Trivia for
"The $10,000 Pyramid" (1973)

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• "The $10,000 Pyramid" debuted on Monday, March 26, 1973 on CBS-TV at 10:30am (Eastern).
  
  
• Faltering ratings prompted CBS to prematurely cancel the show on Friday, March 29, 1974 with celebrity guests Carol Channing and Soupy Sales. After a mere absence of just five weeks, the show returned on ABC-TV Monday, May 6, 1974 at 4:00pm (Eastern) with celebrity guests Anne Meara and Soupy Sales. That same fall, a once-a-week night-time "$25,000 Pyramid" version for syndication in the prime-access time slot debuted with host Bill Cullen and celebrity guests Anne Meara and William Shatner.
  
  
• The first celebrity guests on the premiere were June Lockhart and Rob Reiner; Rob Reiner went on to become the first celebrity with his civilian partner to successfully climb to the top of the big pyramid (his winning clue for "Things With A Hole" was "Doughnuts").
  
  

• On Monday, 23 December 1974, ABC's "$10,000 Pyramid" welcomed a new time-slot (2:00pm Mondays-Fridays [Eastern]) and a new feature called "The Big 7", which if a team picked a category where a special designated card was hidden beneath somewhere on the mini pyramid game board during the main game, the civilian contestant would be eligible to win a bonus prize if he or she was able to get a perfect score of seven points within a round.
  
  
• Monday, January 19, 1976 saw the ABC daytime show renamed simply as "The $20,000 Pyramid" with its very slightly revised cash prize and game winning structure. The first celebrity guests on the re-titled daytime show were Jo Anne Worley and Bill Cullen.
  
  
• The highest scoring main games on record (through some amazing tie-breakers) occurred during the Friday, July 4, 1975 broadcast featuring Lucie Arnaz and Anson Williams with a score 45-44 and the Monday, June 12, 1978 episode with a score 43-42 featuring Sandy Duncan and Nipsey Russell. The celebrity guest, with his civilian partner, who was able to win at the big pyramid in the quickest time on record was Billy Crystal in November 1977 with an amazing 26 seconds (while a few others have done it in 30 seconds).
  
  
• The bonus game originally included a fourth row of four categories on the bottom row. Producers did not realize this was unworkable until days before the premiere so they eliminated the bottom row of 4 entirely.
  
  
• Popular celebrity and guest William Shatner was dropped from his role as a semi-regular guest when he screamed and threw a chair out of the winners circle in disgust when he lost the bonus round for a contestant.
  
  

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