Barry Joker's Wild Mystery Category ?

[rjaguar3]

Or maybe they determined that any single category never went through more than, say, five questions in a game (certainly not a potpourri category, and certainly not a category with doubled values that would end the game more quickly), so they never expected to need a backup plan.

Should probably check the Bing Crosby and horse racing episode to see how often those categories were actually picked. (They were picked frequently enough for Barry to riff on them, so it might be a good estimate of the most questions used in a single category in one game.)

Just watched the game again. It went 14 spins, with Bing Crosby chosen 6 times, horse racing 4 times (one of which was off the board), natural wonders twice, religion once, capitals once. So even so, Bing Crosby didn't get picked 7 times as would be required to exhaust the mystery category.

[Otm Shank]

Here's a case where there was 7 questions in a category, assisted by a super-easy topic and a tossed question.



I'm sure the what-if was played out in the office the day the Mystery category was proposed. The simple resolution would be to have Jack restock the slots on air if there isn't a break opportunity. I can't see them closing off a category, but I suppose that's a possibility

[Adam Nedeff]

Chiming in here. I've worked with a former Joker writer, Terry McDonnell, who filled me in on this. Now to be clear, this won't answer all of our questions, but I can tell you this for sure...

The non-Mystery Category categories had FOURTEEN questions apiece. After each five-episode taping, the writers wrote questions to bring every category back up to 14. According to Terry, when he worked there, neither the show bible nor the contestant briefing even made mention of "In the event that we run out of questions," because the feeling was there was no way it was ever going to happen. Terry's departure from the company actually coincided with the arrival of the Mystery Category and before the introduction of Fast Forward, but I'm presuming the regular categories continued to have 14.

[KrisW73]

Chiming in here. I've worked with a former Joker writer, Terry McDonnell, who filled me in on this. Now to be clear, this won't answer all of our questions, but I can tell you this for sure...

The non-Mystery Category categories had FOURTEEN questions apiece. After each five-episode taping, the writers wrote questions to bring every category back up to 14. According to Terry, when he worked there, neither the show bible nor the contestant briefing even made mention of "In the event that we run out of questions," because the feeling was there was no way it was ever going to happen. Terry's departure from the company actually coincided with the arrival of the Mystery Category and before the introduction of Fast Forward, but I'm presuming the regular categories continued to have 14.

Interesting - thanks for sharing that!!

[TLEberle]

I remembered the number fourteen, and with the number of defined categories (each with their own comic image) it isn’t like you can’t direct the writers room to plus up on Biggest and the Best and Fact or Foto tout suite, and leave those out of game packs until they are filled.

[Joe Mello]

The non-Mystery Category categories had FOURTEEN questions apiece. [...] Terry's departure from the company actually coincided with the arrival of the Mystery Category and before the introduction of Fast Forward, but I'm presuming the regular categories continued to have 14.

Now I'm wondering if the reason they came up with 7 questions was because the values would be doubled, so they thought they'd only need half the material.

[rjaguar3]

Now I'm wondering if the reason they came up with 7 questions was because the values would be doubled, so they thought they'd only need half the material.

I suspect more for aesthetics than any other reason (too cumbersome to display any more questions at the host lectern). Also the available numbers need to be clearly visible to the contestants (or there needs to be a supplemental off-stage indicator like the one for Academic Challenge I describe below).

Although Academic Challenge in Cleveland had ten packets displayed in two rows on the host lectern. A behind-the-scenes video also showed the off-camera lightboard with the packet numbers available lit up. In 1981 (when the video was filmed) they had gone from three packet rounds per team to two, so packets 8, 9, and 10 were unavailable (but the envelopes were still on the host lectern).

[TimK2003]

The non-Mystery Category categories had FOURTEEN questions apiece. [...] Terry's departure from the company actually coincided with the arrival of the Mystery Category and before the introduction of Fast Forward, but I'm presuming the regular categories continued to have 14.

Now I'm wondering if the reason they came up with 7 questions was because the values would be doubled, so they thought they'd only need half the material.

Depending on how a contestant reaches the Mystery Category on their spin, there is anywhere between $700 and $2800 TOTAL up for grabs within a single game (7x $100 to 7x $400).

Assuming a match yields nothing but Mystery spin choices, the average value for using all seven questions is $1400, so you really need some really dumb contestants and/or some unusually difficult questions to not come up with a $500+ champ before exhausting all seven questions.