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84-470: Winston Conrad " Wink " Martindale (born December 4, 1933) is an American disc jockey, radio personality, game show host, and television producer. He is best known for hosting Gambit from 1972 to 1976 (and again from 1980 to 1981), Tic-Tac-Dough from 1978 to 1985, High Rollers from 1987 to 1988, and Debt from 1996 to 1998. Martindale was born in Jackson, Tennessee , and started his career as

168-464: A Millionaire . Although champions remained on the show until defeated, a cap was placed on their overall winnings from 1982 until 1984 as noted above. This was done after CBS , by way of acquiring Tic-Tac-Dough for its flagship station WCBS-TV in New York, became the program’s network-of-record; this meant that the show, as well as its Barry & Enright stablemate The Joker's Wild had been

252-403: A bonus round that was similar to the 1978 CBS bonus round, with the champion playing for cash and a merchandise prize. Instead of trying to reach a winning score, though, the champion chose either X or O and tried to complete a Tic-Tac-Dough line with that symbol. X's and O's were shuffled around the board, along with the dragon and a "Dragon Slayer" knight, and the champion pressed a button to stop

336-451: A cameo appearance in the 1980 TV movie The Great American Traffic Jam in a scene where the quartet played golf. During this time, Martindale decided to branch out and form his own production company, Wink Martindale Enterprises, so he could develop and produce his own game shows. His first venture was Headline Chasers , a co-production with Merv Griffin that premiered in 1985; Martindale had left Tic-Tac-Dough to host his creation, but

420-513: A card after each one. A couple could win the game in one of four ways: Each game was worth $ 100. The first team to win two out of three games won the match and advanced to the bonus round. For the entire original series and the first half of Las Vegas Gambit , the winning couple played the Gambit Bonus Board. They faced a large game board with 21 numbered flip-panels (18 numbered video screens on Las Vegas Gambit ), each concealing

504-422: A category. Contestants alternate choosing a category and answering a general interest or trivia question in that category. Getting the question correct puts the contestant's respective letter on the board, while getting it incorrect leaves it unclaimed. The center square, being of the most strategic importance, involves a two-part question, with the contestant given 10 seconds to think of the two answers needed to win

588-447: A clearance rate of 84%. TTD was one of numerous failed attempts by CBS to find a suitable lead-in to The Price Is Right , by then a daytime institution; it was not until The New $ 25,000 Pyramid and Press Your Luck arrived in 1982 and 1983, respectively, that the network finally succeeded in that effort. On September 18, a previously-planned nighttime version premiered in first-run syndication, where it aired in some markets as

672-676: A companion series to Joker, which went into an off-network version the previous season. This was a nearly identical situation to a 1976 game packaged by Barry and Enright, Break the Bank , which was hurriedly put into syndication after ABC cancelled it just three months into a daytime run in order to expand two of the network's daytime serials; the syndicated version ran during the 1976–77 season. Wink Martindale hosted Tic-Tac-Dough for its first seven seasons, then left on May 24, 1985, to host his new creation Headline Chasers . Jim Caldwell took over as host on September 23, 1985, and hosted until

756-583: A disc jockey at age 17 at WPLI in Jackson, earning $ 25 a week. After moving to WTJS , he was hired away for double the salary by Jackson's only other station, WDXI . He next hosted mornings at WHBQ in Memphis while a college student at Memphis State University , before graduating with a bachelor of science degree in 1957. While at U of M, Martindale became a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. On

840-409: A dragon. These items were shuffled and hidden behind the numbers 1 through 9, and the contestant chose one number at a time. If a dollar amount was revealed, it was added to the pot. The goal was to accumulate $ 1,000 or more without finding the dragon; if successful, the contestant won the money and a prize package usually worth between $ 2,000 and $ 5,000. For the first five seasons, the same prize package

924-739: A few dogs named after the various game shows he hosted. Martindale identifies as a born-again Christian and was once a guest on the TBN flagship program Praise the Lord . He has also previously endorsed several conservative positions politically. His wife, Sandy, previously dated Elvis Presley . Both he and Sandy were friends with Presley. They have appeared on Sirius' Elvis Radio and shared stories about Presley. Gambit (game show) Another Merrill Heatter-produced, blackjack-based quiz show, Catch 21 , began airing on GSN in 2008. The object of

