Mindreaders

Aired

Pilot, August 3, 1979 Monday, August 13, 1979 – Friday, January 11, 1980

Run time

30 Minutes

Host

Dick Martin

Announcer

Johnny Olson

Origination

NBC Studio 4, Burbank, California

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

Game format

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.

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.

Photos

Videos

Joyce Bulifant & Jack Jones (12/13/79) - One of the few episodes still in existence.
Patty Duke Astin & Nipsey Russell

Links

Story about the "unsold" Mindreaders computer game
Mindreaders Pilot @ usgameshows.net