Family Feud at 50

Family Feud set from 1976-1981.
Art by "wheelgenius" on Deviant Art

The classic game show, Family Feud premiered on July 12, 1976 on ABC. While it's run since then has not been entirely uninterrupted, it's been on the air far more often than it's been off of it. There are so many episodes now in existence that there are two distinct 24/7 streaming channels, each devoted to a different era. Family Feud is so deeply embedded in our culture that it's fair to say that the phrase "Survey Says!" immediately brings the show to mind for the vast majority of people, and that if one mentions "three strikes," there's nearly as much of a chance that one will think of this show as that they'll think of baseball.

Mock Game Show: Pointless

Especially in the years since COVID-19 lockdowns, I've found myself gravitating to British game shows that are available to me despite living in the United States. One such show, Pointless, has been running for over a decade now, despite being all-but unknown here. 

The premise is that, before the show, 100 people are surveyed with questions. Unlike Family Feud, they're not looking for opinions, but rather how many of those 100 respondents can give correct answers. The contestants on the show are then asked the same questions, and seek to respond with answers that the fewest survey respondents could get right. Points are awarded for each respondent who got it right. For example, if asked to name a capital city in Europe, you might answer "Paris" (the capital of France). In the case of this survey (conducted in the UK), 98 people in the survey said "Paris," meaning you'd score 98 points, which really isn't very helpful, since that's practically everyone. But if the contestant instead tried something more obscure like "Stockholm" (the capital of Sweden), the score would be a much more attractive 30 points, since only 30 people in the survey could come up with the more obscure answer. What you really want is an answer like "Sarajevo" (the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina), because that answer is both correct and one that no one in the survey group could come up with, rending it "Pointless," not only scoring zero points, but adding money to a jackpot that can be claimed by the winners.

But beware! If a contestant gives a wrong answer, they're hit with the full 100 points representing the entire surveyed group. Lowest scores win.

If you'd like to see the actual show, you can find an assortment of episodes at either YouTube (free) or BritBox (if you have a subscription). (I'm assuming a US audience. If you're lucky enough to live in the UK, you can get everything for free with iPlayer!)

When I was asked to help close out the college year with a game the faculty might play along with, I had to adapt the game play of Pointless a bit to accommodate an auditorium of potential players, but the basic rules are the same. You can watch the video below. The first several questions even come from books published for UK Pointless fans, while the last couple come from surveys we conducted at the college. I hope you enjoy the game!

Mock Game Show: Zoom Family Feud

As long-time readers already know, I'm a big fan of game shows, and over the years have accumulated not only a significant collection of physical game show home games (many of which have been featured here in the past. Just click the "game shows" label on the right-hand sidebar to see them), but computerized front-ends that allow me to host games as well. I've gotten a few of these on video to show off. This particular edition of "Family Feud" was hosted as part of a college kick-off event held online during COVID lockdowns a few years back. I pitted the STEM department chairs against the Humanities department chairs. 

How did it work out? See for yourself!

Game Show Board Games: Concentration (14th edition, 1970) and Classic Concentration (1988)

I've been enjoying watching (and re-watching) some of my favorite classic game shows on the 2-year old Buzzr network. If I have any complaints about the network at all, it is the simple fact that, although they theoretically have access to the entire FremantleMedia library of shows (reportedly over 40,000 episodes worth), the actual content shown rotates through a tiny fraction of that, which repeats more-or-less monthly (with occasional refreshes a couple of times a year). Naturally, this means that fans regularly ask Buzzr to air shows not currently available on the network. Concentration is one of these frequently-suggested shows.

Game Show Board Games: Password Plus (2nd edition, 1979)

Five years ago, when I did a feature on the board game version of the original Password, I promised to do a future post on Password Plus. I didn't expect to take five years getting to it, much less to have moved to a new blog in the meantime, but the future is finally here!

Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Television Game Show - The Early Years

As I've pointed out in the past, I'm a huge fan of game shows. Easily my favorite genre of television. I was extremely pleased to learn last year, while I was between jobs, that BUZZR, a new free over-the-air broadcast station (i.e., not cable or satellite, which I would have to pay for) dedicated to classic game shows, was beginning to air in my area. BUZZR just celebrated its first anniversary earlier this month, but I'm more interested in another anniversary, which I also learned about through BUZZR: Friday, July 1st, marks the 75th anniversary of the television game show!

Game Show Board Games: Family Feud

With Thanksgiving around the corner, it seems appropriate to pull out a game that has been something of a family tradition for quite some time. In fact, this is arguably the start of my game show board game collection right here.

I've mentioned before about how my grandma was a five-time undefeated champion on a game show called Split Second back in the 1970s. The fact is, that whole side of my family enjoys games, and with quite a few Aunts and Uncles (to say nothing of cousins!), there are usually plenty of willing players to be found. Anyway, some time ago (I no longer remember exactly when) Grandma found a board game version of Family Feud at a yard sale and thought of me. She had it ready for one of my then-annual trips up to Placerville for Thanksgiving, and we played several games over the weekend before I brought the game home. Since then, most times when I head up north, I try to bring a game along. While Family Feud is by no means the only game I'll bring, it remains a favorite, perhaps demonstrated by the multiple versions of the board game I now have in my possession (most of which were also provided by my grandma, although I note that all of them, including that electronic version I only use these days as a buzzer, predate the current 15 years-and-running version of the show).

