Wipeouts happen every once in a while. (I think the only pricing game I've never seen a wipeout was Punch-a-Bunch, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong.) If you put every game on the chopping block when it has an occasional wipeout you'd have a mighty puny line-up.
I agree.
Once in awhile, you get either a player who, while he plays his best, gets either stuck with a difficult setup on all three prices and/or makes reasonable guesses that wind up wrong, or a player who just completely blows things.
And it's that way with every game show that has a bonus round where it is possible to end with $0 winnings.
Pyramid is an example where it's possible to whiff even on the lower LH clue and then stumble on every other category and end up penniless (ergo, $0). There was the
Sale of the Century endgame toward the end of the run where -- during True Romance Week (IIRC) someone failed to so much as ring in during any of his three puzzles he was shown, and the answers weren't that difficult, either: One set of clues led to the TV show "Family Ties," the second led to Abraham Lincoln (the clue had it where he debated with Stephen Douglas) and the third time ran out. Although I don't think it's ever happened in the 42-year entire history of the show, it's possible for a family to completely lose
Family Feud's Fast Money and end with a double zero ($0), through a series of answers with 0 points (not necessarily all of them bad) and non-responses.
And the list goes on.
Those are enough examples ... thing is, on TPiR, a complete wipeout has been seen (not frequently, but enough times) on games like Bonus Game, Bullseye (failing to hit the target), Shell Game, 5 Price Tags, Master Key, Secret X, Rat Race ... like someone said, he's never seen it happen with Punch-a-Bunch, but it's possible ... and so on. It's just a matter of how well the player is playing the game and how easy/difficult the game is set ... and if he just did the best he/she could but still ended up on the wrong end of things.
'Dems the odds, I say. Today it was Pathfinder's turn.
Brian