Blockbusters (game show)

Blockbusters was a television game show in which contestants answered trivia questions to complete a path across a game board of hexagons.

Main game

A solo player competed against a "family pair" that consisted of two related contestants (married couples were not allowed), thus setting out to prove if two heads really were better than one.

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The game board consisted of 20 interlocking hexagons, arranged in five columns of four. Each hexagon contained a letter of the alphabet. A contestant would choose one of the letters, and would be asked a general-knowledge trivia question whose correct answer began with the chosen letter. (A typical question was something like, "What 'P' is a musical instrument with 88 keys?" The answer would be a piano.) In the UK, the phrasing that contestants would use to ask for a letter has entered the language, and is frequently heard to this day. It is also the source of a mildly amusing pun - "I'll have a 'P' please, Bob". In the US, such nonsense might not have even been considered.

Related Topics:
Alphabet - Piano

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The game began with a toss-up question to play for control of the board, starting with a letter that was chosen at random. The first contestant to buzz in with the correct answer gained control of that hexagon and was given the chance to choose another one. If the contestant answered incorrectly, the opposing team or player was given a chance to answer it. If nobody answered it correctly, the host asked another question whose answer began with that same letter.

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The object of the game for the solo player was to complete a vertical connection from the top of the board to the bottom; that required at least four correct answers. The object for the family pair was to make a horizontal connection from the left side of the board to the right; that required at least five correct answers. The first player or team to win two games won the match.

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For the 1987 NBC revival, a major change was made by dropping the "family pair" concept; instead, each game was played by one champion playing against one challenger. However, the gameboard was not structurally altered. While this would seem to give one player an unfair advantage, as he or she would have a shorter minimum path to win the game, the producers solved this problem by alternating which player had that advantage in each game. In this version, the challenger played the shorter top-to-bottom route in the first game, while in the second the champion took over that route. A third tie-breaker round, if necessary, was played on a smaller 4x4 gameboard that gave neither player an obvious advantage.

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