For those unfamiliar with the game (and if that's you, thank you for bearing with me on a post that you must have no interest in whatsoever, since anyone who follows game shows probably knows Family Feud pretty well!), the object is to guess the most popular answers to survey questions posed to 100 people. For example, in the example in this picture (go ahead and click for a larger version... and zoom in if you need to), the question was "Name something that a dog wears." Points are scored according to how many of the 100 people surveyed gave a particular answer (with the highest-ranked answers showing up at the upper-left of the survey, and working downward through the four answers — in this instance — that got more than a single response).

Allowing for the lack of electronic precision provided by the buzzers and timers of the actual show (although these may, of course, be provided by other means with the proper resources... like that otherwise terrible electronic version of the game from 1998), the board games duplicate the play of the show almost perfectly, and Family Feud is arguably my favorite board game to "host" at a party. My only real difficulty these days is a side effect of the fact that these editions all came out 20 years or more ago. Imagine asking someone today to "Name a famous person named 'Bill'," when all of the answers on the survey were originally given in the 1980s! Bill Clinton's not going to be there, even though it might well have been a contender for the number one slot today.

Rather than disadvantage my cousins (some of whom weren't even born yet when these editions came out!), I usually end up throwing such questions out. It's a regrettable limitation, but an unavoidable one. This is still one of my favorite games to play with family and friends.

Game Show Board Games: Card Sharks

Card Sharks is one of those shows that's due for a proper revival. It's now been 13 years since the most recent version was on the air (which, itself, is about how long it had been between the most recent version and the one that came before it). This version of the board game is dubbed the 25th anniversary version, despite coming out just a touch early (in 2002. The show premiered in 1978). It's actually a bit unusual among game show board games in my collection, in that it was sold without any version of the show currently on the air.

By the time this home version made it to store shelves, the most recent version, which lasted for one season in 2001, was already gone. Oddly enough, although this board game does indeed incorporate the logo and basic sense of style (or lack thereof?) from that version, the way the game is played bears pretty much no resemblance to the 2001 show, but instead incorporates elements from the previous (and much more successful) incarnations. This is classic Card Sharks.

Each player uses a separate deck of cards. Red for one player, and blue for the other. Control of the board is determined through a series of questions that ask how many of 100 people responded in a particular way to a survey. Quite frequently, these questions turn on moral decisions. For example, "We asked one hundred single women, 'Would you accept an engagement ring from the man you loved if you knew it once belonged to his ex-wife?' How many single women said they would accept the engagement ring anyway?"^a Up to four of these questions are used in a round. For the first question, the player with the red deck must come up with a numerical answer to the question, while the blue deck player responds by answering that they think the true number will be higher or lower than that guess. If the blue player guesses correctly, he/she wins control of the board, but if the blue player guesses wrong (or the red player's number was exactly right), red player wins control of the board. The next question played will require the blue player to guess the number, with red responding "higher" or "lower." Questions alternate between players throughout the game.

The player in control now tries to complete their colored row of five cards by guessing whether the next card in a sequence is higher or lower than the card before it. Aces are high, and deuces (twos) are low. An error forces the player to go back to where he or she was at the beginning of that turn. If a card looks too hard to call, the player may "freeze," protecting his or her progress, but the player then needs to win control again to continue further. The round is won when a player correctly calls the last card in the five-card sequence, or upon the success or failure to complete a row on the last of four control questions (called "sudden death"). Winning two out of a possible three rounds wins the game.

The winning player now gets to play the "Money Cards" bonus round, using the reverse side of the game board. The player starts with $200, and bids any or all of that amount on whether the next card is higher or lower, and continues in sequence for each card that comes afterward with whatever money is won or left over (adding $400 after the end of the first row, as that card moves to the next level). Finally, for the last card of the round, the player must make a "Big Bet" of at least half of their Money Card winnings.^b

Like I said at the beginning, this is a game that I think could stand a fresh run on TV. The questions test how well a player understands human nature (I've often said that those of us studying to be, or working with, church leaders would do well to play this game), and the game has just enough of a mixture of strategy and luck to keep things interesting. Even players who've never seen the show before should be able to understand and enjoy it.

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^aOnly 14 women said that they would accept the ring anyway.
^bAs with most game show board games, play money is provided. Each round is worth $500, and getting a survey question exactly right is also worth $500. Good luck spending that money, of course! The fact that the money is fake also makes the "Money Cards" purely academic. I'm sure a player on the actual show would think twice about risking, say, $5000, on whether the next card after an "8" was higher or lower, but in a board game, the only thing a player has to lose is her or her pride. Obviously, this reality changes the way people play, but there's really nothing that can be done about that unless you want to start giving your players money out of your own pocket as prizes.

Jeopardy! Turns 50

Yesterday came and went without much fanfare, but Jeopardy! reached a milestone. Fifty years have passed since the airing of the first episode.

Now, if you've been watching the current version with Alex Trebek recently, you might think I've made a bit of a typo. The Trebek version has been celebrating the show's thirtieth anniversary this year. But that's just the amount of time that's passed for the current version. Before Trebek took the reigns of America's preeminent quiz show, the show had a previous life — several lives, actually — starring Art Fleming.

The concept behind Jeopardy! actually grew out of the game show scandals of the 1950s. Creator Merv Griffin's wife was allegedly musing about how all those contestants on all those shows back then had been given the answers to questions beforehand. She wondered about a show that actually made that the gimmick, as if to say, "Sure, we'll give you the answers, but now you've got to give us the questions!"

