| Password Plus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Game show |
| Created by | Bob Stewart |
| Developed by | Robert Sherman |
| Directed by | George Choderker[1] |
| Presented by | |
| Announcer | |
| Theme music composer | Score Productions[1] |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of episodes | 801 (1 unaired) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Howard Felsher[1] |
| Producer | Robert Sherman[1] |
| Production locations | NBC Studios Burbank, California |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 22 minutes |
| Production company | Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | January 8, 1979 (1979-01-08) – March 26, 1982 (1982-03-26) |
| Related | |
| |
| Super Password | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Game show |
| Created by | Bob Stewart |
| Directed by | George Choderker[2] |
| Presented by | Bert Convy |
| Announcer | |
| Theme music composer | Score Productions[2] |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of episodes | 1,151 |
| Production | |
| Executive producers |
|
| Producers |
|
| Production locations |
|
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 22 minutes |
| Production company | Mark Goodson Television Productions |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | September 24, 1984 (1984-09-24) – March 24, 1989 (1989-03-24) |
| Related | |
| |
Password Plus andSuper Password are American TVgame shows that aired separately between 1979 and 1989. Both shows were revivals ofPassword, which originally ran from 1961 to 1975 in various incarnations. With only subtle differences between them, bothPassword Plus andSuper Password retained the format of play as their predecessor, with two teams of two people each—a celebrity and a contestant—attempting to guess a mystery word using only one-word clues. New features included a series of five passwords as clues to an overarching puzzle for the teams to solve, as well as abonus round requiring the winning team to guess ten passwords under a time limit to win a cash jackpot.
Password Plus andSuper Password aired onNBC, and were taped on Stage 3 atNBC Studios inBurbank, California.Password Plus was aMark Goodson-Bill Todman Production andSuper Password was a Mark Goodson Production.Password Plus aired from January 8, 1979, to March 26, 1982, for 801 episodes. The program also won aDaytime Emmy Award forOutstanding Game Show in 1982.[3]Super Password aired for 1,151 episodes from September 24, 1984, to March 24, 1989.
Password Plus was hosted by originalPassword hostAllen Ludden from its debut until April 1980, when he took a leave of absence after being diagnosed with stomach cancer.Bill Cullen, who at the time was hosting the show that precededPassword Plus on NBC,Chain Reaction, filled in until Ludden returned a month later.[1] Ludden left the program again in late October 1980 due to further health problems and was replaced byTom Kennedy. (By this time, Cullen was hostingBlockbusters, another Goodson-Todman production also airing on NBC.)[1] Ludden made no further television appearances before his death on June 9, 1981, and Kennedy hosted the remainder of the series.
Bert Convy was the host for the entire run ofSuper Password.
Gene Wood was the regular announcer on bothPassword Plus andSuper Password.Johnny Olson,Bob Hilton,John Harlan, andRich Jeffries substituted for Wood on different occasions onPassword Plus.
Jeffries was the announcer for the first nine weeks ofSuper Password; he was replaced by Wood on November 26, 1984. Jeffries and Hilton occasionally substituted for Wood.
The rules forPassword Plus andSuper Password were almost identical. Two teams, each composed of a contestant and a celebrity, competed. The object, as on the originalPassword, was for the clue-giving partner to get the receiving partner to guess a given word (the "password"). The giving partner on the first team offered a one-word clue, to which the receiving partner was allowed one guess. There were brief time limits for both the clue and the guess. Teams alternated giving one-word clues until the password was guessed, or until each side had given two clues (three in the early days ofPassword Plus until June 15, 1979).
The following infractions by the clue-giver forfeited the receiver's chance to guess the password:
Capitalized words, proper names, and foreign words were allowed, as were vocal inflections intended to lead the receiver to the password. A clue-giver was allowed to repeat a previous clue or guess from either team.
As on the ABC run ofPassword, the team with initial control of a password onPassword Plus had the option to give the first clue or pass to the other team. Originally, the team that did not get the previous password was given the option, but this changed on August 13, 1979.Super Password eliminated the option entirely, requiring the team that guessed a password to give the first clue on the next one.
The rules regarding clue-giving were the same as on all previous versions ofPassword, with the exception of two instances exclusive toPassword Plus. Effective April 23, 1979,Password Plus enforced two new rules: one, direct opposites (antonyms) were no longer allowed as clues (ex: "loose" for "tight", "hot" for "cold", "weak" for "strong", etc.); and two, anytime a clue-giver on either team failed to give a clue in time, the opposing team's clue-giver was allowed to give two clues to his/her partner (this change expanded on the original penalty in which if the clue-giver with the option to pass or play did not decide in time or decided to play and failed to give a clue in time, the opposing team's clue-giver was allowed to give two clues to his/her partner). In either case, both clues had to be given separately, with one guess allowed after each clue.Super Password did not enforce either of these rules.