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1008-564: A game show development contract with CBS . In 1988, Martindale/Gilden Productions secured the licensing rights from Parker Brothers to develop game shows based on Parker-owned properties such as Boggle . After hosting two short-lived Merrill Heatter -produced game shows (a revival of High Rollers and the Canadian The Last Word ), Martindale went back into producing and launched The Great Getaway Game on Travel Channel in 1990. Two years after that program went off

1092-519: A match a chance to "Beat the Dragon". On the CBS summer run, the bonus round had four X's, four O's, and one dragon hidden inside the nine monitors. The X's and O's were shuffled around so that one of the symbols formed a three-in-a-row. For each X and O a contestant revealed, $ 150 was added to the pot. The contestant won the money and a prize package for finding the "Tic-Tac-Dough" line but could quit and take

1176-497: A nationwide tribute radio special in his honor. Martindale's first game-show hosting job was on the show What's This Song? , which he hosted for NBC (credited as "Win Martindale") from 1964 to 1965. From 1970 to 1971, he hosted a similar song-recognition game show, Words and Music , again on NBC. His first major success came in 1972, when he took the emcee position on a new CBS game show, Gambit . He spent four years hosting

1260-400: A prize. After selecting a number, the couple received the prize behind it and a card was added to their hand from the top of the deck. The couple could end the bonus game by doing any of the following: Throughout the CBS run, champions remained on the show until they either lost in the main game or reached/exceeded the $ 25,000 winnings limit that the network had in place for its game shows at

1344-466: A sixty-minute edition of Wheel beginning on December 1 with the second half competing with Gambit . Furthermore, NBC left Wheel at 11:00 am when the experiment ended seven weeks later in January 1976 and it continued to eat away at Gambit in the ratings. The network canceled the four-year-old game two weeks before Christmas 1976 and replaced it with Goodson-Todman's Double Dare with Trebek taking

1428-601: A special guest appearance on the December 2, 2014, episode of the GSN show The Chase hosted by Brooke Burns and featuring Mark Labbett . In October 2016, Martindale appeared on the daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful , as a minister. On April 21, 2017, Martindale appeared in a KFC advertising campaign featuring Rob Lowe as astronaut Colonel Sanders giving a JFK speech spoof / homage about launching

1512-529: A spot to air a syndicated version that began in the fall. The CBS version ended due to poor ratings, but the syndicated version drew high numbers and as a result had an eight-year run. Throughout its eight-year run, the show used its theme song entitled "Crazy Fun", which was composed by Hal Hidey. From 1978 to the end of 1980, the show was recorded at CBS Television City in Hollywood in studio 31 and studio 43 at different times. From 1981 to 1984 and again for

1596-559: A year earlier when CBS did the same thing for that series, was subjected to network standards and practices. At the time, CBS had set a $ 50,000 winnings limit for all game shows broadcast over its airwaves, with any overage being donated to a charity of the champion’s choice. Tic-Tac-Dough premiered on NBC daytime television on July 30, 1956, hosted by co-creator and co-executive producer Jack Barry. Beginning on September 12, 1956, Barry began hosting Twenty-One in Primetime. The show

1680-409: A year later to the morning show at KRLA and finally to KFWB in 1962. He also had lengthy stays at KGIL (AM) from 1968 to 1971, KKGO-FM /KJQI and Gene Autry 's KMPC (now KSPN-AM ) from 1971 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1987, the short-lived Wink and Bill Show on KABC during 1989, and KJQI from 1993 to 1994. In 1967, Martindale acted in a short futuristic documentary film about home life in

1764-400: Is also present within the same collection. Several episodes including the CBS finale exist on YouTube and Dailymotion. Reruns of the CBS series aired on WPIX-TV and KHJ-TV in 1976 and 1977, with Rhodes Productions handling distribution, but it is not clear what happened to these episodes afterward. Tic-Tac-Dough Tic-Tac-Dough is an American television game show based on