The rest, as they say, is history.

The original version of Jeopardy! only lasted for nine years. There was also a syndicated version that lasted for about a year (simultaneous with the end of the original run) and a revival that, itself, lasted for only about five months just a few years after the original ended. Nonetheless, the fact that Art Fleming had hosted all of these versions meant that there was a fair bit of controversy when he was passed over for the 1984 revival in favor of Trebek, who at the time had hosted a sizable handful of shows that never seemed to last very long. Now, thirty years later (and nearly two decades after Fleming's death) game show fans can see that Trebek and Jeopardy! were a perfect match for each other. With Trebek presumed to retire in another couple of years, speculation is already high about what the future of Jeopardy! may look like. For now, it's time to celebrate!

Game Show Board Games: Password

Dating back to 1961, Password is probably the game show with the deepest roots to have a version aired within the past decade. The first board game version came out in 1962, followed by many, many editions over the years to come. I won't swear that my version is a "first" edition, although it does have the 1962 copyright and does not indicate a later edition as many later editions did.

The original Password was a very simple game, and thus easily emulated in a board game. Four players compete in teams of two. Although one can designate an additional person to serve as "host" to distribute the cards, the board game doesn't require this. Basically, each team has an "A" player and a "B" player, and having decided which of the twelve sets of pre-assigned word cards to use, the "A" players of competing teams are given the "A" card for that number, while the "B" players get the "B" card for that same number.  The cards are placed into the sleeves so that the first word appears through the red-filter at the top of the sleeve (red filters really were fairly common in game show board games once upon a time).

After determining which player "A" is to give clues first (a coin toss would be fine), that person attempts to get his partner to say the word which appears in the window by giving a one-word clue. If that person's partner is able to guess the word based on that single clue, he or she gets 10 points (this is what the dial is for in the picture above). If not, the potential score is reduced by a point and the opposing player "A" gets a chance to give a clue. Hyphenated words or multiple word phrases are illegal (as, obviously, are forms of the target word), and if given, a turn is forfeited and the opposing team gets a chance to take the points (reduced by one as if the previous clue was a regular incorrect guess). After the first word is successfully guessed and points are awarded, the "B" players give clues to the first word on their card (starting with the team that didn't give the first clue on the previous word). Clues alternate back-and-forth until all of the words on the cards have been exhausted, and the team with the highest score wins.

There are a few basic differences between game-play as on the original 1960s show and the board game. On the show, the first team to reach 25 points would be the winner (no matter how many or how few words that took) and would then play a "lightning round" to try to guess five words in less than a minute. The "lightning round" (one of the very first bonus rounds in game show history) is entirely absent from this game (at least, as the official rules lay things out), presumably because the makers of the game felt like they would have to include an hourglass or similar timer in the game to make that work. However, both of these differences can be easily re-incorporated into home play should the players so choose.

There were two runs of Password (one from 1961-1967, and another from 1971-1975), but the show has come back several times over the years in other variations. I'll deal with the next incarnation: Password Plus (and, more specifically, the home board game version of it) in a future post.

Game Show Board Games: TV Scrabble

As the show itself regularly announced, "it's the crossword game you've played all your life, but never quite like this!" Scrabble has certainly not been the only game show to spin out of a popular pre-existing board game, but I daresay that it was one of the more successful, lasting for nearly six years in its original run (and earning a second run a few years later that admittedly only lasted a few months). Oddly enough, the game was changed so significantly from the original Scrabble that a separately-sold "TV" version was pretty much a necessity if one was to try to play this version at home. Just having a regular Scrabble set just wouldn't cut it.

I actually put off getting this game when it was originally on the market, because I just couldn't see how the game board I'd seen advertised, a red-filter affair of the type not uncommon in game show board games (I've already featured one example here on the blog with Jeopardy!), could possibly be used to emulate the feel of the show, which doesn't use any similar prop. Yet once I finally got this version off of an eBay auction several years ago and finally had a chance to look through the instructions, I found that it actually does so remarkably well.

The "game board" is actually a paper pad with approximation of the Scrabble board on each page, and the game card (once inserted in the red-filter frame) tells you what letter you're building off of and how many letters are in the word (and where the letter you're building from falls within that word). This is all very much like the game show, but the real genius is how the red-filter frame emulates the "tiles" of the show, by utilizing a two-step reveal process. Pick two tiles, and move the white tab down half-way to reveal the letters you can choose from. Then, once you've picked a letter to see if it's in the word, move the tab the rest of the way down to reveal either the numerical position of the letter, or a "stopper" asterisk letting you know that the letter isn't in the word and that you must forfeit your turn. The short-sentence "clues" to each word also emulate the excessively punny feel of the show quite nicely, and I'm especially impressed with how the board game evokes the "Scrabble Sprint" without a timer by turning it into a two-player buzz-in competitive round.

I actually had a chance to play this game with my nephews (both too young to have ever seen the show, of course, since its last new episode aired in 1993) this past weekend, and they seemed to enjoy it. I found that I only had a couple of minor quibbles. One involves the scoring mechanism. Although the "bonuses" for the colored spaces on the Scrabble board reflect the game rules reasonably well (although not completely, as this version differentiates between light and dark colored spaces, whereas the game show itself didn't), the number of points awarded for getting the word itself strikes me as somewhat inconsistent, and possibly even random. The second criticism is related, in that I found myself occasionally misreading the clues for how many letters were in a word, using the number intended for points rather than the number intended to tell me how long the word was. This led to some minor embarrassments, but thankfully my nephews were quite forgiving whenever this happened.