The new element of the revivals was the "Password Puzzle". Each password, once revealed, became one of five clues to a puzzle referring to a person, place, or thing. The passwords themselves were not worth any money; only the puzzle affected the scores. Correctly guessing a password allowed that team member one chance to solve the puzzle. If a password was not guessed by either player, it was added to the board without a guess at the puzzle. If that occurred on the final password, or if the solution to the puzzle was inadvertently revealed in any way, the puzzle was discarded and a new one was played in its place. If a clue-giver said the password or any form of it (including the final password), or if his/her partner guessed it based on any infraction by the clue-giver, it was added to the board and the guesser on the opposing team was given a chance to solve the puzzle as a penalty.
For the final password in a puzzle, if the guesser was incorrect, his or her partner was given a free chance to solve the puzzle. OnPassword Plus, if both teammates failed to solve the puzzle, the puzzle's solution was revealed and a new one was played in its place. OnSuper Password, if both members of a team failed to solve a puzzle after guessing the final password, then their opponents were each given a chance to solve it.
A correct guess by either team won money for its contestant partner, and any remaining passwords were revealed. Additional puzzles were played until one contestant reached the designated goal to win the game.
| From | To | Goal | Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 | Round 4+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | 1981 | $300 | $100 | $200 | ||
| 1981 | 1982 | $500 | $100 | $200 | ||
| 1984 | 1989 | $100 | $200 | $300 | $400 | |
In 1981, the switch in celebrity partners that normally took place before the start of each game was moved to after the third puzzle. OnSuper Password, the contestants switched partners after the Cashword segment; however, on all-star specials, partners did not switch after the Cashword was played.
Whichever team solved the $200 puzzle onSuper Password got to play a bonus segment called "Cashword" (stylized as "Ca$hword"). The Cashword in question was a significantly more difficult password that the celebrity partner had to describe to his/her contestant partner in three one-word clues (with five seconds allowed per clue), and if the contestant guessed the Cashword in three clues or less, he/she won a progressive cash jackpot that started at $1,000 and increased by that much each time it was not won (the highest Cashword ever won was $12,000), and it was theirs to keep whether they won the game or not (it did not affect their score). However, if the celebrity partner gave an illegal clue at any time, the Cashword segment ended immediately.
The winning team played for a cash prize in the bonus round, called "Alphabetics" onPassword Plus and "Super Password" onSuper Password.
The bonus round was played the same way on both shows. The celebrity partner on the winning team had 60 seconds to describe 10 passwords to his/her contestant partner by using one-word clues as in the main game. These passwords were arranged in alphabetical order (ex: A-J, B-K, C-L, etc.), and the celebrity could see only the current password until he/she passed on it or until their contestant partner correctly guessed it, whichever happened first. The celebrity could also use multiple words to form a sentence but had to pause distinctly after each one. When the "no opposites" rule was enforced onPassword Plus, it applied to both the main gameand Alphabetics. The contestant partner earned $100 for every word he/she got right, and a cash prize for guessing all 10 passwords before time expired.
OnPassword Plus, Alphabetics' original grand prize was $5,000 from the series premiere until October 1981, and $1,000 was deducted for each illegal clue given (this penalty was briefly increased to $2,500 in late 1981). From November 1981 until the series finale, Alphabetics' grand prize was changed to a progressive cash jackpot that started at $5,000 and increased by that much each time Alphabetics was not won, with a cap limit of $50,000 (the highest jackpot ever won in Alphabetics was $35,000); and the jackpot was now reduced by 20% for each illegal clue (ex: if an Alphabetics round was played for a $20,000 jackpot, then $4,000 was deducted from the jackpot for each illegal clue).
OnSuper Password, the Super Password round was also played for the same progressive cash jackpot, but unlikePassword Plus's Alphabetics, the Super Password round's jackpot did not have a cap limit (the highest jackpot ever won in the Super Password round was $55,000). However, if a celebrity gave an illegal clue at any time, the password in play was removed from play.
Contestants were allowed to keep playing until they were defeated or until they won seven games in a row onPassword Plus, or five games onSuper Password, whichever happened first on either series.
Three editions of thePassword Plus board game were made byMilton Bradley in the early 1980s. Milton Bradley made an eight-track cartridge version of the game for itsOMNI Entertainment System.[4][5] In 1983, a version for theAtari 2600 andIntellivision was going to be made by The Great Game Company. However, both versions were scrapped later on due tothe Video Game Crash at the time.
