Blackout

A word game where two contestants and their celebrity partners blackout (censor) the opposing teams descriptions of words to prevent them from solving puzzles.

Main Game
At the beginning of a round, a fill-in-the-blank puzzle was revealed. The puzzle in question was a bad pun with four missing words (one of them being the punchline word). Then a member of one team recorded a 20 second description of a word showing on his/her monitor. The partner of the giver wore headphones and had his/her half of the podium moved up so he/she can't hear what the description is. When the time was up, the partner was released from isolation and listened to a playback of the description; but there was one big catch, one member of the opposing team was equipped with a "blackout button", pressing it down blacked out (muted) the playback. The person blacking out can blackout up to seven seconds (plus one second for every repetition of any key words) of the description. Despite the blacking out, if the player can guess the word, the team wins the word. If the player can't do that, the opponent, who had heard the whole description, would take a guess. Should the giver giveaway the word or any part of it while recording, the opponents automatically won the word. If neither player identified a word, play simply continued to the next word. The team that won the word won $100 and the right to solve the puzzle. At the puzzle, the word just described appeared in one of the four red boxes under the puzzle, and then the team had five seconds to think it over. When time was up, if the team can solve the puzzle, they win the round, but if they can't the next word was played with the next giver describing the next word. Teams would alternate turns back and forth until the puzzle was solved or if all four words were played, and on the fourth word, if the team who won the last word could not solve the puzzle, the opposing team got a chance to solve the puzzle.

Two puzzles were played each show. On the first puzzle, celebrity described the words and the contestants guessed them, while on the second puzzle the roles were reversed. The first team to solve the two puzzles won the game, if the game ended in a tie, a tiebreaker word was played. The contestant with the higher dollar amount had decision to either play or pass after being shown the word. The person describing had only 10 seconds this time to describe the word, while the person blacking out had three seconds. If the partner of the describer guessed the word, he/she won the game for the team, but if the partner is wrong or if the describer gave away the word, the opposing team won the game.

Both contestants kept their cash, but the winner of the game along with his/her celebrity partner also won a chance to play the Clue Screen round.

Clue Screen
In the bonus round, one member of the winning team faced the clue screen while his/her partner had his/her back to it. The player facing the screen saw clues appear one-by-one, and when he/she thinks there was enough information, he/she would yell "Solve it!", causing the clues to stop revealing and allowing the partner to turn around and take a guess. Each correct answer was worth $250, and if the team can solve five puzzles in 70 seconds (1:10) or less, the contestant won $10,000.

Trivia
To this day, Blackout was the only game show in history to replace and be replaced by the same show. The show in question was The $25,000 Pyramid.

Robb Weller of Entertainment Tonight (which was ironically what Bob Goen would go on to do) hosted the pilot. Robb did go on to host Win, Lose or Draw in 1989 after previous host Bert Convy left to do 3rd Degree.

Like a few other Jay Wolpert game shows, it had a cartoon opening; this one is of a hand doddling around while a voice with that hand could not stop talking. The other hand(s) were tired of hearing too much chatter, so they put out a blackout button to stop the chatterboxing. The voice of the non-stop talker was that of Jay Wolpert's wife, her voice was a speed-up tape recording.

Blackout was the last game show announced by veteran game show announcer Jay Stewart. He died on September 17, 1989.

Links
Rules for Blackout

YouTube Videos
Blackout Opening Playing of the first round