Play the Percentages

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Short-lived Game Show created by Jack Barry/Dan Enright and hosted by Geoff Edwards which ran from January 7 to September 12, 1980.

The original format pitted two married couples against each other. They were asked a general-knowledge question which had been asked of 300 people, and each team offered a guess as to how many people they think got it right. Whoever was closer got points equivalent to however many indeed got it right, and could challenge for the remainder (e.g., if 40% of the people in the survey got it right, the next question would offer 60 points) if they answered the question correctly themselves. Alternatively, they could force the opposition to give an answer. Play continued until one team reached 300 points.

The bonus round involved choosing a target number and then another series of general-knowledge questions with three answers. One was not given by anyone in the survey, one was the most popular, and one just got some points. Choosing the 0% answer ended the round, and getting to 100 won $2,500 cash. If any answer was worth the target number, the couple won a progressive jackpot. One other change in this round involved a further step; if the answer that had some points but wasn't the top answer was chosen, the couple had to pick the top answer to continue.

Partway through the show's run, the maingame was completely overhauled and basically became a clone of 21. Here, two solo contestants were pitted against each other and asked questions in three different categories, one of which was always "Pot Luck". Question values ranged from 10 to 90 (that being the percentage of the survey that got the answer wrong), with a goal of 250. Initially, only Pot Luck questions were jump-ins, but this was later changed so that all three categories were jump-ins.

The bonus round was also overhauled to include six survey answers, five of which totaled up to 100%. Picking the five answers that made this total won $1,000 cash and a $2,500 prize package. As usual, five maingame wins awarded a new car.


The following Game Show tropes appear in Play the Percentages:

Tropes used in Play the Percentages include:

Version 1: "During the next thirty minutes, intuition could win our players $xx,000 in cash, because it's time to challenge everybody's knowledge. It's time to Play the Percentages!"
Version 2: "This is the game where people determine the difficulty of the questions! Let's Play the Percentages!"