It's only fair, to honor the late, great Merv, we here at TWoP should have a thread for this show. Tread(way) lightly.

I only caught the tail-end of this show, but I for one am not made to be on this show. I'm one of the few that starts a crossword and it can take me from a few days to a week or more in order to finish, unless it's the People crossword puzzle then give me two days tops. I am intrigued as to how this will play out though, it didn't seem all that interesting to me, but in honor of Merv, I will watch a few more episodes.

Well, I liked the show but my God can they give out any LESS money? It's like Wheel of Fortune that you're only on for one day, but the guy in the second show won less than 5K and three trips. And in both shows there was a trip to Vegas, is this gonna be a once an episode thing?

Treadway was okay, it usually takes a while for a host to find his stride.

The crossword itself, seemed like a Tuesday or Wednesday type of New York Times crossword. Quite a few punny clues (shown by a question mark at the end of the clue), one or two fill in the blanks, and some straightforward clues.

One thing that wasn't explained clearly was how long one of the spoilers sat out if he/she missed an answer to a question. At first I thought it was only for the next question but in show #2 the girl on the far right sat out several questions. I'm guessing you sit out until one of the other two spoilers answers a question correctly then you're eligible again to ring in.

It was an okay show, by the middle of show #1, not only was I shouting out the answer but I was spelling it as well.

NBC boost the dollar amounts (but don't go overboard like Jeopardy!

I thought the same exact thing. I couldn't figure out if it was going to be a constant thing or if it was just a coincidence. Guess if they both are Vegas trips tomorrow, we'll get the picture.


That's the one part of the show that I found addicting. I was thrilled about knowing how to spell the words, they spelled wrong. It comes on between 4-5PM where I live, so if Oprah has a crappy episode, I'll probably watch more.

I'm used to Treadway from him hosting Soap Talk, so it wasn't too much of a stretch for him to host this. He does seem to have the voice for it.

I find something that can be distressing on this show. Let's say I get a big lead and all the trips, all it takes is me not answering a question, and a spoiler getting one word right before time is up and I'm a loser. It's intriguing but a possible turnoff. Also everyone is right. They should offer more money, or at the very least let people stay on until they lose.

At the same time, the Spoilers require that everyone be very aggressive in their gameplay. You can't coast until the end.

And yes, the prize pool needs to be increased.

I just got my latest issue of Soap Opera Weekly and Ty Treadway says that taping for the first season of MGC will be done by Thanksgiving and then he will have 8 months off. So if anyone lives, or plans to visit the Los Angeles area, and wants to win about $4,000 and trips, to Vegas, Palm Springs, and Antigua you better hurry!

Not to mention glorious Pismo Beach.

This show doesn't suck. It's actually kind of good. I do crosswords [not any hard ones], so I'm not all that good on the clues, but I enjoy playing along.

Please make the Muzak stop!

That happened during today's episode. The spoiler, Elyse, didn't answer one question right during the entire episode. On the very last clue she answered correctly and inherited something in the area of $1500 and went on to try to finish the puzzle. Did she deserve the money? No. Did she even play a part in the episode before that one correct answer? No. It was surprising and a little obnoxious. Guess it's a part of the game, though.

I would be okay with the champion winning relatively low amouts of money if the winner would come back to compete the following day. Seeing talented (and lucky) contestants rack up prizes and money on gameshows has always been a big draw to me. The way the genre has been leaning toward one-off cycles with new contestants every day disappoints me. It also encourages audiences to watch the next episode. You'd think producers would want that.

I'll wait for season two, which I think will happen. Maybe they'll fix some of the format problems. I think the basic game play is great, and I'll keep watching for the mental challenge aspect, but I couldn't see being a contestant.

And the show makes me miss Scrabble. Now THAT was a game.

I had a question about Tuesday's show. These are supposed to be two separate shows, running back to back, right? Yesterday's second show was a repeat for awhile and then it changed into a new show. Was that a local glitch or did everyone's do that? I missed Monday's, so I wasn't sure... Thanks

I had to set a recording for this show since it airs at 1:30 AM here. It's not a bad idea for a show; I'm not a huge fan of crossword puzzles and have probably only finished a handful of them, ever, but the format of the show made the puzzles a little bit more interesting.

I agree that the prize amounts are a little low, and I like the idea of asking the winner back until they finally lose. I liked the idea of the spoilers and it made the second round much more interesting while keeping the main contestants on their toes, but it would really suck to have your podium and winnings taken away as late as the very last question.