Game Show Board Games: Match Game (1974 2nd edition)

"Get ready to match the stars!"

NBC did a version of The Match Game in the 1960's, but that's not the version that anyone remembers. The iconic version of Match Game is the version that started on CBS in 1973 (with the year proudly displayed after the name—Match Game '73—and changing each year as appropriate until the daytime network version was cancelled), which itself spawned a pair of successful syndicated versions (Match Game PM and The Match Game, the latter of which continued on for some time after the daytime version's end). Similarly, there were several home game versions of the NBC game, but I've neither seen any of those nor cared enough to spend much time searching for them. It's the iconic '70s version that I made the effort to add to my collection.

The object of the game, as perhaps implied by the tagline quoted at the beginning of this entry, is to match the answers of as many of the celebrities playing as possible.  Each episode featured six celebrities, and thus the board game provides six "celebrities" who respond to each question, which is almost always a fill-in-the-blank process. For example, "At the hospital, Steve passed out when the nurse showed him his ____." The exceptions to this "fill-in-the-blank" rule are leftovers from the early days of the 70s version, before the game had quite found what would be its successful pattern, about which I'll say more in a bit. The responses are, according to Wikipedia (and the game instruction booklet itself in the case of the "Super Match" round) actually from the show itself, and thus reflect the ways real people responded to the questions involved, rather than just reflecting the writers of the game questions themselves, as is the norm for most game show home editions. This is a welcome move, and really helps capture the feel of the game without requiring as many as nine people in a room just to play a single game.

On the actual show, once you've matched a celebrity, you earned a point for that celebrity, but you could not match that same celebrity again in future rounds of the same game. This was displayed on the show by means of a light (either a red circle or a green triangle, depending on the contestant) illuminated next to the celebrity's name. Since the board game doesn't use electronics, it instead marks progress by punching the paper cover of the game board through to the other side, where another punched piece of paper then becomes visible. In the picture to the right, the 1st player has matched "Dick," "Jane," and "Chuck," while the 2nd player has yet to make a match. After the game is done, the punches are easily reset simply by lifting the cover page with the celebrities on it, and the pre-punched folds are able to be reused again and again.

But the board really isn't all that necessary. Really, all one needs to play this game is a set of fill-in-the-blank questions, as well as the short-phrase versions needed to play the "Super Match" and "Head-to-Head Match" bonus rounds. If one has a large enough group available, I would by all means designate a half-dozen of them as "celebrities" to further create a sense of authenticity, but I certainly recognize that getting a large enough group of people interested enough in playing a game show from decades ago may not be the easiest of tasks!

There have been several attempts to revive Match Game since this version finally ended in the early 1980s. None have worked out quite so well. One reason might be that the pattern of game play that the 1970s version of the show found so successful employed a great deal of double-entendre. This worked just fine in the 1970s, when broadcast standards dictated that none of the celebrities could actually get away with writing an outright dirty response. At least one later revival of Match Game on television (in the 1990s) clearly had no such restrictions on the celebrities, and although they still had to "bleep" out a number of responses, the resulting game play simply wasn't funny anymore, and the show died within the year. Other attempts to revive the show since then haven't even gotten beyond the pilot stage. Some have argued that the standards of the culture have simply moved too far today to get away with such mildly suggestive language as was used in the 1970s, and that may be true, but I'm not ready to give up so easily. I think that a talented enough group of celebrities and producers—who know how to be suggestive as necessary, while also knowing that there is a line that can't be crossed without destroying the humorous balance that the 70s show enjoyed—could manage it. But even assuming such people are out there (and I'm convinced that they are), they may not want to use their talents in this way. Until that extraordinary group of people can be found, we'll just have to make do with reruns, and perhaps home games like this one!

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Game Show Board Games: The New Tic-Tac-Dough (70s version)

Last week, I featured the 1950's version of the Tic-Tac-Dough board game.  This week, I'm discussing the 1970's version, which like the original version, seems to have come out roughly around the time of the show's premiere (1978, in this case, although the copyright actually says 1977 for some reason). The game play of the new show was rather similar to the original version, although they changed pretty quickly from shuffling only after both contestants had been asked a question to shuffling after each question. Also, center-box questions on the show became routinely two-part questions, as opposed to merely "more difficult" than other questions (although like the original, extra time was allowed for the contestant to consider a response).

There's little point in denying that the 1970's board game itself is considerably cheaper than the 1950's version.  Instead of mechanical gears and a lever to shuffle the categories, the 1970's game settles for a mostly cardboard affair, using numbers for categories on a single rotating disk. This does, however, have the benefit of easily allowing for different categories in each game (I'm under the impression that one was supposed to order accessory kits to add new categories to the 1950's game, but I've never seen that these actually exist).

