Your Number's Up
| Your Number's Up | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Game show |
| Created by | Sande Stewart |
| Presented by |
Nipsey Russell with Lee Menning |
| Narrated by |
Gene Wood John Harlan Johnny Haymer (substitute) Johnny Gilbert (substitute) |
| Theme music composer | Bob Cobert |
| Country of origin |
 United States |
| No. of episodes | 65 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Sande Stewart |
| Running time | approx. 26 minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Original run | September 23, 1985 – December 20, 1985 |
Your Number's Up is a game show that aired on NBC from September 23 to December 20, 1985. The show was hosted by Nipsey Russell with Lee Menning as co-host. Announcing duties were handled by Gene Wood for the first month and John Harlan for the rest of the run, with Johnny Haymer and Johnny Gilbert as substitutes.
This show was the first series produced by Sande Stewart, son of game show producer Bob Stewart. Your Number's Up was put up against the elder Stewart's The $25,000 Pyramid on CBS at 10:00 AM Eastern. Most of the staff from Bob Stewart Productions also worked in the production of this series.
Rules
Three on-stage contestants, one a returning champion, were each given one point at the outset of the game, indicated by diamonds on the front of their podiums. Also in front of the contestants' podiums was an electronic wheel with numbers 0-9, blank spaces and a car symbol. The symbols on the wheel were spaced so that each spin had two contestants with numbers or the car symbol and a third with a blank space. Players spun the wheel by pulling a lever. After each spin, the player whose space was blank was shown the first halves of two riddle-type phrases, each with an acronym to be filled in. An example of these would be as follows:
"When T.O. speaks..."
"As predicted, the I.O.M...."
After selecting one of the two phrases, the host read the rest of the selected phrase (example: after selecting the first phrase above, the host read "...all of the House listens." Answer: Tip O'Neill). The first player to buzz-in and fill in the acronym correctly scored one point, and incorrect guesses subtracted one point. If neither opponent guessed correctly, the player who selected the riddle won $50. The first to score 6 points won the game & $500.
If the car symbol appeared under a contestant's pointer, that contestant attempted to guess which number was hidden under a question mark on the car's license plate. The first three weeks of the series had a separate plate used for each attempt. Later, previously incorrect numbers were automatically eliminated from each subsequent attempt. Guessing correctly won the player the car regardless of the game's outcome.
Audience game
Each correct answer of a riddle puts the digit which was under that player's pointer on a board. At any point during the game, if the last four digits of any studio audience member's phone number matched the corresponding digits on the board (in any order), that audience member came up on stage to predict which contestant would win the game. The process was repeated until three audience members came on stage. The audience member who became the "partner" for the winning contestant won a trip.
If a digit was duplicated in an audience member's phone number, they had to wait until all instances of that digit were placed on the board. (An audience member with "1234" needed one of each digit to come on stage, while another, with "5555", needed that digit four times to select a contestant.) The same mathematics apply to most lotteries' four-digit games; if a player makes a wager based on the four digits of the number to be drawn, however, such wagers win higher amounts if there are duplicate digits in that number.
Bonus round
The winner drew a postcard sent in by a home viewer (for the first weeks of tapings, post cards were obtained via an ad in TV Guide). The player then had one minute to reveal the last four digits of that home viewer's phone number. The contestant selected a digit 0-9 from a board which resembled a touch-tone phone keypad. An acronym was shown and a clue was read. If the contestant was correct and that digit was in the phone number, that digit was revealed as many times it appeared in the home viewer's phone number. Each correct answer won $100 to the studio winner, and revealing all 4 digits within 60 seconds won $6,000 ($5,000 for the studio player and $1,000 for the home viewer), except on Fridays, on which the home viewer won $5,000 as well. Fifteen players won $1,000 in a random drawing held after the series was canceled.[1]