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1848-555: Is produced by Envision Radio Networks. In 2013, Martindale made a guest appearance on The Eric Andre Show ; in an appearance typical for the show, he did the interview dressed in a motion-capture suit (at one point being, rather poorly, mocapped dancing), sang a song teaching kids their "Jamaican ABCs," and promoted a drinkable mouthwash, called Scoap (pronounced "sco-app"). In 2014, Martindale started his own YouTube channel featuring episodes of game shows, game show pilots, rare clips from various game shows, and more. Martindale made

1932-400: The 1978 52-hour marathon version of The History of Rock 'n' Roll for Drake-Chenault . The new richly-produced series combines songs, fun facts about the music and the artists, and artist interview soundbites. Martindale married Madelyn Leech in 1954, with whom he had four children; the couple divorced in 1972. He later married his second wife, Sandy (née Ferra), on August 2, 1975. He has

2016-535: The American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. Martindale was one of the hosts featured in the 2002 NBC special Most Outrageous Game Show Moments , alongside Bob Eubanks , Jim Lange , Ben Stein , and Peter Marshall , but was not featured in any of the subsequent episodes ordered by the network. Martindale has appeared in various TV commercials, including a stint as a pitchman for

2100-448: The paper-and-pencil game of tic-tac-toe . Contestants answer trivia questions to put up their respective symbol, X or O, on a tic-tac-toe board. Three versions were produced: the initial 1956–59 run on NBC , a 1978–86 run initially on CBS and then in syndication , and a syndicated run in 1990. The show was produced by Barry & Enright Productions . However, the rights to the format are controlled by NBCUniversal . Jack Barry ,

2184-400: The 1978 CBS series, contestants played until either being defeated or reaching the network's $ 25,000 total winnings limit. The syndicated series allowed contestants to play until defeated, and for every five matches that they won, champions were rewarded with a new automobile. As questions are answered correctly, a money amount is added to a "pot", or amount of money awarded to the winner. On

2268-400: The 1990 version. In April 2024, Game Show Network announced another revival, to be hosted by Brooke Burns . Two contestants attempt to complete a line of three X or O markers on a standard tic-tac-toe board, with nine spaces on it. One contestant represents X, and the other represents O; the game always starts with the player using the X's. Each of the nine spaces on the gameboard features

2352-531: The Big Numbers round from the earlier Heatter-Quigley production High Rollers . The rules of the game were the same as on High Rollers , where the champion couple tried to remove the numbers 1 through 9 from a game board by rolling two dice. After each roll, the couple had to choose one or numbers still on the board that exactly added up to the total showing on the dice; those numbers were then removed and taken out of play. Rolling doubles at any point earned

2436-461: The Nielsen ratings. On January 6, 1975, NBC replaced Winning Streak with Wheel of Fortune , which took a chunk out of Gambit ' s audience. On the same day, NBC expanded the soap opera Another World to sixty minutes and the impact it had on the ratings of The Price Is Right , which aired at 3:00 pm, forced CBS to shuffle its schedule again on August 18, 1975, and move Price back to

2520-605: The Zinger chicken sandwich into space. On April 4, 2018, Martindale served as "surprise co-host" (via phone) for Sirius XM NHL Network Radio's "Three Questions" segment where a celebrity co-host creates the questions and then quizzes the show's broadcast crew. On January 28, 2021, Martindale claimed on his Facebook that he had one of the pilots for the ABC version of Deal or No Deal and would upload it when his YouTube channel hit 18,000 subscribers. When he hit his goal on July 19, 2021,

2604-510: The afternoon block of classic game show reruns. Several times during 2008, Martindale filled in for Fred Roggin on GSN Live while Roggin was on vacation. Martindale's last program was the GSN original series Instant Recall , which premiered on March 4, 2010. Instant Recall was the first show Martindale has hosted since Debt aired on Lifetime from 1996 to 1998. In 2012, Martindale returned to radio, as host of The 100 Greatest Christmas Hits of All Time . The nationally syndicated show

