Who, What or Where Game, The

Someone described The Who, What or Where Game as Jeopardy! Lite. It was a pretty good quiz show with three contestants (usually one of them, a returning champion from the previous episode) answering not-the-easiest questions.

Host Art James would reveal a category like “Chocolate” or “World War II.” For each category, he had a “Who” question, a “What” question and a “Where” question and each question had posted odds based on its difficulty. A real tough question might have 5-to-1 odds. A real simple one might be 2-to-1 or even money. Each player would select an interrogatory pronoun and lock in a secret wager of up to $50 that he or she could answer the as-yet undisclosed question associated with it. Then the bets would be revealed. If you were the only contestant to wager on one question, you got to answer it and if you were right, the dollar amount — multiplied by the announced odds — would be added to your total. If two or three players bid on the same question then it went to the person who made the highest wager. If the wagers tied, then there’d be an auction. All the wagers would be blanked out and the players could bid for the question up to the total amount of money they had in their accounts at that moment. Totals went up and up and at the end of the show, they all got to keep what they’d won and they guy who’d won the most got to come back and face two new contestants.

There was a little more to it than that but that’s already more than you need to know. The show moved at a brisk clip and Art James was a pretty good host. It went on the air in the last week of 1969 and stayed on ’til the first week in ’74. It was one of the last game shows done on a tiny set with no bells, no whistles, no cars on stage, no prize models and minimal lighting effects. Some of that was present in The Challengers, a very similar game show hosted by Dick Clark from 1990 to 1991.