Call My Bluff (American game show)

Did You Know?

• Recordings of Call My Bluff were believed to be destroyed due to network practices at the time.
• Two rehearsal shows are known to exist, one of which is held by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
• Buzzr featured Call My Bluff as a part of its 5th annual Lost and Found line-up on September 27, 2020.

Game play

Two teams, each made up of two regular contestants and one celebrity, went head-to-head. The goal was to score points by correctly identifying the real definitions of unusual words. A single word was presented to both teams. On one team, each of the three players received a definition for that word; only one was genuine, while the other two were made-up bluffs. The opposing team then had to pick which definition was the true one. A correct guess earned that team a point, but a wrong guess gave the point to the bluffing team. The teams took turns bluffing and guessing. The first team to win two out of three points took the game and a $100 prize. Later in the show’s run, this was changed to a best-of-five format.

After the main game, both teams stayed on stage. The winning team played for a cash jackpot that started at $200, while the losing team played to avoid elimination. A guest with an unusual or interesting story was brought out and gave brief hints about their tale. The winning team received three cards: one held the correct story, and the other two were blank, allowing those players to invent bluffs. The losing team then had to figure out which winning player held the real story. If they chose correctly, they earned the right to play another game, and $200 was added to the jackpot for the next bonus round. If they picked a bluff, the winning team won the entire cash jackpot, and the losing team was eliminated and replaced.