Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian, actor, writer, singer, stage, film, radio, television star and vaudeville performer. He is generally considered to have been a master of quick wit and one of America's greatest comedians.
Hollywood Squares is an American game show in which two contestants compete in a game of tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The show piloted on NBC in 1965 and the regular series debuted in 1966 on the same network. The board for the game is a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The stars are asked questions by the host and the contestants judge the truth of their answers to gain squares in the right pattern to win the game.
Supermarket Sweep is an American television game show. The format combines an ordinary team-based quiz show with the novel concept of a live, timed race through a supermarket. In the timed race, cameras follow the teams with shopping carts through a large vacated supermarket with several aisles; the value of items thrown into the cart determine the winning team. The original show was broadcast on ABC from December 20, 1965, to July 14, 1967. Later seasons aired on Lifetime from February 5, 1990, to June 16, 1995, and later from April 3, 2000, to May 23, 2003, with reruns airing until March 26, 2004. Another version of the show aired from October 18, 2020, to January 30, 2022, also on ABC.
Password is an American television game show in which two teams, each composed of a celebrity player and a contestant, attempt to convey mystery words to each other using only single-word clues, in order to win cash prizes.
You Bet Your Life is an American comedy quiz series that has aired on both radio and television. The original and best-known version was hosted by Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, with announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show debuted on ABC Radio on October 27, 1947, moved to CBS Radio debuting October 5, 1949, and went to NBC-TV and NBC Radio on October 4, 1950. Because of its simple format, it was possible to broadcast the show on both radio and television but not simultaneously. Many of the laughs on the television show were evoked by Groucho's facial reactions and other visual gimmicks; the two versions were slightly different. The last episode in a radio format aired on June 10, 1960. The series continued on television for another year, recording a season on September 22, 1960 with a new title, The Groucho Show.
The Joker's Wild is an American television game show that aired at different times between 1972 and 2019. In the show, contestants answer questions based on categories determined randomly by a mechanism resembling a slot machine. The show's title refers to the game's slot-machine mechanism also having jokers.
Figure It Out is an American children's panel game show that aired on Nickelodeon. The original series, hosted by Summer Sanders, ran for four seasons from July 7, 1997, to December 12, 1999. The show was revived in 2012, with Jeff Sutphen as host, with the revival airing from June 11, 2012, to July 16, 2013. The series was originally recorded at Nickelodeon Studios at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. The revival episodes were filmed on stage 19 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles.
BrainTeaser was a British game show based on the original Dutch format of Puzzeltijd. The show was broadcast live, with phone-in viewer puzzles being announced and played during the show in addition to the studio game. During its run from 5 August 2002 to 7 March 2007, it aired on Five Mondays to Fridays, usually for an hour around lunchtime, and was fronted by various presenters rotating with one another. Beginning in August 2005, a version of the show that exclusively focused on viewer participation was broadcast in a four-hour long block on YooPlay TV every day after the Five broadcast, as part of a thirteen-week trial.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood is a computer game that was developed by Denton Designs and published by Ocean Software Ltd in 1985 for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum home computers. The game is based on the teachings of the UK band Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Face the Music is an American television game show that aired daily in syndication from January 14, 1980, to September 1981. The show was hosted by actor Ron Ely, with Dave Williams as announcer for the first season and John Harlan for the second with Art James as a substitute. The Tommy Oliver Orchestra, with Lisa Donovan as vocalist, was also featured. Face the Music was produced and distributed by Sandy Frank Productions.
Pimania is a text-and-graphics adventure game written by Mel Croucher and released by Automata UK in 1982 for the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Dragon 32, and Sinclair ZX81. It was the first real-life video game treasure hunt to be released. It was inspired by the 1979 Kit Williams book Masquerade. Automata gave a prize of a golden sundial worth £6,000 for the first person to solve the various cryptic clues to its location that were hidden within Pimania.
Mel Croucher is a British entrepreneur and video games pioneer. Originally an architect, he moved into computers and in 1977 launched one of the very earliest games companies, Automata UK, as an extension of his publishing business. He is now credited for setting up "the first games company in the U.K.", celebrated as "the father of the British videogames industry" and presented as "a pioneer in affective computing". His first broadcasts of computer game software were made over AM and FM radio. After the release of the Sinclair ZX81, his label published several games for the early home computer market, including three Computer Trade Association award-winners: Pimania (1982), Groucho, and the groundbreaking "multi-media" title Deus Ex Machina (1984). Croucher has championed immersive entertainment throughout his career as director and producer, mixing audio, video, spoken word, real-world locations and computer-generated effects.
PDQ and Baffle are American television game shows created by Heatter-Quigley Productions. Both shows' objective was for contestant/celebrity teams to guess a given word or phrase in the shortest amount of time with the fewest letters given as possible.
The ZX Spectrum's software library was very diverse. While the majority of the software produced for the system was video games, others included programming language implementations, Sinclair BASIC extensions, databases, word processors, spread sheets, drawing and painting tools, and 3D modelling tools.
Automata UK was a software house which developed and published ZX Spectrum video games between 1982 and 1985. Significant releases included Pimania (1982), My Name Is Uncle Groucho, You Win A Fat Cigar (1983) and Deus Ex Machina (1984).
Jeopardy! is an American game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given general knowledge clues in the form of answers and they must identify the person, place, thing, or idea that the clue describes, phrasing each response in the form of a question.
Automonopoli, also known as Go to Jail, is an unauthorised computer version of the boardgame Monopoly, released in June 1983 by Automata UK for the ZX Spectrum. Although other two-player Monopoly computer programs already existed, the developer advertised that their Automonopoli was the first with an artificial intelligence strong enough to compete against and defeat human players.
Ask Me Another is an hour-long radio puzzle game show that was produced by WNYC and National Public Radio. It was hosted by Canadian American comedian Ophira Eisenberg and featured as its "in-house musician" or "one-man house band" independent rock musician Jonathan Coulton. Episodes of the show were usually recorded at The Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, however the show did go to various states across the country and recorded one or more episodes from those locations. The show was produced by WNYC Studios. During the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the show continued taping episodes from the homes of the participants, without a studio audience.
Ellen's Game of Games, also known as Game of Games and stylized as ellen's GAME OF GAMES, is an American television game show that aired on NBC. In March 2017, NBC ordered six hour-long episodes of the series. Ellen DeGeneres serves as host, while Stephen "tWitch" Boss appears as announcer/sidekick. The series is based on game segments from DeGeneres' daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The series premiered on December 18, 2017. On February 18, 2020, DeGeneres announced on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that the series was renewed for a fourth season, which began airing on October 6, 2020. In January 2022, the series was canceled after four seasons.
Family Game Fight! is an American game show, where families take on each other in massive games, with a chance to win $100,000. The show is hosted by Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, marking their first television project together. The series premiered on NBC at a special time on August 8, 2021 at 10.30 p.m., while the actual series began airing on August 11 at 9 p.m.