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2688-419: The air, Martindale teamed up with Bill Hillier and The Family Channel to produce a series of "interactive" game shows that put an emphasis on home viewers being able to play along from home and win prizes. Four series were commissioned and Martindale served as host for all four. The first to premiere, on June 7, 1993, was Trivial Pursuit , an adaptation of the popular trivia-based board game. On March 7, 1994,

2772-411: The big-money quiz shows began to sink in the ratings and disappear from the air as the scandal widened. Tic-Tac-Dough did not go unscathed before its cancellation. The April 3, 1958 episode featuring U.S. military serviceman Michael O'Rourke winning over $ 140,000 became one key subject of the federal grand jury investigating the quiz fixing. That run occurred during Jay Jackson's tenure as host. Jackson

2856-680: The block. Except for Trivial Pursuit , none of the interactive games were much of a success; Boggle ended on November 18, 1994, while Jumble came to an end on December 30, 1994. Trivial Pursuit ended on the same day as Jumble , but continued to air in reruns for some time afterward, finally being removed from the Family Channel schedule in July 1995. In June 1996, Martindale became host of Lifetime 's highest-rated quiz show, Debt , which had debt-ridden contestants compete to try to eliminate their debts. Despite its popularity on cable, Debt

2940-464: The card dealer on the original version, while Beverly Malden served in this role on early episodes of Las Vegas Gambit before being replaced by Lee Menning. Mort Garson composed the original version's theme, and Stan Worth composed the theme to Las Vegas Gambit . Gambit creator Merrill Heatter developed a similar show, Catch 21 , which premiered on GSN July 21, 2008 with Alfonso Ribeiro as host and Mikki Padilla as dealer. A good chunk of

3024-446: The cash at any time. Later in the run, the champion automatically wins if the pot goes over $ 1,000. Finding the dragon ended the round and lost all the money in the pot; if the dragon was found, the same prize package was at stake for the entire episode until won. On the syndicated run, the squares contained the words TIC and TAC, six dollar amounts: $ 100, $ 150, $ 250, $ 300, $ 400, $ 500 (originally $ 50, $ 150, $ 250, $ 350, $ 400, and $ 500), and

3108-412: The categories, X's and O's, bonus game numbers and amounts, and a dragon, in addition to a moving screensaver and custom messages; it was the first game show to use computerized graphics. On the original 1950s Tic-Tac-Dough , a winning contestant played until either he/she was defeated or elected to stop; the new champion's initial winnings would be deducted from the outgoing champion's final total. On

3192-465: The co-producer, was the original host of the 1950s version, followed by Gene Rayburn and then Bill Wendell , with Jay Jackson and Win Elliot hosting prime time adaptations as well. Wink Martindale hosted the network and syndicated version beginning in 1978, but left the program to host and co-produce Headline Chasers and was replaced by Jim Caldwell for the 1985–86 season. Patrick Wayne hosted

3276-497: The couple an insurance marker, which enabled them to continue playing if they made a roll that could not be completed with the numbers on the board. If they made such a roll and did not have an insurance marker, or if they removed every number except 1, the bonus round ended. Removing all nine numbers awarded the Gambit Galaxy, a jackpot which included $ 5,000 cash and a collection of prizes that increased in value every time it

3360-406: The dragon. If that person did not find the dragon, another audience member would be asked to choose one of the remaining numbers. The prize for finding it was originally a flat $ 250, but was later increased by $ 50 for each incorrect guess. When the change was made to invite two audience members to take turns choosing numbers, the losing member received $ 50. The short-lived 1990 syndicated series used

3444-481: The evening of July 10, 1954, Martindale was showing the WHBQ studio to some friends when he realized that his colleague on the 9 p.m. to midnight shift, Dewey Phillips , was getting a large number of reactions from listeners after airing a new song. That song was Elvis Presley 's first record, " That's All Right ." The song was recorded at Sam Phillips ' recording studio on the evening of July 5, 1954. Sam, who had brought

