rolled out a chalkboard with the different pronunciations -- trouble is, not all parts of the US recognize that difference (see this explanation; coincidentally; "marry" was also part of the puzzle!). Marcia tried to argue on that basis, but to no avail.

See .

(Actually, no one ended up guessing the puzzle in question, so it was a somewhat academic matter.)

[Eric Paddon]

In a similar vein, I still have a memory of watching a lost Pyramid show from 1976 when Tony Randall was trying to describe the word "weatherman" and he started to say, "He tells you whether or not...." and got cuckooed.    He then threw a big tantrum with the judge and I remember him saying angrily, "There is a difference between WEATH-er and WHETH-er!"    Then there was a sound of a ding as the point was given back and the audience gave a big roaring ovation.

[Nick]

I believe Allen explained once on PP that Dr. Reason A. Goodwin was no longer there, so people like Howard Felscher were making decisions  on the fly. That would account for inconsistencies in the judging.

But why didn't they have a Dr. Reason A. Goodwin or Robert Stockwell for Password Plus?  Were game shows too "bread and circus" by the late '70s to have academics involved anymore, or was there another reason?

In a similar vein, I still have a memory of watching a lost Pyramid show from 1976 when Tony Randall was trying to describe the word "weatherman" and he started to say, "He tells you whether or not...." and got cuckooed.    He then threw a big tantrum with the judge and I remember him saying angrily, "There is a difference between WEATH-er and WHETH-er!"    Then there was a sound of a ding as the point was given back and the audience gave a big roaring ovation.

Which was correct because whether and weather are two different words, and Tony Randall was a competent enough game player that he wouldn't try to be sneaky by using whether to communicate weather, and whether is clearly what he said here.

And then there was that time they got trigger-happy on LeVar Burton for saying "34 across" on "Things in a Crossword Puzzle".