In response to the following from "whewfan" in this thread:
Of course, he [Barry] also always asked the players if they could come back to the next show, something he always asked contestants on Twenty-One and other shows he hosted.
I'm old enough to remember when he would ask that question to the contestants on
Tic-Tac-Dough at the end of a program. Those were the days when the show aired live (except on the West Coast, which got kinescopes in those pre-videotape days) and contestants
did have to "come back tomorrow" in order to continue an interrupted game on
TTD and other game shows of that time.
I think there were a few cases in which a
TTD contestant couldn't "come back tomorrow" and the opposing player ended up being the new (or continuing) champion, though I don't recall exactly how they handled the potential prize involved (the existing game pot on
TTD in this case). But this was also the time when a player, if he did not "retire" voluntarily as champion on either
TTD or
Twenty-One, woud go into the next game with at least some of his/her past winnings at risk, and if he/she lost that game, that player would lose an amount from his prior winnings equal to the amount his/her opponent won in that game. (Biggest such loss I recall from the daytime
TTD of that time: A contestant ran up $9200 in prior winnings and chose to continue against the next opponent, only to have that competition go through eight ties with a "carryover pot" each time before he finally lost $8500 of his $9200 to his opponent in the ninth game.)
For those who might have the video that was produced from the old kinescope of the infamous
Twenty-One match between Herbert Stempel and Charles Van Doren, you saw that practice in effect on that show -- in this case, Stempel, who had $69,500 in prior winnings before his match with Van Doren, ended up losing $20,000 of it to Van Doren, leaving him with a going-away total of $49,500.
Michael Brandenburg
(Now I see that
Twenty-One is back in Canada, with much smaller stakes -- but I don't think its going to make it.)
