"Dumb Dora was soo-o-o-o-o-o-o dumb" (how dumb was she) "She thought Bo Duke of 'The Dukes of Hazzard' was the one wearing (blank)!" So began a typical fill-in-the-blank statement on one of the most popular game shows of the 1970s — "Match Game '73." Produced by Goodson-Todman Productions and hosted by Gene Rayburn, the premise of "Match Game '73" (and its successive year variants, such as "Match Game '74") was simple: Match as many of the six celebrities as you can within a set number of rounds, then go for the big cash. The humor, of course, was in the questions and statements read to the six-member celebrity panel — the most famous of the celebs were Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Richard Dawson. The fill-in-the-blank statements invariably led to bawdy and sometimes rowdy answers, full of double-entendre and pushing the lines of censorship. Sometimes, the on-stage antics and reactions from the answers led to even more over-the-top behavior. But things were always (to an extent, anyway) in good fun, not to mention taste. Two contestants, one of them a returning champion, competed. The challenger chose from one of two statements (labeled "A" and "B"), and Rayburn read the statement on the card. An example: "Did you catch a glimpse of that girl on the corner? She has the world's biggest (blank)." After the celebrities write in their responses, the contestant was polled for his/her answer; Rayburn would frequently critique the answer, based on whether he thought the response was a good answer or not; often, he would also comment on the audience's reaction. Each celebrity was then polled for his/her answer; a match (either directly or adjudged to be a reasonable synonym — for instance, "rear end" and "butt" would match) earned the contestant one point. After all six celebrities were polled, the champion played the other question, and play was similar. Round 2 was played identically, with these exceptions: The contestant who was leading (or the the champion, if there was a tie) went first; and any celebrity who was matched in the first round did not play this question. The contestant who was leading after Round 2 was declared champion and won $100; play on the second question immediately ended once it was impossible for the trailing contestant to catch his/her opponent, and a tie-breaker was played if needed (either a full round of two questions, or a simple fill-in-the-blank phrase on the syndicated shows). The champion played a two-part bonus round called the Super Match. The first part was called Audience Match, the second half the Head-to-Head Match, played thusly: * [b]Audience Match[/b]: The contestant was shown a fill-in-the-blank phrase (e.g., "Happy (blank)"), and three concealed answer spaces. He/she was allowed to poll three celebrities for possible answers. The contestnat could choose one of those answers or supply his own, after which the top three answers were revealed, in reverse order. The top-rated answer was worth $500, the second-most popular was worth $250, and the third-ranked answer was $100. Failing to match one of the top three answers ended the game at this point. * [b]Head-to-Head Match[/b]: The contestant chose one of the six celebrities for one final fill-in-the-blank phrase. A match here won the contestant 10 times the amount won in the Audience Match (either $1,000, $2,500 or $5,000); even if there was no match, he/she still kept the money won in Audience Match, and he/she got to return to play another game. Contestants continued until defeated or surpassing CBS' $25,000 winnings limit in place at the time; only one contestant retired undefeated, and that came in 1979. The biggest change to the show came in the late summer of 1978, when a "Star Wheel" was added to the Super Match. After playing the Audience Match part of the game, the contestant spun a wheel, each containing the names of the six celebrities. Whomever the wheel landed on, that's who the contestant would play with; in addition, if the wheel landed in a special "star" section of a space, the contestant could play for up to 20 times his Audience Match winnings ($2,000, $5,000 or $10,000). Some say the addition of the "Star Wheel" hastened the departure of Richard Dawson, who by now was hosting the highly successful "Family Feud" (and was rumored to be becoming very difficult to work with); Dawson, after all, was picked by the celebrities to play the Head-to-Head Match 90 percent of the time, as he had that part of the game mastered. As a network TV series, "Match Game" ran from July 1973 to April 1979. Two syndicated versions aired — a weekly version starting in 1975 and running through 1981, and a daily syndicated rendition which began in September 1979 and ran through 1982. The syndicated show featured two new contestants per week, while the daily series featured two contestants playing two games each before being replaced. The weekly syndicated series had a top prize of $10,000 from 1975-1978, and $20,000 from 1978-1981 (by virtue of a modified rule where the Audience Match was played twice); the daily show also allowed contestants to win up to$20,000 (by winning two games), but since the Audience Match was played only once per game, he/she could only win $10,000 at a time. "Match Game '73" began its successful run just four years after its predecessor — "The Match Game" — left the air after seven years; this was a simple fill-in-the-blank affair, and featured much lower cash prizes and two celebrity-two contestant teams. After the final blank was filled in come 1982, three more runs followed, none of which were successful: The "Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour" (1983-1984, which mated "The Hollywood Squares" and was co-hosted by Rayburn and Jon "Bowzer" Bauman), "Match Game" (1990-1991, hosted by comedian Ross Shaffer) and a 1998 version hosted by Pat Bullard. A revival in 1985 was also scrapped; stories of why this version never surfaced have varied, the most frequent of which centered on his advancing age (he was 67 in 1985, and that was considered too old for advertisers to draw in desirable demographics). Reruns of "Match Game '73," meanwhile, have been featured on GSN (Game Show Network) since its inception.