3 for the Money

Two teams (dressed in red & yellow sweaters) of three players (two of them are civilian contestants and the third is a celebrity captain) played against each other for one whole week trying to guess a series of subjects from a series of clues. All while trying to win thousands of dollars in cash & prizes.

Broadcast
NBC - from September 29, 1975-November 28, 1975

Packager
Stefan Hatos/Monty Hall Productions

Host
Dick Enberg

Announcer
Jack Clark

Round 1
In round one, the team that's behind or won the coin-toss if it was the first game of the week played three categories; each one has three questions which consisted of nothing but clues. On each category, the celebrity team captain chose which player to play the category and how many players on the opposing team to play against. On each question, three clues were revealed one at a time; the first player to buzz-in had a chance to answer; a correct answer won money for the team, but an incorrect answer gave the opposing team a chance to answer by seeing the rest of the clues. Each player can only play each category once.

Scoring
Money values were determined by how many of the opposing team the chosen player played against:
 * 1 player - $100
 * 2 players - $200
 * 3 players - $300

If the opposing team buzzed-in and answered right, they win $100.

Round 2 (The Catch-Up Round)
Round two, the Catch-Up round was played the same as round one except it was played against the clock, and the questions were rapid-fire and they were all general knowledge. The round lasted for two minutes (2:00), and the team that's behind kept control of the round until they go into the lead, at which point the clock stopped. Upon the clock stopping when the lead changed hands, the now-trailing team decided who to play and who to play against. During their turn, the team celebrity captain can stop the clock voluntarily by asking for a "timeout"; thereby switching players on either or both teams; celebrity captain can only call a timeout once a game.

If time ran out in the middle of a question, that question had to be finished. When time ran out, the team with the most money won the game. If the game ended in a tie, host Enberg read a tiebreaker question in which all six players participated. The first player on either team to buzz-in with a correct answer won the game for the team, but if the buzz-in player was wrong, the game went to the opposing team.

Bonus Round
The winning team played a bonus round for more cash. To start, the wining team chose one of the final three categories to play with. Then they had 45 seconds to solve seven words/phrases/names, with each one appearing one letter at a time. Players on the winning team alternated turns and if a player made a mistake, he/she was out for the rest of the game. Each correct answer was worth $100 and guessing seven puzzles correctly won a jackpot. The jackpot started at $1,000 and grew by that amount every day of that week up to $5,000 (meaning that winning all five bonus rounds won a total of $15,000).

As previously stated, all six players participated all week long. The team with the most money at the end of the week won the match, the winning contestants on that team kept all the money won from the week, and in addition they also won two new cars, one for each contestant.

Links
Curt Alliaume's Three for the Money Page

YouTube Videos
These are full episodes of 3 for the Money.

Episode #1
Part 1 Part 2

Episode #2
Part 1 Part 2