The only thing I outright hated about this show was the music. It was ridiculously cheesy.

Iti probably was just a glitch at your local station because I saw the entire second episode on Tuesday in it's entirety. IIRC, that was the one with spoiler Elyse mentioned above.

Seriously, if I was Jeff in that episode, I would have been super pissed since he was down to like -$500 until the second round and built his way back up to the $2700 and then Elyse got that one question right and won the entire game. I guess he took solace in the fact that she didn't know babies can drink milk while on laps.


That's exactly what I thought. Seriously I was around 3 when that show came on and my mother still 'til this day anytime she sees Chuck Woolery has to tell me how I used to run up and kiss the TV when Scrabble came on. Plus, that show had kick ass sound effects.

I'll watch this show to honor Merv Griffin. Now I love word games like scabble and boggle, but I suck at crossword puzzles. It's probably because I don't have an expansive vocabulary. Seriously, words like "attar" make me scratch my head.

I just looked at wiki, and it seems like I caught the tail end of the first episode.

Maybe they could keep the Spoiler concept but make it a bit difficult for them to take over the podium... You have to answer correctly twice before you can replace a contestant, and then it's fair game after that.

Caught it for the first time yesterday and have a few thoughts.

I thought the general concept of the game play was fairly decent -- quick, sometimes punny clues for varying dollar amounts depending on length. I like the fact that because the game is to fill in an entire crossword grid, there were several "classic" crossword terms in play, such as "asis" (as is).

I'm of two minds on the spelling requirement. On the minus side it slows things down (but I guess given the size of the grid and the end play, the timing needs to be what it is), and when you are up there under the lights, it would be easy to unintentionally spell a word wrong. This happened yesterday when one contestant said the word "Scamp" but accidentally started spelling with the "c' -- he immediately realized the problem and started over, but they still disallowed it. On the plus side, given the prevalence of homonyms, homophones, etc. in crosswords, it's not an unreasonable thing to ask, and it can be significant to the final grid. Also in yesterday's show, one contestant spelled Sonia "Henie" wrong as "Henje", and the grid already showed the "j" would have been before a "t", so he should have known better.

As for the spoilers, I understand their role in the game, but I sure don't understand how they come on the show. In other words, if you try out for this, do five people get picked for the show and two are randomly chosen to be the "main" contestants, with the other three "relegated" to spoiler, or do they come from different pools? If you are a spoiler and the two main contestants never get a question wrong, can you come back? I know I would be ticked off if I flew out to CA to be on this show, went on as a spoiler and got just one or two chances to even attempt an answer.

And then the money/return champion issue. In these days when Jeopardy champions are routinely pulling down $10,000 - $15,000 in a single day and can return, $5,000 to $10,000 for a single shot does not seem to me to be remotely enough of a lure to get anyone east of the Rockies to head out there. I know I won't. And that being the case, I probably will not continue to watch.

Oh, and to me Ty Treadway = Total Tool

I didn't watch it yesterday, but this is something I noticed on the two previous days shows and wondered. On Tuesday's second episode, (the one with Elyse "The One Question Answer" winner), she didn't get all the words filled in and she won the $2,700 she had from the game. However, when the other players one in the previous games, I thought Ty said they won $2,000 and whatever the trip was. So basically, what I'm wondering is that if you win over $2,000 in the game, do you get to keep it and the trip if you win or is $2,000 + trip the max you get?

Roxie, that reads like a question you'd find on the LSATs. But, I'll have a go at it!

If a player completes the puzzle they win the trip, their earnings from the beginning of the game, and (if I'm recalling correctly) $2000. At least that's my understanding. I haven't paid close enough attention to actually understand the nuances of the game and rules yet. And I still say there should be returning champions!

To me if you make it to the final round you take home whatever prizes (and trips) you won from the first portion of the game. If you fill in the crossword in the 90 seconds they add $2,000 and ANOTHER trip to your final winnings.

Also, Ty says it's winner take all, so the other non-spoiler at the end of the regular game does not win his/her money/trips, They just go home with the special watch with the MGC logo on it.

My take on the spoilers. They just introduce them by name at the beginning of the second segment. No hometown, no interview. They are probably the people who lead boring lives and have nothing to say. Also the interview with the first 2 contestants is very short, one question. Which is fine by me. It had to have been hard for Alex Trebek to find something new about Ken Jennings after 75 shows, and these people are only on once.

