Hollywood Squares (originally The Hollywood Squares) is an American game show in which two contestants compete in a game of tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The show piloted on NBC in 1965 and the regular series debuted in 1966 on the same network. The board for the game is a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The stars are asked questions by the host and the contestants judge the truth of their answers to gain squares in the right pattern to win the game.
Though Hollywood Squares was a legitimate game show, the game largely acted as the background for the show's comedy in the form of joke answers (commonly called "zingers" by the production staff), often given by the stars prior to their real answer. The show's writers usually supplied the jokes. In addition, the stars were given the questions' subjects and bluff (plausible, but incorrect) answers prior to the show. The show was scripted in this sense, but the gameplay was not. In any case, as original host Peter Marshall explained at the beginning of the Secret Square game, the celebrities were briefed prior to the show to help them with bluff answers, but they heard the actual questions for the first time as they were asked on air.
Marshall hosted the original version of Hollywood Squares that aired on NBC from 1966 to 1980, as well as a nighttime syndicated version that ran from 1971 to 1981. It then returned to NBC in 1983 as part of a 60-minute hybrid series with Match Game, featuring Jon Bauman hosting the Hollywood Squares portion of that show. Following Marshall's retirement, the show has since been revived twice in syndication: a version hosted by John Davidson from 1986 to 1989, and another hosted by Tom Bergeron from 1998 to 2004.
In 2013, TV Guide ranked it at No. 7 in its list of the 60 greatest game shows ever. Internationally, there have been multiple versions produced under a variety of names (see International versions below).
Basic rules
Though there have been variations in the rules and prizes of the game, certain aspects have remained fairly consistent. Two contestants competed in every match, one playing X and the other O. Traditionally, the matches were male vs. female with the male playing the X position and referred to informally as Mr. X, with the female playing the O position and referred to informally as Ms. Circle. One of the contestants was usually a returning champion. In later iterations with a returning champion, the X spot is reserved for the returning champion and the O spot is the challenger.
Taking turns, each contestant selected a square. The star in that square was asked a question and gave an answer, which was usually preceded by a zinger. The contestants had the choice of agreeing with the star's answer or disagreeing if they thought the star was bluffing. On rare occasions, a star did not know the correct answer to a question and was unable to come up with a plausible bluff. In such instances, the contestant was offered the chance to answer the question and earned or lost the square based on how they answered. Usually, the contestants declined, in which case they incurred no penalty, and the same star was asked another question for that contestant to agree or disagree.
The objective was to complete a horizontally, vertically, or diagonally or to score as many squares as possible, as contestants could also win by capturing five squares (early in the Marshall run, a player was required to get enough squares to make it mathematically impossible for the opponent to get three in a row; it is possible to capture as many as six squares without blocking the opponent from getting a diagonal three in a row, which did occur in an early episode). Correctly agreeing or disagreeing with a star's answer captured the square. If the contestant failed to agree or disagree correctly, the square went to his/her opponent, unless the square resulted in the opponent winning by default, which was not allowed; in that case, the square remained unclaimed and the opponent got a chance to earn it themselves.