The $100,00 Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour

## The $100,000 Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour

***The $100,000 Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour*** is an upcoming game show combining *Match Game* and *Hollywood Squares* into an hour-long format. The series is also a revival of the NBC game show of the same name that aired from 1983-84. The series aired on MyTV (now XYZ) during the summer of 2017-18, but was put on hold due to ABC hosting a prime-time version of Match Game, which as airing during that time. When ABC made the announcement that Match Game was canceled on the network, XYZ decided to bring back the series with two new hosts: David Williams (who was hosting Match Game's British version *Blankety Blank*) to do the Match Game portion, and Warwick Davis (who was hosting Hollywood Squares' British version *Celebrity Squares*) to do the Hollywood Squares portion. XYZ announced that the series would return later on in the summer of 2022.

## Rules

### Match Game

The show began with two new contestants playing a round of the syndicated *Match Game* with a panel of six celebrities, including Davis in the bottom left seat. The game-play format is the one used on the syndicated *Match Game*; it is up to the contestant to match as many of the panel's responses to fill-in-the-blank questions as possible, with three rounds played and matched celebrities not playing subsequent questions. After three rounds, the contestant with the higher score won the game.

If the contestants had the same score at the end of the game, the scores were reset to 0–0 and a time-saving variant of the tie-breaker was used that reversed the game play. The contestants wrote their answers first on a card in secret, then the celebrities were canvassed to give their answers verbally. The first celebrity response to match a contestant's answer gave that contestant the victory.

### Hollywood Squares

The *Hollywood Squares* half of the show pitted the *Match Game* winner against the returning champion.

For *Squares*, three more celebrities joined the panel along with Williams, who took Davis' seat at bottom left. A third tier of the panel set swung into place to accommodate the new panelists, and the celebrity who was already sitting in the top center seat for *Match Game* became the center square. As on the original *Squares*, contestants attempted to claim squares by correctly agreeing or disagreeing with the responses that the celebrities gave to Davis' questions. The first contestant to get three of his/her own symbol in a row (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) won the game.  The first and second games were worth $1,000 to the winner. The third game was worth $2,000, and every subsequent game until time ran out was worth $4,000. If a contestant did not win anything in the main game, $1,000 was given to them as a consolation prize.

There is no "Secret Square" in this version, and the contestants played as many games as time allowed. When the final bell rang, the contestant in the lead became the night's champion and joined Williams on stage to play the Super Match bonus round. Both contestants kept any money they earned in this segment.

### Super Match

The champion could win up to $100,000 in the Super Match, which resembled the round played on the ABC prime time version of the show instead of the syndicated version that used what was referred to as the "Star Wheel". The primary differences were the use of nine celebrities – Davis, plus the other eight who took part in the *Hollywood Squares* segment – rather than six, and the method for determining the potential top prize.

The round began with the Audience Match, in which the contestant tried to match one of the three most popular responses given by a previous studio audience to a short item such as "Trading \_\_\_\_\_\_ ." The contestant was allowed to call on any three celebrities for help. $1,000 was awarded for matching the most popular response, with $500 and $250 for the second and third, respectively. If the contestant failed to match any of these three responses, the round did not end as on previous versions of *Match Game*; rather, he/she was given $100.

For the Head-to-Head Match, each celebrity had a card that concealed a number: four 30's, four 50's, one 100. The champion selected one celebrity, who revealed the number on his/her card; if the champion and celebrity gave the same response to the item asked by Williams, the Audience Match winnings were multiplied by that number ($500 x 30 = $15,000, for example). The long-standing requirement for an exact match remained in place.