Chain Letters

***Chain Letters*** was a British television game show produced by Tyne Tees and Barry & Enright Productions. The show was recorded at their City Road studios in Newcastle Upon Tyne and first broadcast on ITV in the United Kingdom from 7 September 1987 to 6 July 1990, then again from 2 January 1995 to 25 April 1997.

Three contestants competed to win money by changing letters in words to form new words. Its original host was Jeremy Beadle, followed by Andrew O'Connor, Allan Stewart, Ted Robbins, Vince Henderson and Dave Spikey.

A computer named Wordsworth generated words and checked their validity, and occasionally provided the host with definitions of unusual words that came up during the game.

In 2017 shortly after Disney/ABC decided that MyTV (now XYZ) should have a daytime block, they also decided that in addition to the soap opera block, the network would have a game show block as well, deciding to bring the series to the United States.

## Gameplay

### Round 1 – Make a Chain

The first round was entitled **Make a Chain**. Each contestant chose one of four hidden four-letter words and had 45 seconds to create as long a chain as possible by changing one letter at a time. Proper nouns or plurals were not allowed, and the contestant could not change the same letter position on consecutive plays. (E.g., SALE to MALE to MILE was allowed, but SALE to MALE to TALE was not.)

Each valid word added $10 to the contestant's score. Words had to appear in the *Longman Dictionary of the English Language* (*Chambers English Dictionary* in later series) to be valid. At each step, the contestant had to call out both the letter being changed and its replacement, then say and spell the new word. If a word was invalid, the letter change was undone.

### Round 2 – Booby Trap

Contestants played in descending order of their scores from Round 1. The contestant in control chose one four-letter word from a group of four, then selected one letter to change. Both opponents then secretly wrote down their predictions of the word they thought the contestant would make. The contestant then changed the letter and won £10 if the new word did not match either opponent's prediction. The contestant could then change the word up to twice more for higher stakes, with the opponents' predictions staying the same on each attempt. If the new word matched a prediction at any time, the opponent received the money at stake instead, and the contestant lost it and ended their turn. Both opponents won the money if each of their predictions were correct, or if the contestant formed an illegal word. After the first or second word, the host would encourage contestant to either gamble or stay on the money they won after making a new word.

For all but the last two series, the money at stake doubled on the second and third words, to a maximum of $40. Beyond this point, every word added $10 to the stakes, for a maximum of $40.

### Final Round – Tie the Leader

A five-letter word was displayed, with a plus sign at the left end and a minus sign at the right. The host read a toss-up clue whose answer differed from the displayed word by one letter. The change that needed to be made was displayed when a contestant buzzed-in. If a letter was highlighted, it needed to be changed. The plus and minus signs indicated that a letter had to be added or removed, respectively, without changing the order of the others. Answers could be three, four, or five letters in length.

Buzzing-in also stopped a randomiser that determined the value of the word: $10, $20, $30, and $40, or "Tie," which if hit by the second- or third-place contestant, immediately increased their score to match that of the leader. An incorrect answer gave the opponents a chance to buzz-in.

When the round ended, the contestant in the lead won the game and advanced to the bonus round. All three contestants kept whatever money they had earned in the game. In 1995, however, the players scored points and each runner-up received a portable CD player.

### Bonus Round – Superchain

The contestant was shown a four-letter word with one letter highlighted, and had to change that letter to form a new word. If they passed or gave an invalid word, a different letter would be highlighted. The contestant won $500 for each new word formed, or $20,000 for making 10 changes in 60 seconds.