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3528-416: The final season from 1985 to 1986, the show was taped at the studios of KCOP (also known as Chris Craft Studios). The 1984–85 season was taped at The Production Group Studios, while Chris Craft Studios was getting an overhaul. Beginning around early 1979, every Friday was "Hat Day", where Martindale received hats from viewers to show off at the end of the show. Some were winter hats, and some even dealt with

3612-562: The first of his hosting assignments of The Match Game . Almost two decades after its original cancellation, the game was reborn as The New Tic-Tac-Dough on CBS gave it a place on its daytime schedule. The series ran from July 3 to September 1, 1978, at 10:00   a.m. Eastern/9:00   a.m. Central, replacing the Bill Cullen -hosted Pass the Buck . Coincidentally, that timeslot had been occupied from September 1972 to June 1975 by

3696-477: The game and keep the money. For a brief period in 1983, a contestant had to accumulate exactly $ 1,000 or find TIC and TAC, but this requirement was quickly eliminated. For a time in 1983, members of the studio audience were invited to play a special "Dragon Finder" game whenever the bonus round was won or a contestant stopped early. The remaining numbers on the board were not immediately uncovered; instead, an audience member would be selected to choose which number hid

3780-547: The gameboard, and in turn controlled by an Altair 8800 system. It was one of the first uses of computer graphics on a television game show. The second syndicated revival of the series premiered on September 10, 1990. Its theme music was composed by Henry Mancini , his final television theme song. The series was a Barry & Enright Production (the company's last) and distributed by ITC Entertainment . As noted above, Patrick Wayne hosted, while Larry Van Nuys announced with Art James substituting for two weeks. The 1990 revival

3864-486: The grand jury, and that he had himself lied under oath. Felsher also estimated that about 75% of the nighttime Tic-Tac-Dough run had been rigged. Felsher was fired in the fallout of the quiz show scandals by NBC, but later resurfaced as a producer for Goodson-Todman Productions in the 1970s and 1980s. The daytime show was unaffected, and host Gene Rayburn suffered no damage to his career. After Tic-Tac-Dough , he went to Goodson-Todman, where on December 31, 1962, he began

3948-475: The hosting position after High Rollers came to an end on June 11, 1976. After its cancellation, repeats of Gambit were later seen on KHJ-TV Channel 9 (now KCAL-TV ) in Los Angeles , starting in fall 1977 and running until spring 1978. Along with Goodson-Todman's Blockbusters (which aired immediately after), the retitled Las Vegas Gambit returned on October 27, 1980, as one of two replacements for

4032-460: The list-based Shuffle and Boggle , another board-game adaptation, premiered and were very different from Trivial Pursuit , which was presented more in a traditional game-show style. These two programs, along with the Jumble -based show that replaced Shuffle on June 13, 1994, after its initial 14-week run ended, were played more like the interactive games for the home viewers that were the focus of

4116-437: The main game was similar to blackjack , with two married couples attempting to build a hand as close to 21 as possible without going over ( busting ). Number cards (2 through 10) were worth their face value, face cards (Kings, Queens, Jacks) counted as 10, and Aces counted as either 1 or 11. Martindale asked a series of toss-up questions, usually multiple-choice or true-false. The first couple who buzzed-in and correctly answered

4200-404: The morning schedule, which it had left in 1973. Gambit moved back to 11:00 am, bumping Tattletales back to the afternoon after two months and remained there until late 1977, when it returned to the morning until its March 1978 cancellation. At that slot, Gambit initially had to go against its sister Heatter-Quigley show High Rollers , also hosted by Alex Trebek. However, NBC decided to air

4284-494: The offices of Tic-Tac-Dough producer Felsher, who provided Kirsten with the answers and hints to win on the show and a promise to showcase her talent and sing. "I botched it up", said Kirsten. She requested her categories in the wrong order and, as a result, walked away with a paltry $ 800. A grand jury subpoenaed Kirsten to testify, and Felsher implored her to lie. Felsher admitted to Congress that he urged roughly 30 former show contestants and all of his production staff to lie to

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4368-472: The original Gambit and later hosted a Las Vegas-based revival for 13 months in 1980–81. The emcee role for which Martindale is most widely known is on Tic-Tac-Dough . He was tapped by Barry & Enright Productions to host the revived series in 1978 and stayed until 1985, presiding over one of the more popular game shows of the day. While hosting Tic-Tac-Dough , Martindale (along with fellow game show hosts Art James , Jack Clark and Jim Perry ) made

