Eye Guess is an American game show created by Bob Stewart and hosted by Bill Cullen that aired on NBC from January 3, 1966, to September 26, 1969.
[1] The game combined a general knowledge quiz with a Concentration-style memory element, in which the answers were shown to the players and their recall of their positions was tested.
Don Pardo announced for the first year, after which Jack Clark replaced him for the rest of the run.
At the beginning of the game, the answers hidden behind the outer boxes were revealed for six-to-nine seconds, then re-covered.
A contestant could call for the "Eye Guess" space if they thought that the correct answer was not among the eight choices revealed at the start of the game.
Toward the end of the show's run, when both contestants missed four consecutive questions in the main game, both received a series of at-home memory improvement books.
If a game was in progress when time was called, it would resume on the next show, with any unrevealed answers shuffled into different positions.
If time was called during the bonus round, the board was left as it was and the contestant resumed playing on the next show.
Instead of restarting the bonus round and editing the tape, the episode aired with this mistake and the contestant was awarded every prize on the board, including the car.
In December 1979, a pilot was shot for a revival of Eye Guess and was pitched to local stations by syndicator Metromedia Producers Corporation for the 1980 season.
Similar to Match Game and Hollywood Squares, the humor came from the comically mismatched answers and over-the-top line readings given by the performers.
Although the show failed to sell in America, it was sold two years later in the U.K. for ITV and had a successful three-year run with Lennie Bennett as its host from January 3, 1981, until December 22, 1984.
In addition, Bennett would also host the U.K. adaptation of another Bob Stewart-created game show, Chain Reaction, as Lucky Ladders, running on the same network from March 21, 1988, until May 14, 1993.
Two years later, a pilot for an Australian adaptation of the show, hosted by Jeremy Kewley, was shot for the Seven Network on August 20, 1986.
Another pilot was shot for a revival of Eye Guess at CBS Television City in August 1988.
[4] Called Eye Q and hosted by Henry Polic II, the premise of the game was slightly different.