The password, by any other name, is….

A familiar game show in a new disguise, with some twists

After decades of having to work Christmas Eve at the newspaper, this year — as a county government employee — I got off both Christmas Eve and the day before Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve, about midday, I took a load of laundry to the laundromat. While I was sitting waiting on it, I happened to notice a game show on TV. Now, I grew up in the golden age of daytime game shows; I owned the “Concentration” home game. I loved “Match Game.” I was on a game show on TNN in the late 1980s (and again three years later). But this was a game show I’d never heard of before: “25 Words Or Less,” hosted by Meredith Viera.

It’s an obvious derivative of “Password,” and I was surprised to learn it’s now in its second season. It’s based on a board game of the same name.

I loved the original “Password,” and Allen Ludden was my favorite game show host. I did not really care for the last couple of daytime iterations, “Password Plus” or “Super Password,” in which four or five individual passwords were clues to another password. To me, that was a needless complication, especially since they sometimes used proper names instead of dictionary words. The original “Password” was very simple and elegant in its game play.