One oddity deserves mention that applies to both versions of the board game. The scorekeeper (a disk on this version; a pointer on the original) allows for rounds to be worth up to $1000.  Each box being worth $100 (or $200 for the center square). This is accurate enough to the daytime network versions of each show, but the 1978 network version of The New Tic-Tac-Dough didn't last very long, and the syndicated version (which lasted much longer) awarded $200 for each square ($300 for the center), which really isn't possible to do if you're limiting yourself to the board itself (of course, it's pretty easy to just grab a piece of paper and a pencil!).^*

The other big difference in this version of the board game involves the Bonus game (a feature that the original 1950's show didn't have in the first place). Oddly enough, while the dollar amounts for the main game reflect the 1970's network version, the bonus game is instead taken from the syndicated version of that era. The game provides cards with the words "Bonus Game" on the back, and you are to lay these out on the table in a 3-by-3 grid. The contestant turns over one card at a time, which reveals either a dollar amount or a dragon. The contestant is allowed to add to their score the accumulated total of the dollar amounts revealed after each turn, or risk losing that amount to turn over another card. If the contestant reaches $1000, they win the Bonus game and receive a total of $2000 added to their score. If the dragon is revealed, all money from the Bonus game is lost.^† This is somewhat different than the show, where two of the dollar amounts are replaced by cards that say "TIC" and "TAC," which award no money, but which will automatically yield a victory if both are selected. This actually makes the home version considerably easier to win than the real thing. The real game would also add a prize package (worth quite a bit more than $1000, in my experience) in addition to the money accumulated (rather than a set $2000), so perhaps the added risk evens out in the long run.

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^*I should also point out here that the 1950's show had a nighttime version where the values were $300/$500.
^†I should point out here that the game actually gives you 12 cards, even though the instructions say you should only use 9. Basically, they give you 3 extra dragons for no apparent reason. The rules even make clear that there should only be one dragon among the 9.

Game Show Board Games: Tic-Tac-Dough (1950s version)

I've featured a few game show board games on this blog in the past, and it's high time I got back to doing a few more. This time, I'm going to feature the oldest such game in my collection: a 1956 or 57 (my sources differ on the year) edition of the game created for the original Tic-Tac-Dough. Jack Barry (later known to my generation as the host of The Joker's Wild before his death in 1984) is featured on the cover, and was indeed the original host of Tic-Tac-Dough. But since Barry was only host of the show for a few months in 1956, it seems reasonably likely that he had already moved on by the time this game would have been available.

Tic-Tac-Dough was a quiz show built on (as the name no doubt makes obvious) Tic-Tac-Toe. The game board features nine categories, a different one appearing in each square of a 3-by-3 grid. The returning champion, playing as "X," selects a category (and its corresponding square), and the host reads a question from that category. If the contestant gets the correct answer, an "X" is placed in that square, and the cash value of that square is added to a game pot. If not, the square remains unclaimed. The "O" contestant may then choose one of the remaining categories/squares to capture it in the same way. After both contestants have had a chance to answer a question, the categories would shuffle around the board, a feat done by virtue of a series of rollers on which the categories have been written. As in Tic-Tac-Toe, a player wins the game (and the accumulated pot of money) by capturing three squares in a row.

The board game really captures the feel of the actual show rather brilliantly. I'm especially impressed by how the board game duplicates the mechanism for shuffling categories, almost precisely scaled-down from what was done on the 1950s-era set. The categories are shuffled by pulling down on the blue lever to the right. The questions are contained on a series of cards held in a blue stand. While this means a lot of potential parts to be lost, it is much closer to how an actual quiz show host gets his questions than the standard "question book" that most game show board games of a later era would have.

The box proudly calls itself a "First Edition," but I do wonder just how many variations of this edition were made, as the images I've found elsewhere on the web of early 1950s-era Tic-Tac-Dough games use the form "1st Editon," rather than spelling the ordinal number out. Either way, it seems clear that the game comes from the time before the show was investigated for game rigging (as many game shows of that era were, most notably Jack Barry's most well-known show of the time, Twenty One). The board game continued to be released after that, but with all references to Tic-Tac-Dough removed, going by the name 3 In-A-Row Home Quiz.

Being born in 1974, I of course never actually saw the 1950s version of Tic-Tac-Dough when it was originally on. I've had to rely on the wonders of You Tube for that. I grew up with the 1970s/80s version, which had its own board game version released. I'll feature that next week, along with some of the differences between the two.

Reflections on Survivor - Why I Still Watch After a Decade

I don't watch Survivor as much as I used to. Back during the second season (I didn't see any of the first), Survivor was appointment television, and I joined a group of my friends around the television set every week to watch, and to talk about what we all thought would happen next week.

(Spoiler alert for the final episode of the season follows! You have been warned!)

The twenty-second season ended last night, and although I was pretty deliberate about watching the last half of the season finale, whereby Rob Mariano won the game, and the million dollars, after three previous failed attempts on the show (Well, I say "failed," but he did finish second-place on his second attempt—and then married the winner!), my viewing this whole season has been pretty sporadic. It's been that way for several years now.

I've always found these shows (that is, "reality" shows with non-celebrity players—although it's obvious that players hope to reach celebrity status by coming on, and Rob's certainly not the only player who can legitimately say that they've succeeded in this attempt) to be simultaneously fascinating and disturbing. Fascinating because the ways that human nature is played out in the relationships developed on the show, and disturbing for much the same reason.

That's not because Survivor displays only "secular" people—self-professed Christians have played, too, visibly wearing their faith on their sleeve, for as long as I've watched. I'd be lying if I suggested that wasn't uncomfortable with the faith that such Christians have demonstrated, but more charitably, I can definitely concede that Christians remain human beings, with all the failings that being human implies. And Survivor seems to be designed to draw those failings out into the open.

