Merv Griffin's Crosswords

"Five letters, $200... 'A hung plot element'."

Game Show from that guy who created Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune whose premise involved Ty Treadway trying to be interesting while asking two contestants to solve crossword clues on the buzzer. To make the simple-looking game more confusing, a musical-chairs mechanic involving three "Spoiler" contestants was used for Rounds 2 and 3. The Spoilers could steal questions missed by the two main players and literally switch places with them if successful, cash and all.

In the end, however, Crosswords didn't live up to the high hopes of Merv Griffin (whose original pilot involved three contestants building a cash jackpot that would be split evenly at the end) and was canned after one season. For better or worse, Merv was unable to see the aftermath of it all — he died just five weeks before its debut.


 * Bonus Round: Here's 90 seconds, now finish the rest of the crossword. Victory awarded a trip and...
 * First Taped Episodes: $100 per word solved.
 * First Aired Episodes: $2,000.
 * Post-Getaway, Pre-Microsoft: $5,000.
 * Microsoft-Sponsored: $5,000 and an Xbox 360 game package.
 * Bonus Space: The Crossword Extra (basically their version of a Daily Double) and the Crossword Getaway (get this right and you won a trip). The latter was removed after the first two months (but returned sporadically during the rest of the run) in favor of a few more Extras.
 * Game Show Winnings Cap: One-and-done which, considering the show's budget, wasn't the best idea. "Undefeated" "champions" ended up "retiring" with huge winnings of less than $1,000 (the minimum guaranteed by Merv's other two games). You know you're in trouble when a "big winner" owes you $250.
 * This January 2007 article from Broadcasting & Cable states that the show was, at that stage of development, going to use returning champs. Even the show's synopsis on Program Partners' official website claims to use returning champs!
 * Consolation Prize: A Croton watch with the show's logo on it, the plug for which changed a bit in some episodes.
 * Golden Snitch: Since cash and trips stayed at a podium no matter what, a Spoiler could win the main game on the last clue. Several times, the winning Spoiler did absolutely nothing otherwise.
 * Home Game: Despite the show's failure, various tie-in products were produced, including branded crossword puzzle books, a video game version, and a board game rendition. Sadly, the video games boast a slightly improved format and much higher payouts than the actual show, with the Bonus Round worth a vacation and $25,000.
 * Losing Horns: A type A was used as the time buzzer in the "finish the board" bonus round. How to describe it?... A jet-like "whoosh" sound, along with a wobbly downward sort of sound.
 * Personnel:
 * The Announcer: Edd Hall, formerly of The Tonight Show.
 * Game Show Host: Ty Treadway, a bodybuilder and SoapTalk host who also played on One Life to Live from 2001-04. Hosting this, he showed none of the muscles and was way too peppy.
 * Studio Audience: None whatsoever, and nobody really knows why. Producers did claim the studio was too small to have an audience.
 * Product Placement: The Croton watches were always there, but for a time (nobody really knows how long), Microsoft sponsored the show to promote the Home Game coming out for Xbox Live Arcade. The Extra was renamed the "Crossword Xbox 360 Extra", and an Xbox 360 console was added to the bonus prize package.
 * Rules Spiel: Even that barely changed, and then only to clarify that "some answers may contain two or three words".
 * Unexpectedly Obscure Answer: Some clues were rather vague, and some answers equally obscure. Sure, real crossword puzzles can be like that, but this is a game show with low payouts!

"Ty: You've got no money, but you have your pride."
 * Author Existence Failure: Merv Griffin, who was in the middle of tweaking the format from the pilot (and hopefully into a good format), died five weeks before the premiere. Whether this led to the hoopla you see on this page and its YMMV tab is unknown — yes, the resulting format may have been Merv's intention, but based on said hoopla it appears that the staff ran with a half-finished concept.
 * Catch Phrase: Pretty much everything Ty said, including his Rules Spiel, since he spoke the exact same way every time.
 * "Welcome to Merv Griffin's Crosswords!"
 * "Five letters, $200..."
 * "Say hello to [y]our Spoilers!"
 * "[Name] with a chance to spoil!"
 * "You're going home our champion with $[amount]!"
 * Crossword Puzzle: Uh, duh?
 * Dark Horse Victory: The whole "Spoiler can win on the final clue despite having done nothing beforehand" bit of the game.
 * Epic Fail: January 30, 2008. Five bad contestants, and the winner entered the Bonus Round with minus $250...and proceeded to lose said bonus round (instead getting the Croton watch). From a different viewpoint, this may be the show's defining Funny Moment.


 * From the fans' viewpoint, this trainwreck is the biggest example of everything wrong with the format...and later, when Program Partners put the show on hiatus due to "high production costs" (see the Trivia tab), the shining example of just how that couldn't possibly have been the case.
 * Expy: Of The Cross Wits...minus the celebrities, the hostess, and most of the prize budget.
 * Laugh Track: The studio was apparently too small to have an actual audience, yet considering the rest of this page it seems a bit more likely that the staff didn't want anybody criticizing their lame format.
 * Luck-Based Mission: Performance in the Bonus Round often depended on how much of the puzzle was empty; some days, it was just plain impossible to fill the whole thing in.
 * MacGuffin Delivery Service: What the show frequently wound up becoming; see Golden Snitch and Dark Horse Victory, above.
 * No Budget: Boy, it certainly felt that way sometimes, didn't it?
 * Obvious Beta: The first taped episodes (not the first to air) used Crossword Extras which weren't part of the puzzle, worth $300 in Round 1 and $600 in Round 2. It also gave Bonus Round winners a trip (offered throughout the run) and $100 per word, the latter typically adding up to less than $2,000 (the amount offered for victory in the first aired episodes).
 * Obvious Rule Patch: The ousting of the Crossword Getaway, which removed the two "shelves" from the front-row podiums.
 * Out of Order: Why a lot of this page and its other tabs are a bit vague, and the most likely reason for the show's ratings (hovering around a 1.0). Crosswords eschewed returning champions, and the airings basically played "format hopscotch" beginning in mid-December 2007. Repeats were seen in both single- and double-run markets, to the point where a particular episode was shown twice in a double-run slot. The kicker? A staggering 225 episodes had been recorded, which should have prevented something like this from coming anywhere near close to happening. The double kicker? It was the entire point of doing so many in the first place!
 * The show debuted on September 10, 2007 with the 27th episode recorded; the first taped episodes, using a format that somehow managed to be even cheaper, aired later on. The out-of-order airings were so bad, nobody is sure which episode was the last one taped.
 * Rearrange the Song: Even the Title Theme Tune was done on the cheap, specifically a re-working of the 1980s Wheel of Fortune car cue "Buzzword". Yeah, the Jeopardy! sample is still in there.