This is the first I\'ve heard of a loosening of the rules after the Pyramid\'s West Coast transplant. I doubt there were any other such rule loosenings in the Bob Stewart era (anyone know of any others, or was this the only one?).
I can\'t think of other specific rule loosenings during the 80s, but there is some evidence of it on the 1973 episodes that circulate. The Ballard-Deacon episode has the strange WC where the category is \"Things You Wrap\", the contestant says \"Things you unwrap\", yet he doesn\'t get credit for it and they end up playing a replacement category. I can\'t get into the judge\'s head 40 years later, but I suppose the logic was that even though the contestant said the key word (\"wrap\"), wrapping and unwrapping aren\'t synonymous.
On one of the Duncan-Asner episodes from five months later, however, one WC category is \"Something You Press\". The contestant replied to Anser\'s clues with \"Something ironed\", which was accepted and won her $10K. That seems to go too far in the opposite direction of permissiveness, since press/iron aren\'t entirely synonymous -- you might press an elevator button, but you wouldn\'t iron it.
