Westercon Postscripts: Match Game

When I got to the office this morning, I was relieved to find the bag of Match Game questions and supplies (envelopes, contestant cards, etc.) sitting on my desk. I say relieved because I was starting to worry that I'd accidentally thrown them out during the apartment clean-up the previous weekend, and there is stuff in that bag that I did not want to lose. For example, all of the tie-breakers are in there, as well as a store of questions we might use in another game sometime. Thanks again to Sharon Sbarsky for (a) helping me quickly compose sudden-death tie-breaker questions just before the show when I realized they were missing and (b) hastily cutting a bunch of the 5 x 8 cards down to half that size for use as contestant entries when I realized that the printed 4 x 6 cards weren't in our supply box.

For the next time we do the show, I may change the Bonus Round to require that the contestant do a Celebrity Match (simple questions such as "Captain _____") to win the prize. Not that I don't want to give away the prizes, but I'd also like to put some spark into the round.

As it happens, just as I turned on the TV when I got home yesterday, I caught the last five minutes of a 1970s Match Game episodes that shows that anything could happen. One player scored five matches on a round 1 question (that almost never happens) and the other did not "get" the question at all, and for that matter, neither did the panel: "Sitting Bull said, 'Me not worried that there be no rooms at Holiday Inn, because me got _______.'" I thought that one was way too easy for round 1, not to mention foolish because you should never write a question that telegraphs only one sensible answer. I forget what the contestant answered, but only one of the panelists -- Richard Dawson, natch -- had the answer that I (and Gene, and the audience) were thinking: "reservation." Maybe it's just the BASFA pun experience that sensitizes me to those sort of answers.