It has been said that the true test of a person's character is how that person acts when all comforts have been stripped away. Placed in such harsh conditions for nearly a full month, it's worth noting that it's not like all the contestants on Survivor throughout the years have been disagreeable. The fact that the producers were able to put together a season of "Heroes vs. Villains" (season twenty) is testimony enough to the fact that at least a significant number of players have demonstrated positive traits. It is how these traits come out, even in the midst of messy, fallen human beings, that keeps me coming back after more than a decade of this show. I don't think that one can truly find a nice, clear dividing line between "Heroes" and "Villains" (the producer-chosen tribal designations not withstanding). Most of us have aspects of both. I think it's good to remember that, and Survivor is a consistent reminder of just how complex human nature can be. That's why I continue to watch... if admittedly not as frequently as I used to.

Game Show Board Games: The $25,000 Pyramid

On the comparatively rare occasions when I am with a group of friends playing board games at their house, it seems that Taboo is almost always requested.  I usually am pretty happy to join in, because I know the truth: Taboo is pretty much the same game as one of my favorite game shows, which in the 1980's I knew as The $25,000 Pyramid!

Yes, Taboo adds the wrinkle of not being able to say certain obvious words, rendering it a bit more difficult, but Pyramid was popularizing the idea of trying to get your teammate to say the correct word or phrase based on definitions you give them for a good decade-and-a-half by the time Taboo (and the later, similar game, Catch Phrase) had begun to be marketed to the public.

Pyramid captures the gameplay of the game show quite nicely (although it's rather difficult to have teammates trade off in the middle of a round, given the fact that all clues for that round are visible on the side of board available to the players giving them), if perhaps it doesn't capture the snazzy feel of the set with the rotating trilons anything near as well.  Instead of a digital timer, you are given an hourglass with bright pink sand in it (a fairly common element in board games with a timed element).  The hourglass is remarkably well-calibrated to the expected 30-second time limit required for the regular game.  Unfortunately, only one hourglass is provided, requiring someone to flip it over in the middle of the 60-second "Winner's Circle," which is more than a little unfortunate.  As anyone who's watched the show can attest, this round can be quite intense, and one really can't expect the players to be paying attention to the clock when they're trying to win the round!

The producers of the game were wise enough to realize that gameplay for the daytime $25,000 Pyramid and the nighttime $100,000 Pyramid is more or less identical, and thus advertise that you can play either version you want on the sides of the box and in the rules.  Unfortunately, they also decided to cram both numbers at the top of the paper pyramid board provided, which further detracts from the visual feel of the game, with the top prize proudly (and singularly!) on display at the top.

Still, these are minor quibbles.  The game plays like a Pyramid game should, and that's what really matters.  If you're able to pick up a version of this game, I highly recommend it, and would especially suggest pulling it out for your next party (perhaps using a stopwatch rather than that hourglass, though)!

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Weekly Twittercast: "You Bet Your Life"

Game shows have been a part of American culture for a rather long time.  Thanks to the fact that so many older programs, especially those made for radio before the 1970's, have fallen into the Public Domain, it is relatively easy to enjoy some of these pieces of game show history even today.

You Bet Your Life was a game show that was more about the "show" than the "game" part.  Premiering on radio in 1947, and eventually being broadcast on both radio and television in 1950 (indeed, the very same episodes aired in both media, thanks to the simple format), the show starred movie legend Groucho Marx.  Groucho had a skill for improvisation that was unmatched, and many of the Marx brothers most famous comedies were largely ad-libbed.  This skill was put to good use on You Bet Your Life, which featured Groucho and three pairs of contestants in each show.  The contestants were often (but not always) selected from the studio audience, and often were not people who knew each other, but who fit "categories" requested by the producers.  One pair, for example, featured a "hobo" alongside a "job analyst."  Groucho and the couple would chat for a few minutes, before eventually playing the perfunctory game, whereby the contestants would answer a series of questions, betting a portion of their existing winnings (starting with $20, at least in the earliest episodes) to try to accumulate the highest total at the end of four questions.  The couple with the highest total then attempted to answer a single question at the end of the show for an escalating jackpot (starting at $1000).

A highlight of the show was the "secret word."  Always a very common word, the idea was that if the couple should say the word during the course of their conversation with Groucho at any point during the episode, they would win an additional cash prize of $100 (I can't tell that this ever changed).

Although cash prizes were given away, there was no mistaking that this show was really about the humor that would come from Groucho's conversations with the contestants.  For example, while interviewing a couple that had been married for 50 years, Groucho and the husband (obviously retired at 77 years old) had this exchange:

Groucho: "What sort of work do you do now?"
Mr. Thacker: "I don't work."
Groucho: "You're a bum?"

