Game Show created by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions for CBS, which replaced The $10,000 Pyramid. The show was directed by Paul Alter and aired first from 1974 to 1975 with Jack Narz as host, then returned for a brief stint in 1989 with Los Angeles news anchor Chuck Henry.
The show relied largely on a word-search format, where contestants are given clues to a word and have to search for it in an oversized grid.
Do not confuse with the Disney film, Now You See It....
Line 4, Position 6—Tropes in use:
- The Announcer: Johnny Olson and Gene Wood, Goodson-Todman's most prolific announcers, handled the 1974-75 version; Wood also announced the 1985 pilots. Disc jockey Mark Driscoll took the first couple of weeks of the 1989 revival, with Don Morrow ("The Shell Answer Man", as well as an announcer for the final few months of Sale of the Century and the obscure Dick Clark-hosted The Challengers) taking over for the rest of the run.
- Bonus Round: The Solo Game — circle ten words based on clues given by the host on a telestrator, win at least $5,000.
- Catchphrase: "Now you see it... now you don't." (Said by Jack Narz when the board was briefly shown to the players and then turned off, at the start of the Elimination Game and Finals.)
- Freudian Slip: Chuck once tried to say that a missed answer was "Peanuts", but a slip of the tongue left out the "T" in that word...
- Game Show Host: Jack Narz hosted the original version. Jack Clark hosted a pair of pilots in 1985, and Chuck Henry emceed the 1989 revival.
- Game Show Winnings Cap: The Narz version followed CBS' then-limit of $25,000, and winning the Solo Game retired a contestant immediately whether they had passed the cap or not. The Henry version had no winnings limit (contestants could now win multiple jackpots), but had a 5-day limit.
- Golden Snitch: The scoring system on the Narz version was terribly broken, as points were awarded depending on where in the grid the first letter of the word was, example which could be a real pain if a contestant kept getting only the words on the left side, the top two rows, or both.
- Home Game: A box game was released by Milton Bradley in 1974, while GameTek released a computer game in 1989.
- Losing Horns: Recycled from Classic Concentration on the Henry version after a bonus loss.
- Opening Narration: Both runs and the 1985 pilots had one, delivered in sync with "Chump Change".
- For the 1974-75 run: "Every answer...to every question...is right here...before your eyes, and... