Chain Letters

Gameplay

The first round, titled Chain Letters (or Make a Chain in the final series), began with each contestant selecting one of four hidden four-letter words. They then had 45 seconds to create as long a chain as possible by changing one letter at a time, with each valid word adding £5 to their score. Proper nouns and plurals were disallowed, and the same letter position could not be changed on consecutive plays. Words had to appear in the Longman Dictionary of the English Language (or Chambers English Dictionary in later series) to be accepted. At each step, the contestant called out the letter being changed and its replacement, then said and spelled the new word; if the word was invalid, the letter change was undone.

In the second round, contestants played in descending order of their Round 1 scores. The contestant in control chose a four-letter word from a group of four and selected one letter to change. Both opponents secretly wrote down their predictions of the word they thought the contestant would make. The contestant then changed the letter and won £10 if the new word did not match either prediction. The contestant could change the word up to twice more for higher stakes, with opponents' predictions remaining the same. If the new word matched a prediction, the opponent received the money at stake instead, and the contestant lost it and ended their turn. Both opponents won the money if each of their predictions were correct, or if the contestant formed an illegal word. For all but the last two series, the stakes doubled on the second and third words to a maximum of £40; beyond that, each word added £10 to the stakes, for a maximum of £30.

A third round was added in the 1995 revival and eventually involved two different formats. One contestant was given a four-letter word and had to change one letter to form a new word, which was then given to the next contestant in line. Each valid word awarded 5 points, and each invalid word deducted the same amount. If a contestant formed a word that could not be changed by either opponent, they won ten additional points and received a new word. The round ended after 60 seconds.

Transmissions

Chain Letters holds the distinction of being the very first show to occupy the 9:25am time slot, which had previously been home to the opening programme of the ITV Schools block before that block moved to Channel 4. Its debut series ran weekday mornings at that time from early September to early October 1987, then shifted to 1:00pm from early January to mid-February 1988. However, viewers on TVS and Channel saw it at 3:00pm on an irregular schedule, with those regions dropping it in February and airing the leftover episodes over the summer. The second series moved to Thursday evenings at 7:30pm, though Grampian and Granada aired it at 12:30pm, while Central and Anglia chose 5:15pm; Scottish started on Tuesdays at 7:30pm, later moved to Thursdays at 10:35pm, and finally to Sundays at 3:00pm. The third series also aired Thursdays at 7:30pm, except for its final two episodes which aired on Fridays at 1:30pm; Scottish ran it on Wednesdays at 1:30pm. The fourth and fifth series returned to weekday mornings at 9:25am. The sixth series was not networked, so times varied by region; Granada and Border began airing episodes after a few weeks at 5:10pm on certain days, finishing in August. The seventh series again aired weekday mornings at 9:25am.