Battle of the Bones

The celebrated gaming booths of NBC's Twenty One last week rocked under a rhubarb that had even the head croupiers puzzled. Playing their sixth tie game in four weeks, at a husky $3,500 a point, Greenwich Village Artist Jim Snodgrass, 34, and Medical Research Consultant Hank Bloomgarden, 28, both answered correctly a ten-point question on European royalty, then went for the tough eleven-pointer: Name the five groups of bones in the human spinal column (see diagram). A onetime pre-med student, Snodgrass began with a noun, "sacrum," was ruled out by M.C. Jack Barry, whose answer card listed the adjective "sacral." Then Bloomgarden ticked off "sacral," "cervical," "thoracic," "lumbar" and "coccyx," was abruptly ruled correct and the winner of the $73,500 at stake.

Within minutes, NBC was being bombarded with calls and wires, mostly from doctors who protested that Bloomgarden had also given a noun, "coccyx," instead of the adjective "coccygeal." Either both contestants were right or both were wrong. Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica admitted to an inconsistency in the quiz answers that they had approved for the show. Barry and Co-Producer Dan Enright put heads together, agreed that both contestants had missed, and called for a rematch--again at $3,500 a point--next week (Mon. 9 p.m. E.D.T.). Although Bloomgarden must relinquish claim on last week's pot, he gets a guarantee from the sponsor (Geritol) that even if he loses to Snodgrass, he can have the $52,500 he had already won. "Completely fair," said Bloomgarden, and stiffened his axial skeleton, from cervical to coccygeal vertebrae, for a return to battle.

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