I still have no clue how they decide how long the spoiler is blacked out after answering a question wrong. They really haven't explained that.

Either when all 3 get it wrong or when a spoiler replaces someone in the contestant row.

I don't know if they changed it in the first couple shows, but if 1 contestant answers it wrong and then a spoiler gets it right, the spoiler replaces the incorrect contestant. If both contestants get it wrong or neither answers, then they get a choice.

Thanks Worleybird and Stinger97 for the answers. I was thinking "Who wouldn't just intentionally lose if they had more than $2000 in the first part of the game?"

ETA: because "loose" and "lose" are two different words. =)

I like crosswords, but can't say I care for this game. Maybe because it replaced our daytime (12:30 pm) Jeopardy reruns and I really enjoyed those. For some reason, it's just not grabbing me.

This game has the most unfair rule I've ever seen in a game show: as a "spoiler", usually you get to pick whose podium you take over. But if only one of the players got a question wrong, and you spoil, you're stuck taking over their podium.

How is this unfair? It seems reasonable. But an episode last week had one guy who actually seemed good at crosswords. He built a huge lead (like $5000 to $0). A spoiler gets one right, and this guy's sent to the back of the bus. Surely, not for long...

... and two questions later, he spoils to get back in. But wait -- the sucky contestant with $0 rang in and got it wrong first! Oh noes! Now the good contestant is forced to take over with a $5000 deficit -- which is pretty much impossible in low-budget Crosswords land. And worse, any other spoilers won't pick his spot to take over, so he's stuck there for the rest of the game and loses. His only way out would be to act stupid and get more stuff wrong to screw over another player the same way. Penalized for being good at crosswords!

That guy should've won, he was way better than the other contestants. It just seems too easy for a random spoiler to come in and win the game in the last moments. I'll give it a few more chances, I guess, but the spoiler thing really blows. It's not a bad idea overall, just makes the show a completely random crapfest.

I agree with this. At a certain point, if you are way far behind, you almost want to answer incorrectly and go into spoiler's row. I kind of don't link the rules of the game, but I do enjoy watching for the crossword itself.

I saw that and thought WTF? I'm glad the spoiler didn't win the grand prizes, even as pathetic as they were.

Couple of other thoughts on why the spoilers are flawed: a) If a contestant who is far behind answers wrong and you have a chance to spoil, you might be inclined to risk it and purposely give a wrong answer in hopes of eventually replacing the contestant in the lead; and b) with homophones/homonyms the contestant, by answering wrong, could unintentionally give the right anwer to the spoiler. It would work better if the spoilers had to "lock in" their answers somehow.

That said, I like the last round of this game, but the rest and especially the sucky prizes are lame.

Be prepared for some more indigestion--today's 2nd episode in the double run market had a rule change to the "Crosswords Extra" clue. Now when it comes up, there's a jump-in clue that everyone can answer (including the spoilers), then the winner gets to play the "Extra" clue (which isn't in the puzzle) for either $300 or $600 depending on the round (no more wagering). No idea if this is one of the earliest episodes and the betting rule was adopted later on, or if this was a tweak in the later episodes to stop "runaways" from occurring (if so, it didn't work). Didn't seem to much else different with the gameplay, but Plastic Man (aka Ty) hair was more of a mess, and the sound effects had more of an echo to them.

All I can say is that this show has the wimpiest, most emasculated music ever. It makes me want to put my arm around the show, take it to the nearby park, and teach it how to throw a football. Or, it makes me want to kick its ass.

And couldn't they use sometiming more original than the old music used when a prize is presented on Wheel of Fortune? Whenever I hear that music I think Charlie O'Donnell is going to come in and push aside Edd Hall and say "Your prize is worth $2,799!" I know Merv Griffin composed it, but couldn't they use one of his more "punchier" tunes or at least jazz it up a bit?

I swear today the guy who won named Patrick looked like Truman Capote. It was weird.

Anyway, do they XBox has a sponsor now? I thought I saw the other day you hit the "XBox360 Crosswords Extra".


I actually think that's the same music on my old Super Nintendo Wheel of Fortune game.

The shows with the "Xbox 360 Extras" are the newer episodes. No more of the Crosswords Getaways and they upped the bonus round jackpot to $5,000 (+ prizes). We also now get a short intro of the Spoilers (they have names...OMG!)