Other game shows have been known as much for the humor they generated as they have been for big cash prizes.  The 1970's classic Match Game, for example, would never have been a hit if not for the antics of the celebrities and the double-entendre jokes (mild by modern standards.  In fact, this is why some suggest that the show couldn't work today.  I disagree, but do feel that the more recent attempts to revive Match Game didn't understand that there is a boundary between what's funny what's going too far into the risque) often tossed in.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've started something of an experiment with my Twitter account.  Every Monday night, at 8:00 pm (Eastern Daylight Time, 5:00 pm Pacific), I am posting an MP3 link to the episode of You Bet Your Life that originally aired exactly 60 years previously.  A "Twittercast," if you will.  I am already prepared with "anniversary" episodes for the next month or so, but of course I may not have existing episodes to do this indefinitely (at least, not while retaining the "60th anniversary" element).  Still, I think that this is could be an interesting experiment in reliving a moment of broadcast history.  If you'd like to keep up-to-date when a new 60th anniversary episode of You Bet Your Life is made available, feel free to subscribe to my Twitter account @NicodemusLegend.

Game Show Board Games: The Joker's Wild

Of all the game shows I watched when I was a child, The Joker's Wild was always my favorite.  I'm not entirely sure that I can explain why.  Perhaps it was the "pure trivia" nature of the game (although certainly simplistic compared to Jeopardy! questions today.  But I started watching game shows in the few years between the end of the original Jeopardy! and the beginning of the current version, so I wouldn't have known that yet), maybe it was the hosting (Jack Barry at first, making his big comeback from the game show scandals of the '50s--something else I didn't know anything about at the time--and Bill Cullen in the couple of years after Barry's sudden death), but I'm guessing it was probably the fact that the game centered on a "slot machine" with three spinning wheels that determined the categories.  I've always been a sucker for game shows with wheels!

Naturally, when I grew up, I had to add to my game show collection the board game version of The Joker's Wild, produced by Milton Bradley in three editions (plus a child's version, patterned after the children's spin-off Joker! Joker! Joker!) starting in 1973 (the year after The Joker's Wild premiered).  I suppose that this game duplicates the mechanics of the actual gameplay as well as could be expected for an affordable home game using 1970's technology.  The main board looks enough like the slot machine from the actual game, but instead of three separately spinning wheels, the categories are determined by a deck of playing cards.  Instead of actual category names (as seen on the show), the cards have numbers on them, intended to correspond to one of 5 categories as read from a little booklet (although I do like that the booklet of categories is separate from the booklet of questions and answers, allowing players to see the categories for themselves without spoiling the game).  But I have to confess, cards are a poor substitute for actual wheels.  And the odds of getting matching categories out of the cards just has to be different than the odds of the same result from independently spinning slots... but I digress.

In the main game, a player "spins the wheels" (i.e. deals three category cards) to see what categories are available, and asks for a question corresponding to one of the displayed categories.  If the category (number) shows up only one time among the three cards, the question is worth $50.  If it shows up twice, it's worth $100, and if all three cards/slots have the same category, the question is worth $200.  Also, there are jokers interspersed in the deck, which are (as the name of the game suggests) wild, allowing the player to increase the value of a category listed on the other card(s), or giving the player the chance to go "off the board" with a different category, worth the value of however many jokers are available.  If all three of the cards/slots are jokers, the player can choose any category he/she likes, and will win the game with a correct answer.  In all cases except for a "three jokers" scenario, if the player gets an answer incorrect, his/her opponent gets a chance to answer, and if correct, gets the value of that question.  The first player to reach $500 (after ensuring that both players have had an equal number of questions) wins the game and gets to play the bonus round.

Bonus rounds are perhaps a bit superfluous in a home game, since prizes are seldom actually given away when playing at home.  Still, it does help to create the feel of the game show.  Unfortunately, the board game duplicates an early version of the bonus round that I never actually saw as a child (being born in 1974, the game had evolved a bit before I was old enough to remember watching).  However, I would argue that I like the way the cards emulate the slots better in this round.  You are given three separately-colored decks of cards, each corresponding to one of the three slots on the slot machine.  The cards in each deck are exclusively images of jokers, plus one "devil" per deck.  The player starts the bonus round by playing one card from each deck.  If all three cards show jokers, all is well, and the player is awarded $100.  The player can stop right there and take the winnings (again, this is a bit of a moot point at home, where it's just play money), or risk that money to try again with the next card in each deck.  Another set of three jokers increases the players' winnings to $400, and the player can stop there or risk it all to try again.  A result of three jokers one more time increases the winnings to $1000, and the game ends.  However, if a devil appears at any time, on any of the three decks, the bonus game is over and the player wins nothing.

I value this board game more for it's nostalgia factor than for it's actual gameplay.  If I really want to play a game, I prefer to use one of a number of (mostly unofficial) computer versions I've found on the web.  These can more accurately duplicate the feel of spinning slot machine wheels for random categories.  Go Jokers!


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Game Show Board Games: Jeopardy! (Parker Brothers version)

Given that Jeopardy! has a history dating back more than 45 years, it's probably no surprise that there have been a lot of home versions produced.  Of the board game versions (that is, not counting any fully-electronic versions or various versions one might play on one's television set), I think the 1999 version by Parker Brothers is definitely the best.

It's not necessarily the one that most closely duplicates the actual gameplay.  Other legitimately "board game" versions had incorporated electronic buzzers at least as early as 1987, which certainly made the answer to the question "who buzzed in first?" much clearer than the little clickers that this 1999 version comes with (visible on the left-hand side).  The thing that makes this version stand out to me is the fact that this version actually incorporates six categories per round.   

