The Great Getaway Game

A short-lived travel themed question & word game show for the Travel Channel.

Broadcast
Travel Channel - June 1, 1990 – April 1991

Packager
Brockway Television

Host & Producer
Wink Martindale

Announcer
Rick Sommers

Gameplay
Two contestants (one a returning champion) played a Q & A/wordsearch-based game about traveling.

Main Game
In the front game, the players faced a game board of 30 squares (numbered 1-30). Behind those numbers are letters, one for each square and some of them make up a word the contestants would be searching for. The mystery word can be in any direction (up or down & backwards or forwards (no diagonals)) and it is always 4, 5 or 6 letters long.

To start the round, a category was given along with a letter in the word, then the contestants each picked two free squares to reveal letters in. When the choices were made, and the letters were revealed, the toss-up questions (about traveling) came into play. In each toss-up, a player can buzz-in at anytime if he/she thought they knew the answer; a correct answer awarded points, but an incorrect answer lost points a gave the opposing player a chance to answer. Now the player with the correct answer also won another pick at the board as well as a guess. Should both contestants miss the question, two letters in the word search were revealed at random. The first player to find & guess the word scored bonus points (which is ten times the question value) and won a prize.

In the first round, questions were worth 10 points and the mystery word was worth 100 points; the value doubled each new round. Several would be played according to time, should time run out in the middle of a round, letters in the word search were revealed until a contestant found the word. The player with the most points became champion and went on to the bonus round.

Bonus Round
In the bonus round, the winning contestant stood behind the host's podium where he/she faced a secret screen consisting of a visible 7x7 wordsearch grid. Hidden in that grid are five words that fit a specific category. The words were given by Wink at the start, then the winning contestant had 30 seconds to find those words. Doing so won a trip.

YouTube Link
An episode of the Great Getaway Game