P+/Super Password question...

[weaklink75]

I was watching some episodes of each lately, and I thought they used A-J in the endgame a lot; so I ended up going through about 200 bonus rounds (about split between the two shows, which is approximately 10% of the total bonus rounds between the two shows). Sure enough, A-J came up about 25% of the time (which makes sense, as based on the number of words starting with any given letter, the spread A-J has the best average). Anything with the LMN or RST spread came up pretty often as well. The only one of the 17 possible 10-letter spreads that didn't come up in the eps I watched was O-X; Q-Z seemed to be the combination to get the least common letters (since Z is only in that one spread). Does anyone remember any P+/SP episode that had a O-X endgame?

[Bryce L.]

I've not seen one, but then again I've never honestly tracked that either.

Though I do have a question for Chris... when the show was overbudget, were there any specific "showstopper" words you guys would deliberately use in Alphabetics to try to force a loss?

[TLEberle]

From what I recall their budget was less than $25,000 and they were typically able to keep it to four wins and two near misses on a regular basis, so they didn't need stopper words as opposed to Super Password that wanted those big jackpots.

[MSTieScott]

I would imagine that they wouldn't want to use O–X because the difficulty of the last word should feel satisfying, given that it's frequently the word that pays out the money. And the X words they would be likely to use in the bonus round were either too easy (XYLOPHONE, XEROX, X-RAY) or way too difficult (XENOPHOBIA? XERXES?), with no middle ground.

Maybe XAVIER could have been a good game-ender.

[Jimmy Owen]

I would imagine that they wouldn't want to use O–X because the difficulty of the last word should feel satisfying, given that it's frequently the word that pays out the money. And the X words they would be likely to use in the bonus round were either too easy (XYLOPHONE, XEROX, X-RAY) or way too difficult (XENOPHOBIA? XERXES?), with no middle ground.

Maybe XAVIER could have been a good game-ender.

. Francis.....

[Fedya]

CUGAT.

[Otm Shank]

Either I read it in the P+ bible or I've been sitting on my brain, but I think they had a provision to "wrap around" to the front of the alphabet. I don't recall it ever being implemented, though. An Alphabetics of U-V-W-X-Y-Z-A-B-C-D-E certainly would have signaled a busted budget.

Strikethrough on the ex post rectum, what I remembered was they could skip uncommon letters, but as far as I know, they never did. From the bible:

The ten words begin with ten consecutive
letters of the alphabet.  Because so few words start with
certain letters, e.g., Q and X, we may play a game such as
P - Z  announcing that we will skip the letter X.

[chris319]

The Alphabetics rounds were set up by Bobby Sherman without much collaboration. I'm not aware that he had any special "stopper" words.

The prize expenditures on P+ were pretty level at $22,000 per week. That includes the main game and Alphabetics.