4452-410: The original 1950s series used rolling drums (each containing the same nine categories) to display subject categories, with light displays beneath them to indicate X's and O's. When Tic-Tac-Dough was revived in 1978, the gameboard was made up of nine Apple II systems connected to individual computer monitors to represent each game screen, all linked to a central Altair 8800 computer, which displayed

4536-403: The original series, the same nine categories were used for an entire match regardless of the number of games played and/or episodes it took. On all subsequent series, each new game featured a different set of nine categories. If there were ties on the original or first syndicated series, the pot was carried over to each subsequent game until someone won. In the 1990 series, there was no carryover of

4620-508: The original version of Barry's The Joker's Wild . However, the CBS TTD ran only nine weeks because of the high popularity of its competition on NBC, Card Sharks . It was replaced by daytime repeats of All in the Family , which had already been running on CBS for about two and a half years. When it was cancelled by CBS, TTD had averaged a 3.9 rating/21 share through July 28, and had

4704-408: The pilot was uploaded to his channel. On June 6, 2021, Martindale began hosting the nationally and internationally syndicated The History of Rock 'n' Roll , a two-hour weekend look back at music from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The production is created by a team composed of Martindale, producer/engineer Peter Jay Gould of The Intervale Group, and writer/producer Gary Theroux , who wrote and produced

4788-422: The pot from a tied game. Instead, the values of the outer boxes increased by $ 500 and the center box by $ 1,000 until the tie was broken. For each tie game before being defeated, losing challengers received $ 100 on the 1950s version and $ 250 from 1979 to 1986; champions who eventually lost the match after a tie game did not receive any additional money. Special categories were introduced in 1980 and used throughout

4872-472: The pot, or $ 1,000 if it was empty. Finding the dragon ended the round and forfeited the pot. Three of one symbol and four of the other were hidden on the board, arranged so that a Tic-Tac-Dough could be achieved with only one of them. If the champion chose the other symbol, they could only win the prize by finding the Dragon Slayer. Regardless of the outcome, the entire board was revealed at the end of

4956-402: The question won control of the top card from a deck of oversized playing cards. An incorrect answer awarded control of the card to the couple's opponents. Once a couple gained control of a card, they had the option of adding it to their own hand or passing it to their opponents. The first card of the game was revealed before the question was asked. Each subsequent card was presented face-down and

5040-434: The record on July 6, was in the WHBQ studio on the first airing night and had Elvis' telephone number. DJ Dewey Phillips wanted to interview Elvis during his program, so Wink endeavored to contact Elvis, but Gladys Presley, Elvis's mother, answered the phone and said Elvis was so nervous that he had gone to a movie theater. Gladys and her husband Vernon brought Elvis to WHBQ and Dewey interviewed Elvis without his knowing that he

5124-405: The rest of the syndicated run and the 1990 version, marked by red backgrounds in the former and red lettering in the latter. Only one such category was used per game at first; later, the board would display two and then three. These categories never appeared in the center box, either at the start of the game or after a shuffle. The bonus round was introduced in the 1978 version, giving the winner of

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5208-401: The revival failed to draw the ratings of its predecessor and was cancelled after just over a year, ending on November 27, 1981. Both the original version and Las Vegas Gambit were hosted by Wink Martindale , with Kenny Williams , announcer of many other Heatter-Quigley shows, as announcer. Jerome Shaw was the director of both versions, and Robert Noah the producer . Elaine Stewart was

5292-601: The round. With contestants being able to play until defeated, several Tic-Tac-Dough contestants were able to win over $ 100,000 on the show. Over the course of nine weeks in 1980, Thom McKee defeated 43 opponents and amassed a winnings total of $ 312,700, including eight cars and over $ 200,000 in cash – a record at the time . One match ended with McKee winning the single biggest pot in the show's history to that time, which reached $ 36,800 after four tie games against challenger Pete Cooper. McKee's winnings record stood until 1999 when Michael Shutterly won $ 500,000 on Who Wants to Be