Since the television version of Jeopardy! has always had six categories per round since the show's beginnings in 1964, the fact that no version had included a board with six categories previously may come as a surprise (TYCO did a couple of versions of Jeopardy! in the mid-1990's that used six individual category stands, rather than a single board.  This allowed for the correct number of categories, but had a rather different aesthetic and play pattern entirely.).  But take a moment and do the math on those dates.  It took board game designers 35 years to make a Jeopardy! board with space enough for six categories!  For some reason, all previous versions of the board game--and all versions made since--have used boards that only had five categories per round!  (Pictured here is the 9th Milton Bradley edition, which I believe is from 1972.)

Of course, game play for all these versions (excepting the TYCO versions) is more or less the same.  Pick a category and dollar amount (it's worth noting that both of these versions use outdated dollar amounts since the television show adopted its current dollar values in 2001), remove the corresponding tab to reveal a clue.  Click (or buzz) in first to be recognized by the "host" and give your response in the form of a question.  Correct questions add that dollar value to your total, incorrect questions require you to forfeit that much money.  Daily Double tabs are hidden on the board (one for the first round, two for the second) to allow you to bet however much money you want out of your current total (or up to the highest value on the board, provided you don't have that much) to respond to a clue without competition from the other contestants.  Then, after the second round is completed, all contestants wager how much of their totals to risk on a "Final Jeopardy!" clue that all must answer by writing their response on a piece of paper.

Actually, "Final Jeopardy!" is one more aspect that the Parker Brothers version of the game "gets right" that others generally haven't.  If you'll notice in the picture above, the Parker Brothers version has a dedicated space for "Final Jeopardy!" at the bottom of the board, below the rest of the spaces.  In most other versions of the game, the "Final Jeopardy!" tab is taken from one of the second-round clues, revealed in advance so that no one would pick that clue before that round is over.  The fact that I care about such things is, no doubt, just a side-effect of my generally over-zealous attention to detail.  But I think that the fact that I'm not "cheated" out of 11 full answers-and-questions per game is worth caring about!

EXTRA: If using all that funny-colored play money is too unwieldy for you, perhaps you might want to use the "Jeopardy! Challenger."  This little hand-held device from 1987 is basically just a glorified calculator designed to help fans keep their own score while watching the show.  My grandma found this one for me a few years back, and this seems like the best time I'm ever likely to have to mention this interesting and hard-to-find collectible, although, to tell the truth, I generally just use a pen and paper, anyway (both for watching the show and for keeping score on the board game versions).

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Game Show Board Games: Blockbusters

Transformers aren't the only thing I collect.  I'm also proud to have a collection of quite a few game show board games.  This is, in part, an outgrowth of my love for game shows in general, but I also started collecting these in part due to a series of Thanksgivings and other family gatherings where we played these games together.  A number of them came from my grandmother, herself a game show fan for obvious reasons.

The Blockbusters game comes from Milton Bradley, and has a copyright date of 1982 on the box.  Although I was first familiar with the board game through a copy my grandmother owned, the one I have didn't come from her, but rather is something I located a number of years ago on eBay.  The show itself ran on NBC from 1980 to 1982 and starred game show legend Bill Cullen.  The show was revived in 1987 with Bill Rafferty, but to this day I've never seen an episode of that version.  Blockbusters sought (in some way) to answer the question "are two heads really better than one?" and featured a solo player competing against a team of two players in a game that combined trivia knowledge and strategy.

The board game more or less faithfully duplicates the mechanics of the actual show.  Players compete on a game board of connected hexagons, each one containing a different letter.  Players capture hexagons by answering trivia questions with answers that begin with the letter for space.  For example, if the letter "R" was chosen, a question might be "What 'R' is the first name of Supreme Court Justice Bader Ginsburg?" (answer: Ruth)  A correct answer changes that hexagon to the player's color.  The "solo player" is assigned red, and seeks to create a path of connected red hexagons from top to bottom, a task that can be completed in as few as four moves.  The team of two players tries to complete a path of white hexagons from left to right on the board, which requires at least five moves (the extra space needed in an effort to balance out the existence of two players on the team).  The first player/team to win two games would win the match.  The 1987 version of Blockbusters eliminated the "two heads are better than one" bit, and alternated top-bottom and left-right so that no player (both players being "solo players") was disadvantaged by needing an extra hexagon to win (with a tiebreaker match played on a 4-by-4 board, but I never really felt that this worked especially well with hexagons. Of course, I've never seen that version, so what do I know?).

One significant difference between the board game and actual show regards the bonus round, called the "Gold Run" (originally "Gold Rush."  Don't ask me why they changed it.  Anyway, the board game calls it "Gold Run.").  After winning a match, the player (or one member of the team, in the case of a team of two players) would try to connect a path from left to right (using gold hexagons for correct answers) within 60 seconds.  In the show, most of the hexagons in "Gold Run" would have multiple letters, denoting multiple-word responses (such as, for "WUD," "What Bugs Bunny often says."  Answer: "What's up, doc?").  However, the board game only gives you three reversible boards, all containing single letters, so you have to use the same questions as you would for the regular game (using the handy question book provided).

It really must be emphasized that these "differences" are really very minor, and this is a very enjoyable game to bring out to play with friends.  I've also used this game with students when tutoring, since the trivia format lends itself well to whatever subject is at hand.  Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people I run into these days have ever heard of the game, which obviously diminishes the nostalgic fun felt by those of us who remember Blockbusters from the 1980's.  Still, I think that the game play itself is quite solid, and easy to learn and enjoy for anyone willing to give it a shot.