So I was thinking about the situation where a spoiler gets trapped at a losing podium (let's say at least a $2500 difference between the two active players), and trying to figure out what everyone's strategy would be. Let's call them the Leader, the Loser, and the Spoilers.

The Loser is trying to get herself into the Leader's podium, and she can only do that by becoming a Spoiler herself first. The only way she can do that is by answering wrong (and hoping that the Leader doesn't answer correctly), and that one of the Spoilers will answer correctly and be forced to take the Loser's podium. So the Loser's best strategy is to keep answering incorrectly.

The Leader, however, can't be knocked back to Spoiler Row as long as the Loser answers incorrectly and the Leader doesn't answer at all. So if the Loser adopts her best strategy, the Leader should be quite content to drop her buzzer and do nothing, which means she can never be knocked out of her podium. The Loser gains nothing if she doesn't ring in or if she answers correctly, because either the Leader or a Spoiler will have the Leader podium in that instance; she HAS to answer every single question incorrectly.

The Spoilers can never gain the Leader podium and win if they do nothing, and they get locked out if they answer incorrectly. So they have to answer when they're able. But since the Leader's best strategy is to do nothing, the best they can do if all players play optimally is to rotate the Loser podium among the three Spoilers and the Loser.

Do I have this about right?

Yeah, I agree with that. I always think the loser should try to get stuff wrong so they can get out and into the winning position. Though with the increased Extras, it is not quite as necessary.

Speaking of the Extras, why does Ty say "Crossword XBox 360 Extra". XBox 360 Crossword Extra makes much more sense.

I keep rooting for both contestant to finish in the negatives, just to see what would happen.

Speaking of the XBox 360 extra, why is Microsoft trying to hock their video game console on a television show that seems to be aimed at older folk? Is the target audience for this show really going to go out and buy Halo 3 or Gears of War? C'mon. It'd actually make much more sense for Nintendo to have their DS handheld system or Wii promoted on the show. At least they feature crossword puzzle games.

Well I guess there were only so many trips they could try and give away to Laguna Beach. Although, I'm glad they finally decided to make the bonus round money more.

Weirdly, I think I'd like this show more if they'd let the people come back and play until they lost. Then we could see who really were Crossword champions.

So today was my first day watching this show. The guy who was one of the first two contestants didn't have a clue what was going on. His opponent got a $1000 right off the bat, and then the spoilers came. And since he had a big fat zero, no one wanted to switch places with him. But he wasn't smart enough to realize he had to get one wrong to move to the back, so he still buzzed in when he could to answer it correctly. This show could be better with a little more tweaking.

Just happened today, and it was predictably hilarious. One contestant had about -750 while the "winner" had -250. Ty actually told him, "Get your wallet out because you owe me 250 dollars." The winner won nothing but the right to play in the bonus round. Of course, he lost that too, so he ended up winning absolutely nothing.


Yeah, definitely. I really want to like this show, but there's way too much stuff that annoys me about it. The problem with spoilers has already been discussed, but one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that the bonus round is all or nothing. They should give at least some amount of money for each correct word to prevent people from leaving with nothing (although it was admittedly funny).

I saw that episode and I got really pissed when the guy ended up playing an entire game and went home with nothing. They didn't even mention "parting" gifts like they used to give out on Wheel of Fortune.

Today, I saw some guy win almost $13,000 (after winning the bonus round) and I immediately thought of the guy who won nothing for some reason.

What I don't get is why it's taking so long to fix some of these obvious problems. Although the guy who played the whole round and wound up with nothing is both hilarious and sad.

Do they get the "special edition" Croton watch if they don't win any money?

This show needs serious reworking! I watch every night and feel my blood pressure rise when some dillwad who answers one question "spoilers" and wins the game.

Last night, it happened to the tune of over $10,000 that the clear "winner" deserved to get- but was spoilered at the last moment and lost everything.

To make matters worse, the nimrod ended up winning the trip in the final round, since almost all the puzzle was solved.

Looks like Crosswords is on hiatus because of high production costs. Really? I rarely see anyone finish the final puzzle, so I can't imagine that they're giving away that much money. What on earth are they spending the money on?

Apparently they shot 225 episodes but haven't aired all of them yet, so next season there'll be a mix of new episodes plus "The Best of Crosswords." I'm a bit disappointed, because as annoying as it was to see undeserving spoilers win, I did enjoy the clues.