ASuper Password video game was released forMS-DOS,Apple II, andCommodore 64 byGametek in 1988. A version for theNES was also planned around that time, but never surfaced. In 2000, aSuper Password hand-held game byTiger Electronics was released.
Password Plus was first shown at 12:30 pmET/11:30 amCT andPT, filling part of the time left when the talk/variety programAmerica Alive! was cancelled. On March 5, 1979, two months after its debut, the series made its first time slot move to Noon/11:00 am following the cancellation of NBC’s revival ofJeopardy!. It moved back to 12:30/11:30 on August 13, 1979 when the Goodson-Todman gameMindreaders premiered at Noon/11:00. On June 20, 1980, three other NBC game shows were canceled to make room forDavid Letterman'smorning talk show and in the shuffle that followed,Password Plus was moved on August 4, 1980 to 11:30/10:30 when the daytime dramaThe Doctors moved from 2:00/1:00 to 12:30/11:30 (this time facing the second half-hours of CBS'The Price Is Right and reruns ofThe Love Boat on ABC), withCard Sharks taking the Noon/11:00 slot on June 23, 1980, replacingChain Reaction. The series returned to Noon/11:00 on October 26, 1981 upon the cancellation ofCard Sharks, and remained there for the rest of its run. The final episode aired on March 26, 1982, and through a scheduling shuffle its place on NBC's schedule was replaced bySearch for Tomorrow (which had moved to the network from CBS).
The program returned in September 1984 asSuper Password and aired in the noon Eastern time slot, facing, for its first two weeks, the then 8-year-oldFamily Feud, thenRyan's Hope on ABC. Despite some of NBC's affiliates preempting the 12:00 pm hour in favor oflocal newscasts orother syndicated programming, as it was also the case withPassword Plus,Super Password remained in the top-of-the-hour time slot for its entire 4½-year run. Later in the decade, however, NBC affiliates began dropping most of the network's entire daytime programming, along withSuper Password; the increasing number of stations carrying local newscasts at noon during that time caused the program to experience a decline in viewership. The show's final episode aired on March 24, 1989, the same daySale of the Century aired its series finale.[a]
Both shows exist in their entirety, and can currently be seen onBuzzr. Both shows were previously aired onGSN. However, certain episodes were not shown due to celebrity clearance issues that were out of GSN's control.
Beginning on July 2, 2018,GameTV inCanada began airing the first 65 episodes ofSuper Password.[6]
In January 1988, a man later discovered to be a previously convicted felon with active warrants for his arrest appeared onSuper Password.[7] Kerry Ketchem, who competed on the program under the name "Patrick Quinn", won a total of $58,600 in cash over four days onSuper Password, which included a record-tying $55,000 jackpot win in the bonus round. However, his appearance on the show led to his apprehension on charges of fraud.
Ketchem's arrest came as the result of an investigation started when a bank manager inAnchorage, Alaska, called theUnited States Secret Service after having seen his episodes. He was discovered to have outstanding fraud warrants in Alaska andIndiana, and producer Robert Sherman was contacted by the Secret Service shortly thereafter. Around the same time, Ketchem—claiming that he was leaving the country on work-related business—called Mark Goodson Productions and asked if he could collect his winnings in person instead of having a check mailed to him, which is the usual standard procedure. Sherman said yes, with the knowledge of the Secret Service, and gave him a date and time. When Ketchem showed up to the Goodson offices he ran down eleven flights of stairs and was apprehended and taken into custody by local officials after being found in the restroom. The arrest came two days after his appearances finished airing.[8] Booked on the outstanding Indiana warrant, Ketchem was found to have used his "Patrick Quinn" alias (which came from the name of one of Ketchem's college professors) to commitcredit card fraud in Alaska;[8] to defraud a used car dealer; and tocollect illegally on an insurance policy on the life of his ex-wife.[9] Ketchem, who had previously spent 18 months in prison on an unrelated felony charge, agreed to a plea deal in May 1988 on charges of mail fraud. He was sentenced to five years in prison[7] and his winnings were rescinded as he was ruled to have violated contestant eligibility rules by using a false name.[10]
| Country | Title | Broadcaster | Presenter | Premiere | Finale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Portugal[11][12] | Palavra Puxa Palavra | RTP2 | António Sala | September 30, 1990 | March 28, 1993 |
| RTP1 | July 8, 1993 | June 11, 1994 | |||
 Sweden | Femettan | SVT | Staffan Ling | February 7, 1983 | January 12, 1994 |