70s/80s Game Show Tournaments

[That Don Guy]

I seem to recall a number of network shows had tournaments of some sort in the 70s and 80s, usually involving different shows' champions somehow.
I am not talking about straightforward Tournaments of Champions - I know Password and Jeopardy! had these annually, and Wheel of Fortune and The Gong Show each had one of their own, plus, of course the The Joker's Wild tournaments in syndication.

I can think of:

1.  NBC's "Shamrock Sweepstakes" (the top players from their six games at the time appeared on a St. Patrick's Day episode of Celebrity Sweepstakes; I think the first to answer a set of six questions about Ireland/Irishmen won $100,000)

2.  There was another Celebrity Sweepstakes tournament of some sort, but I don't know if it involved game winners or just people who mailed in postcards; each day, two different celebrities (mainly soap opera stars, but Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford were on the last day) played, each representing a different contestant, and I think they called the contestants up on the phone and they had to answer (I remember one contestant's score was thrown out because they got a busy signal) in order to get credit for the score; whoever had the highest score at the end of the week won an extra $75,000.

3.  Hollywood Squares had a $100,000 tournament involving the top two contestants of NBC's four game shows at the time.

4.  I read somewhere that the Australian version of Sale of the Century has an annual international tournament, and I know one year the American version had a Tournament of Champions to pick a representative to compete against the Australian champion and someone else.

Anybody care to fill in any missing details, or refresh my memory as to any missing tournaments?

-- Don

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'That Don Guy\' date=\'Jun 7 2005, 10:10 PM\']I seem to recall a number of network shows had tournaments of some sort in the 70s and 80s, usually involving different shows' champions somehow.
I am not talking about straightforward Tournaments of Champions - I know Password and Jeopardy! had these annually, and Wheel of Fortune and The Gong Show each had one of their own, plus, of course the The Joker's Wild tournaments in syndication.

Anybody care to fill in any missing details, or refresh my memory as to any missing tournaments?

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[/quote]

Super Password had a TofC in February 1985. $otC had four TofC's during its 80s US run, including the January 1987 international tournament. Scrabble had three regular TofCs plus one Teen TofC plus the All American Scrabble Tournament from February 1985-December 1986. WOF had a TofC during the Woolery era in 1976. TTD had celeb tournaments, plus a kids tournament and an over 80 tournament during the Wink run, as well as the 1983 TofC. The Challengers had a TofC early in its run, as well as the Teachers tournament.

[Jamey Greek]

History IQ had a teacher's tournament.

[Mike Tennant]

[quote name=\'zachhoran\' date=\'Jun 8 2005, 07:14 AM\'][quote name=\'That Don Guy\' date=\'Jun 7 2005, 10:10 PM\']I seem to recall a number of network shows had tournaments of some sort in the 70s and 80s, usually involving different shows' champions somehow.
I am not talking about straightforward Tournaments of Champions

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Super Password had a TofC  . . . blah blah blah

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In the rush to be first, Zach provides all kinds of information about . . . straightforward Tournaments of Champions!

Yes, I know there were a handful other things in there, but few of them seem relevant to the question at hand, which dealt primarily with cross-show TofC's.

Perhaps we ought to institute the Tournament of Horanians, in which people try to be first to post the most useless and/or irrelevant information.  (Extra points for run-on sentences and inaccuracies!)  The winner receives a gold spray-painted Bowling Buddy.

[jmangin]

Was the Scrabble $100,000 Tournament considered a tournament of "champions?"  I know they started with 64 contestants, whittled them down to 16 then to 4 for the final show, but did the original 64 contestants ever appear on a prior show?

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'jmangin\' date=\'Jun 8 2005, 04:17 PM\']Was the Scrabble $100,000 Tournament considered a tournament of "champions?"  I know they started with 64 contestants, whittled them down to 16 then to 4 for the final show, but did the original 64 contestants ever appear on a prior show?

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They started with 188 contestants(ran from Sep-Dec 1986). 16 contestants competed each week, four on each show(12 on Thanksgiving week). Four contestants competed each day. The winner of each Monday-Thursday maingame played the Sprint. Fastest time in the SPrint that day moved the player on to the Friday semi-finals. Those four winners from Mon-Thu competed on Friday. The winner of that day won $5K and moved onto the 13th and final week. Thanksgiving week had only four shows, only three players played on Friday. The loser of the first crossword would play the second crossword round against the third player on that week. For the finals week, they picked four wild card players among runners-up and that gave them 16 players for the final week. Four players competed each day, with the faster Sprint time on each day returning on Friday to compete for the $100K. The contestants were supposedly all found via contestant searches in cities like Dallas, Chicago, and Philadelphia, as per an article in the November 1986 issue of TV Game $how Magazine.