Password: Difference between revisions
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Bob Stewart created this [[Mark Goodson]]-Bill Todman [[Game Show]] in 1961 after the company searched for parlor games that could be played for modest stakes following the quiz show scandals. Stewart suggested a game whose players asked themselves a simple question — "How well can I communicate with just one word?"
''Password'' debuted in October 1961 on [[CBS]] as the first game to have celebrity guests as teammates for civilian contestants. Allen Ludden left ''General Electric College Bowl'' to moderate ''Password'', which ran until 1967 on CBS daytime and
Ludden returned as host of [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]]'s 1971-75 [[Revival]], which went through two [[Theme Tune|Theme Tunes]] and two sets. The changes were made for ''Password All-Stars'' (November 1974 to February 1975), after which members of the public were once again allowed to compete.
Two more daytime revivals appeared on [[NBC]] — ''Password Plus'' from 1979-82, and ''Super Password'' from 1984-89. Both of these series used Password Puzzles, wherein each round consisted of five passwords that described another person, place, or thing; for instance, "Wiki", "Lampshade", "Hanging", "Topics", and "[[Egregious]]" might be used to describe [[TV Tropes]]. These versions also featured a [[Bonus Round]] ("Alphabetics" on ''Plus'', "Super Password" on ''Super'') where the celebrity had to describe ten passwords, each beginning with consecutive letters of the alphabet, in 60 seconds for a bonus of at least $5,000.
In June 2008, CBS debuted ''Million-Dollar Password'' for a brief
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** [[Studio Audience]]
* [[Show the Folks At Home]]: "The Password is..."
* [[Unexpectedly Obscure Answer]]: While the main-game passwords on ''Plus'' and ''Super'' were sometimes a bit tough, they paled in comparison to the Cashword. Some of these words were nothing short of impossible to convey using just one-word clues, even given ''three'' chances
** Three clues: Dice; Checkers; fronT? (read that last clue with a rising tone, as to convey an opposite).
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** Tom Kennedy once played as a celebrity partner on ''Plus'' in March 1982, with his brother [[Concentration|Jack]] [[Now You See It|Narz]] hosting. It was the last time Narz emceed a game show.
* [[Expy]]: ''You Don't Say'', another word-association game which debuted in 1963, began with a virtually-identical set but quickly moved the host's podium from the center to the far left.
** Also, ''The Object Is,'' a short-lived 1963 ABC game show (the first hosted by Dick Clark) which was a curious
** More blatant is Goodson-Todman's ''[[Snap Judgment]]'' (one of the only Goodson-Todman games that has been entirely wiped), which debuted on April 11, 1967. For most of its run, ''Snap'' was a contrived word-association game of its own, but for the last three months (December 23, 1968 to March 28, 1969) it was [[Retool|Re Tooled]] as a 100% clone of original-recipe ''Password''.
* [[Grand Finale]]: The last episode of ''ABC'' in 1975 featured a final game played by four Goodson-Todman staffers. Neither team got to the normal format's 50-point goal.
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** December 23, 1980: It took nearly five minutes to get ''Plus'' back on track after Tom Kennedy cracked up over [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MlOkZCms-w Dick Martin's reaction] to giving "France" as a clue for "French". In 2008, Kennedy donated a copy of the unedited master tape to the Television Production Music Museum, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee2fFYGq7lY and] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDLZG9Wl_BQ it] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejQa0W8TzxA quickly] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxauU04KM3Y spread] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzRnANsTiJ4 to] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8T3qstZ6ak YouTube.]
** January 1982: During one puzzle, the word "Hairy" was ruled unacceptable for the password "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Rlrx-AQbQ Harry]". Marcia Wallace contested this (since homophones of words are accepted), so the next day Tom hauled out a chalkboard and gave everyone a phonics lesson.
* [[Literal-Minded]]: Following a celebrity accidentally giving the Cashword as a clue on ''Super'', Bert asked the producer what they did in that situation. Upon being told to "throw it out," he picked up the Magic Toaster and threw it behind him, asking what to do next as he did so. The Toaster broke as it hit the floor. Cue an [[Oh Crap]] look on Bert's face when the celebrity informed him that he broke the Toaster. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nv8UMIWmPE#t=3m21s Here's a link.]
* [[Negated Moment of Awesome]]: A winner on ''Super'' walked away with $58,600 (including a record-setting $55,000 jackpot in the [[Bonus Round]])... but it was later revealed that he was a convict who had entered the show with a pseudonym. More information [https://web.archive.org/web/20160307012154/http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1988-01-16/news/0010150272_1_super-password-ketchem-patrick-quinn here.]
* [[Nintendo Hard]]: The time frames and/or word difficulty on ''Million-Dollar'', coupled with the inane "clue-response-clue" rule (see below) and forcing each half-hour to be self-contained, meant there was no way anybody was going to win the Million.
* [[Obvious Rule Patch]]: Several.
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* [[Oh Crap]]: Bert's reaction to blurting out the password, which he did quite often. He gets a particularly good moment [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-51t1-EBoQ here.]
* [[Progressive Jackpot]]: On ''Password Plus'' and ''Super Password'':
** On ''Plus'', late in the series' run, an
** On ''Super'', the accruing bonus round jackpot was returned; the top value it reached was $55,000. In addition, a new mini-game called "Ca$hword" was added early in the run; a contestant who won the second puzzle was given a chance to guess a difficult password (using a maximum of three clues) for a cash bonus of $1,000 plus $1,000 for each show unclaimed. The top amount the "Ca$hword" reached was $17,000.
* [[Replaced the Theme Tune]]: The ABC version changed its set and theme tune for the transition to ''Password All-Stars''. Robert Israel's synthesized theme was replaced by Bob Cobert's "Bicentennial Funk".
** In 1963, the first theme-- Kurt Rehfeld's ''Holiday Jaunt''--was replaced with a Bob Cobert composition many believe to be called "You Have The Password
* [[Running Gag]]: It was common on ''Super'' for someone to throw a roll of tape at Bert if they thought he was on the verge of blurting out the answer.
** Also on ''Super'', if neither Bert nor the teams knew the answer to a puzzle, Bert would sometimes ask announcer Gene Wood if he knew, to which Gene would always
* [[Scenery Porn]]: All of the show's sets were bright and colorful with attention paid to every detail (including the parts not normally seen on-camera)...except the ''Million-Dollar'' set. It might have been cool to some, but it certainly wasn't bright or colorful.
* [[Shout-Out]]: Every once in a while the writers included a password that had a meaning for one of the celebs, such as "[[I've Got a Secret|Secret]]" for Betsy Palmer, "Crane" for Bob Crane, "Ukulele" for Arthur Godfrey, "Court" for ''[[The Defenders]]''' E.G. Marshall, "Huddle" for Frank Gifford — and, perhaps most famously, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAyJPpjqujw "Skipper"] for Bob Denver.
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[[Category:Trope Makers]]
[[Category:Password]]
[[Category:TV Series]]
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