Jeff started hosting when he said "Once you got Things You Tap that did it for you" i think he almost started to look at the camera and says "Theres $20,000, congratulations"
I should mention that the jackpot actually started at $2,000 and went up by $1,000 for every failed attempt. Even in 1978, $2,000 wasn't much in bonus round prize money-- $5,000 would've been a better starting point for the jackpot.
Eliza Taylor, Paige Turco, Marie Avgeropoulos, Bob Morley, Henry Ian Cusick and Christopher Larkin. Those are the Battlestars. And here's the man in command.. Alex Trebek.
Nothing wrong with the synonym rule. The spirit of the game was to give a list of things that fit the subject. Contestants (whether celebrity or not) would always try to bend that rule to get to the word, but descriptions never meant to be done in this part.
I was on the show in 1978 with Geoff and JoAnn Worley. He was terrible, maybe because he had his leg in a cast and had just taken a train in from DC because of a fierce snow storm. Made it to the winner's circle 5 times before I won (and set a new record) with JoAnn. She was a great player. Wish I could find a copy somewhere.
Orion picked up the Heatter-Quigley formats. Heatter and Quigley broke up in 1981. Heatter couldn't revive Squares himself, but he could use portions of Squares' format which he did with this show and later All-Star Blitz(agree-disagree format)
I dont like the scoring format it makes the first 3 rounds pointless, If I were to revive it: 4 words: $500, 3 words: $1,000, 2 words: $2,000 1 word: $5,000, if you failed at a level you could try again with the next celebrity but you stayed at that level.
Some of the sound effects used were from the following: the bell from "Wheel of Fortune", the buzzer from "The Gong Show", and the beep from "Scrabble"...all from NBC.
The exact broadcast date of this show was February 23, 1978 (the end credits have a voiceover promoting the debut of "Quark" the next night). This is the only episode other than the premiere of the show from October 3, 1977 that's in the game show trading circuit (a third episode from March 17, 1978 can be seen at the Museum of TV/Radio in NY).
This was an ABC game, so network rules applied. After the quiz scandals, earning limits were imposed on game shows. ABC and CBS had a limit of $25,000, with ABC mandating contestants retire after $20,000. CBS retirement was $25k in 1972, $35k in 1978, $50k in 1982, $75,000 in 1984 (retire after $50k), $100k in 1986 (retire after $75k), $125k in 1991, and unlimited now (daytime record is $147k, 2006). The early CBS Pyramid made contestants retire after $25k, but later $50k after Larson PYL.
The stupid thing that got me with the daytime 70's version was that if you won at the $10,000 level, you were retired. You actually had to lose twice in the winner's circle to even try for $20,000. Now, does that make any sense? You were essentially punished for being good enough to win on the first try. That's just not fair at all. I don't know who's bright idea that was, but at least on Bill Cullen's nighttime version was like the 80's version. First trip to was worth $10K, the 2nd $25K.
The earlier episodes weren't NEARLY as anal as the later ones (e.g. $100,000 version). And dig Geoff Edwards with his telegrapher's key. I couldn't come up with that under pressure in a million years.
It would have been interesting, after this seeing this clip again, if he could have hosted it at some point. Geoff would have been a perfect fit for this. Not that DC was bad, a syndie version with Geoff would have been nice.
When they came up with 100k Pyramid, Geoff was tied to another Stewart pilot, "50,000 a minute" w Meredith McRae, presumably for ABC. Before that he was doing Starcade and afterward, he would be sent by Stewart to Canada to replace Blake Emmons on Chain Reaction, so he sadly was unavailable, leaving Dick to do double duty.
