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Barry Joker's Wild Mystery Category ?
rjaguar3:
--- Quote from: MSTieScott on September 21, 2024, 04:41:22 PM ---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.
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote from: Adam Nedeff on September 22, 2024, 03:14:48 AM ---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.
--- End quote ---
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 gam3 packs until they ar3 filled.
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