5376-425: The series finale on May 23, 1986. Jay Stewart served as announcer for the first three years. Charlie O'Donnell replaced Stewart in 1981. Occasional substitutes for those announcers included Johnny Gilbert (including the syndicated premiere), Bob Hilton , Mike Darow , John Harlan , and Art James . In an interview, Martindale stated that while the CBS version began airing Barry & Enright Productions secured

5460-504: The series is considered lost despite CBS having abandoned their wiping process around the same time. The Joker's Wild which premiered the same day as Gambit (September 4, 1972) also had a majority of its episodes lost to time until the first two seasons of the CBS run were found. Five episodes of the CBS version from 1973 are held by the UCLA Film and Television Archive . The pilot for an unsold 1990 revival, hosted by Bob Eubanks ,

5544-486: The short-lived The David Letterman Show (Letterman did a tribute/parody of Gambit to conclude his last program). Stan Worth composed the theme for this version, with Beverly Malden serving as card dealer before she was replaced by Lee Menning. Producer Robert Noah, director Jerome Shaw, and announcer Kenny Williams all carried over from the original. Despite limited competition (reruns of The Jeffersons on CBS, and local or syndicated programming on ABC affiliates),

5628-462: The show (such as having a picture of a dragon on them). He also wore hats on the Friday shows of Las Vegas Gambit , which he was also hosting on NBC at the time, requiring Martindale to commute between Los Angeles and Las Vegas for over a year. The gameboard, designed by Bob Bishop of Apple Computer, Inc. , was driven by nine Apple II computers, each one responsible for displaying a single box of

5712-438: The show back a half-hour to 10:30/9:30, where it faced NBC's aging quiz Jeopardy! with Art Fleming, just over a full decade before Trebek would host a revival of that show himself. NBC moved Jeopardy! to the afternoons on July 1 and placed one of the many Bill Cullen-Bob Stewart collaborations, Winning Streak in the slot. That show's weakness made late 1974 the high point of Gambit ' s original daytime run at least in

5796-546: The show did not meet with any success and was cancelled after its only season in 1986. Martindale's next venture was more successful, as he created, and along with Barry & Enright, co-produced the Canadian game show Bumper Stumpers for Global Television Network and USA Network . This series aired on both American and Canadian television from 1987 until 1990. In 1986, he launched a partnership with producer Jerry Gilden, Martindale/Gilden Productions, and it started off with

5880-421: The shuffle and then chose one box at a time. The pot began at $ 500 when the champion first uncovered their chosen symbol in a box, and doubled for each additional one found. The champion had the option to stop after any turn and keep the money in the pot. The champion could win the prize either by completing a Tic-Tac-Dough, which awarded all the money in the pot; or by finding the Dragon Slayer, which awarded double

5964-414: The square. After each question, the categories shuffle into different positions; originally, the categories shuffled after each round. A contestant wins the game by achieving three of their symbols in a row in any direction. If it becomes impossible for either contestant to form a winning line, whether or not all nine spaces had been claimed, the game is declared a draw, and a new one began. The gameboard on

6048-516: The time. From 1972 to 1975, the show featured an annual promotion in which the first couple to get a two-card 21 (an Ace and a face card/10) in the bonus round won either $ 200 a week for a year (totaling $ 10,400) or a flat $ 10,000, depending on the year. Special awards were occasionally hidden among the numbers, including: For the second half of the NBC version, the Gambit Board was replaced with

6132-472: The travel website Orbitz . Until 2007, Martindale had a daily three-hour show on the syndicated Music of Your Life format, which is heard on around 200 radio stations. On June 2, 2009, Martindale signed with the syndicated Hit Parade Radio format. The format began operation on February 7, 2010, with Martindale as afternoon drive personality. The syndicator stopped operating on June 6, 2010. In 2008, Wink appeared on GSN Live , an interstitial program during

