Pet peeve

A thread on the Sitcoms Online game show board asked for rules that people know by heart. One poster responded with Dick Clark's famous Winners Circle injunction: "List of the things that fit the subject."

Which reminded me of another famous rule on Pyramid: the dreaded "no prepositional phrases" law for the Winners Circle. This ancient commandment, brought down by Moses after he got done with those other ten things, has stuck in every version of the show from Clark to Richards. And it just drives me nuts.

Okay, it mildly irritates me. I get the idea behind the rule: the show can't allow the clue-giver to ramble forever in a clue. They want to make the bonus round hard, after all. But the rule has never been consistently enforced. Prepositional phrases have always been allowed in clues for things-whatever-would-say categories in the Winners Circle. And more than once in a while, one of the dreaded phrases would get past the judge for other categories as well.

Every game show fan has pet peeves. We cherish the peeves and spout off about them whenever possible. On a slow news Sunday, it's my time to vent about prepositions.