Mindreaders

"Are you a Mindreader, yes or no? Will (celebrity #1) say yes? Did (celebrity #2) say no? Find out as we play a game of hunch and ESP, Mindreaders! And now here's the star of Mindreaders, Dick Martin!"

Mindreaders, the short-lived game of predicting where celebrities predict what the contestants will say, and vice versa.

Gameplay
Two teams of four players (three civilians and one celebrity) played the game in a battle-of-the-sexes manner.

Main Game
Host Martin read a question to one group of three civilian contestants after which they locked in their answers. The celebrity team captain's job was to predict how they answered that question. A correct prediction keeps control for that celebrity captain and predicts the next player in line. If the celebrity is incorrect, the celebrity captain of the opposing team gets to predict the remaining controlling teammates' responses. Each correct answer is worth $50, with the money going to the other team for incorrect answers, and the first team to reach $300 wins the game and goes on to play the bonus game.

Bonus Game
The bonus game was played in two parts. The first part was where the winning team got to judge the jury and the second part was where the winning team got to predict what their celebrity team captain said.

Judge the Jury
Host Martin asked three questions to the jury (consisting of 10 members of the studio audience). Each contestant on the winning team played each question (one for each contestant). On each question, the jury locked in their answers depending on the criteria of the question and the player operating on that question predicted how many of the jury members said yes or no. Guessing the number exactly (right on the nose) won $500 for the team while missing the number by one or two earned $200. After playing the three questions, the winning team then played part two called "Celebrity Turnabout".

Celebrity Turnabout
It is called Celebrity Turnabout because the tables have turned, for the winning team now tried to predict if the celebrity captain said yes or no on one last question. Each contestant made a prediction with the majority rule in effect. The celebrity captain then revealed his/her answer, and if the majority of the team is correct, the winning civilians win 10 times the part one cash for a maximum total of $15,000.

All teams competed against each other for three games and left the show afterwards. The maximum any team can win is $45,900.

Music
Score Productions

This theme would later be reused on the unsold pilot - Puzzlers.

Unreleased Mechandise
In order for a chance to revive the series in the 80s, an "unreleased" computer game (presumably for the Commodore 64 and DOS) was made by Gametek in 1989. Much like the ill-fated series, it involves four players on the mens' team and four on the womens' team. Contestants picked which player would be team captain (the mindreading job the celebrity had on the TV series) for each team, and whiich players would be controlled by the CPU (Central Processing Unit). a yes-or-no question would be asked that probed the personal opinions of the teammates. The three teammates put in their answer without the captain looking, and the captain had to guess what they answered one at a time. Each correct predicition was worth $50 while Incorrect predictions gave $50 to the opposing team amd the other team captain was allowed to mindread the other teammates. The process continues with a new question for the opposing team. First team to reach $300 wins the game and goes onto the bonus round.

The game was finished in late March and it was test-marketed in Northern Virginia in early of April and the results were overwhemingly negative. Consumers complained that the game basically boiled down to chance wen playing solo. And even if they managed to gather aorund enough friends to play the game, it just wasn't fun. Thanks to it's poor play-testing, the release of the home game was cancelled and all copies were later retuned to Gametek as they were later destored by them. However, the graphics for the game were later used for The Price is Right First Edition game for the Commodore 64 and DOS systems in 1990.

Trivia
The sound indicating that the entire jury locked-in their answers was later used as the solo player buzz-in sound in another short-lived but more successful NBC Goodson-Todman game show, Blockbusters. It was also used as the buzz-in sound in the Bob Eubanks hosted NBC game show, Dream House.

The correct answer bell was also used on Password Plus and Blockbusters. The sound indicating wrong answers was the NBC Claxon.

The idea of having 10 audience members answer a question was later instituted into the CBS revival of Card Sharks, which Mindreaders producer Mimi O'Brien also worked on.

Links
Mindreaders Pilot

Story about the "unreleased" Mindreaders computer game @ Ryan Rinkerman's Game Show Trading Page

YouTube Videos
Joyce Bulifant & Jack Jones (12/13/79) - One of the few episodes still in existence.

Patty Duke Astin & Nipsey Russell