6216-658: The year 1999 produced by the Philco-Ford Corporation which predicted, among other things, Internet commerce. Martindale's first break into television was at WHBQ-TV in Memphis, as the host of Mars Patrol , a science-fiction themed children's television series . At his tenure with WHBQ, Martindale became the host of the TV show Teenage Dance Party , where his friend Elvis Presley made an appearance on 16 June 1956. Following Presley's death in 1977, Martindale aired

6300-400: Was at stake for the entire show until won, but the final three seasons offered a different package in each new bonus round. Finding both TIC and TAC constituted an automatic victory, awarding the prize package and increasing the pot to $ 1,000. If the dragon was found, the game ended immediately and the contestant forfeited the money. After any safe choice, the contestant had the option to stop

6384-541: Was cancelled in 1998, for the reason more males were watching the show than females (the network's target audience). Martindale did not host another game show for over a decade. On June 2, 2006, Martindale received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame . In 2007, he became a member of the nominating committee of the Hit Parade Hall of Fame. On October 13, 2007, Martindale was one of the first inductees into

6468-656: Was initially on Wednesday nights but quickly moved to Thursday nights. At this point, Gene Rayburn began hosting Tic-Tac-Dough on Fridays. Twenty-One later moved to Monday nights in February, 1957, and Barry once again hosted the show all five days of the week. Barry left the show and was replaced by announcer Bill Wendell on October 6, 1958. Wendell hosted the show, with the announcing taken over by Bill McCord , until its demise on October 23, 1959. A nighttime version, produced in color, played for bigger stakes aired from September 12, 1957, to December 29, 1958. Jay Jackson

6552-424: Was never implicated in any wrongdoing himself, and he had left the show well before the quiz investigations began, but he never again hosted a television game show. The same could not be said for Tic-Tac-Dough producer Howard Felsher . Felsher was in charge of all facets of the show's production, including selecting contestants. One of them, sixteen-year-old Kirsten Falke, auditioned as a folk singer. This led her to

6636-461: Was not won. If the couple failed to complete the round, they won $ 100 for each number they had removed. CBS originally aired Gambit at 11 a.m/10 Central, where it defeated NBC's Sale of the Century . It also easily beat Alex Trebek 's American debut program, The Wizard of Odds , which NBC began in July 1973. On April 1, 1974 (the same day Now You See It with Jack Narz premiered), CBS moved

6720-668: Was on the air (Martindale reports that Elvis later admitted that he would have been unable to talk otherwise). Martindale's rendition of the spoken-word song " Deck of Cards " went to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold over a million copies in 1959. It also peaked at no. 5 in the UK Singles Chart in April 1963, one of four visits to that chart . It was followed by "Black Land Farmer." In 1959, he became morning man at KHJ in Los Angeles , California , moving

6804-427: Was one of four game shows to premiere on September 10, 1990, with five premiering altogether for the season. Like the other four series, however, Tic-Tac-Dough did not find an audience. The series was the first of the five to be cancelled, airing its final new episode on December 7, 1990, after thirteen weeks. Three months of reruns followed and the show aired for the last time on March 8, 1991. On January 30, 2024, it

6888-431: Was reported that Game Show Network green lit a revival of the series. Production on the revival began in April 2024. A pilot was recorded in 2021 for NBCUniversal with Tom Bergeron as host, but the series was not picked up. On April 2, 2024, the show was officially announced, with Brooke Burns as host. Harry Friedman will serve as one of the executive producers, and the show will premiere in 2025. Tic-Tac-Dough

6972-484: Was the original host, and was replaced by Win Elliot on October 2, 1958, for the duration of the show's nighttime run. Johnny Olson filled in as both host and announcer at varying points on this version. In August 1958, the cross-network hit game show Dotto was canceled after network and sponsor executives discovered that it had been rigged. Deposed Twenty-One champion Herb Stempel made allegations of rigging on that show as well; once his claims were confirmed,

7056-436: Was turned up once the couple in control decided who should receive it. After a couple received any card (either by choice or by having it passed to them) that put them in the lead and could potentially bust with another card, they could elect to freeze , preventing them from receiving any more cards. Freezing was not permitted when the two couples were tied. If one couple froze, the other continued answering questions and received

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