There was also something else in the celebrity chairs that the home viewers could not see, but the celebrities could -- a light-up sign that read "DON'T WRITE" that would be lit up by the same bulbs that lit up the triangle/circle symbols that flanked the celebrity's name in front of him/her.
The purpose of the sign was to alert the celebrity sitting in that position that he or she would not be participating in the play of a Round 2 question after matching the contestant's answer to a Round 1 question; hence, no need to write an answer to it. However, in the MG73 episode I saw today on GSN, JoAnn Pflug (who was sitting in the #4 celebrity position) wrote an answer, anyway, to such a question -- but the contestant won the game with a match with Vicki Lawrence (sitting in the #2 position) before they came to her.
(Of course, since this was the very first MG7x episode, maybe the signs hadn't been installed yet.)
Michael Brandenburg
(Oh, yes, JoAnn Pflug's real name is JoAnn Pflug -- she once said that "Pflug is a name you change from, not to!")