Games That Got "Smarter" (Though The Contestants Did Not)

[Jay Temple]

My theory is that second-year contestants on any show will generally be much better than first-year contestants simply because they've had a chance to watch the game. The same applies to anything new to a show (like the Bonus Sprint).

[HYHYBT]

Absolutely. Early on, lots of people took Sprint words out to the last letter. Later, they'd buzz-in and get it on the clue alone. Plus people started going for bonus money specifically rather than happen into it all the time.

I didn't see the last year of the original run, but by Scrabble '93, Chuck Woolery wouldn't *let* players buzz in if there was only one stopper left and money still available.

[gameboy2000]

I didn't see the last year of the original run, but by Scrabble '93, Chuck Woolery wouldn't *let* players buzz in if there was only one stopper left and money still available.

That is because the pink and blue squares only added to the jakcpot that the Bonus Sprint was played for.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'gameboy2000\' post=\'153774\' date=\'May 30 2007, 03:41 AM\']

I didn't see the last year of the original run, but by Scrabble '93, Chuck Woolery wouldn't *let* players buzz in if there was only one stopper left and money still available.

That is because the pink and blue squares only added to the jakcpot that the Bonus Sprint was played for.
[/quote]
Way to miss the point, there, chief.

What HYHYBT was saying was that the quality of play had improved so much that at that point that fishing was a basic strategic point, and Chuck wouldn't allow players to solve early (figuratively, of course; I'm sure if a player insisted on it, he wouldn't have stopped them) when they stood to lose nothing by going fishing for pink & blue squares.

Now, if you're saying that the reason he was so overt in doing so was because it never benefited a contestant directly, instead, it benefited the contestant pool as a whole, that makes a little more sense.

[Don Howard]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'153790\' date=\'May 30 2007, 11:38 AM\']
if you're saying that the reason he was so overt in doing so was because it never benefited a contestant directly, instead, it benefited the contestant pool as a whole, that makes a little more sense
[/quote]
I can see this, especially since in some cases Chuck may have wanted to get it off $1000 or some other pitiful amount.

[WhammyPower]

Bumping this topic to add another show to this mix...

Comparing the Ludden shows that GSN is currently airing vs. the Kennedy shows, Password Plus seems to be another good example.  The puzzles seemed relatively easy (most could be easily guessed within the first 3 clues), whereas with the Kennedy puzzles, good ones may not have been solved at all.

[JasonA1]

This is basically me repeating things I think I said here before, but for a good portion of Allen's tenure on P+, they had the clues arranged much differently from how they would be later. If the puzzle were "American Idol," they'd have SEACREST-SINGING-FOX-TELEVISION-COMPETITION, whereas later they'd be reversed. I mean, once you see Seacrest, you might as well guess Idol, and it's a shoe-in on word 2 unless you just never heard of the show.

Then I watched a few episodes from the Steve Allen/Jayne Meadows week of Kennedy's run, and roughly 5 out of 10 puzzles I saw went unsolved. As I recall, the five words didn't really lead you to one solution. Once "Super Password" came along, they started to get really tricky with the puzzles, almost deliberately leading you astray until the 3rd-5th words came in to make the early ones make sense. It was a good idea, but the contestants (and a good chunk of the celebrities) weren't very good at all, and would give great guesses like "JFK" when the word "Kennedy" was up.

-Jason