I'm with you on the agony of the audience being way ahead of the clueless contestants, Chuck - or as I like to refer to it, Trivia Trap Syndrome :-)
Another good point about the lack of humor - I never regarded Everybody's/Hollywood as having much humor at all. The point was to guess the item talked about as fast as you could within a time limit, so the clues had to be more direct than funny/obtuse. If the pilot of Everybody's was one referred to some time back when Barry was with Goodson (where Jerome Schnurr also worked), and someone complained about Barry scripting reponses (with Barry saying, It's only the pilot - who cares?) - I can see where the producers would like to have the option of editorial control so that you could get enough diverse clues. If you went up to 10 different people and said, "Give me a statement about turkey", I'll bet at least 8 would say "We serve it every Thanksgiving." I can't see a cheap outfit doing what Goodson did - shoot hundreds of hours of tape for an "honest" show. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if people were either encouraged to give several responses, or even be asked to read suggested clues to assure variety and a long-enough tape of clues. Personally, I don't consider that "rigging", since the on-stage contestants are not tipped off. Child's Play had more of a "cuteness" factor - but the games were very similar. Not like we've never seen variations of other shows before, right? :-)
