Many of us missed on this opportunity two days ago, so...
"It's the Game You've Played all your life, but never quite like this!"
On July 2, 1984, Scrabble made its premiere on the NBC daytime game show circuit, joing perennials $ale of the Century and Wheel of Fortune (Super Password would be the final fixture of the 80s daytime lineup a few months later). Hosted by Wheel alum Chuck Woolery, the show took a different spin on the board game. Two contestants competed in a best-of-three matchup, using tiles to solve puzzles with tongue-in-cheek clues (For example, the clue "You can't do less than this" would be a reference to the word "nothing.") The winner would play the previous match's winner in the Scrabble Sprint. Whoever wins the sprints wins $1,500 (plus whatever money was in the pot during the first year of the show's run). Five wins in a row are an additional $20,000; ten wins add $20,000 on top of that (and retirement as undefeated champion).
In 1985, the rules were amended with a less-than-stellar spelling format (thus the "Mosquito Incident"). Thankfully, that was dropped two weeks later.
In 1986, the rules of the game were amended once again. Scrabble was now a self-contained show, with the Sprint slightly altered. The first match's winner (the game the champion played in the event that there was one) would set the time, and it would be up to the second match's winner to beat it. The winner would win $1,500 and go to the Bonus Sprint...two words successfully guessed in 10 seconds resulted in a jackpot of $5,000 (plus $1,000 for each day not hit).
Scrabble would eventually meet its end in 1990, but it would be revived in 1993. It was true to heart to the original (somewhat), but the daytime fizzle (plus the fact it was against TPiR) proved to be too much for the Reg Grundy classic, and the show met its final demise on June 11, 1993.
The Inquisitive One
(I'm pretty sure all of you knew about this, but I thought I would just write it out for you. Happy Independence Day!)
