Count your words

As I've mentioned a few times, game shows have been knocking each other off as long as there have been game shows.

America Says has successfully (in my opinion, and the Nielsen Company seems to agree) knocked off Family Feud. Now comes 25 Words or Less, which like several other shows, knocks off the lightning round from Password. Now that I think about it, how many word-game shows has Password spawned in one way or the other? Quite a few, no?

Some Fox O&O's are trial-running 25 Words or Less, and I finally caught an ep on my local DFW affiliate. Two teams of three (two sort of celebs and a civvie) compete, and the kicker is that the cluegiver only has a limited number of words to nail five answers in forty-five seconds. 25 words or less, get it?

In the first two rounds of the front game, the teams bid against each other for how few words they can use. In the third round things get complicated when the civvies select the answers to be guessed, and...oh, what the hey, I'm not going to plod through it all. It's still the Password lightning round with a strictly limited number of words allowed to the cluegiver.

The winning team plays a ten-answer bonus round with a little longer time limit but still with a limited word count for the cluegiver. In the ep I watched, the team nailed the last answer with a couple seconds left, and the civvie became ten grand richer, minus taxes. There was much rejoicing and running around the set. Good for him.

Meredith Vieira hosts competently, though you can't expect much sparkling humor from the news lady. The game does dawdle now and then, especially during the bidding process in the first two rounds and the long set-up for the third round. Once they actually get to the lightning rounds, the show picks up steam. Just like the original Password.

My guess is that the trial run won't prove successful, because there's not much here that hasn't been done faster and better on Pyramid and Celebrity Name Game. To be blunt, I think Password Plus was a more interesting knockoff of the original. But 25 Words or Less is not the worst word-game show ever devised.