Reader Craig Robin suggested I link you to this excerpt from The Name's The Same to illustrate what I was writing about in the previous post. It's a good example. It's pretty obvious that Joan Alexander was told (a) to start by asking about the physical attractiveness of the person in question, (b) to get to that question about working with trained animals and (c) to not make a guess that would prevent the game from moving on to Bill Cullen. It's also pretty obvious to me that Mr. Cullen figured it out right away but decided (or was told to) play dumb to make for a more interesting segment. It would not surprise me if the producers had a way to signal that it was time to end a spot like this so someone should go ahead and give the answer.
The "gambits" got much worse on later episodes but this one illustrates the principle at work…
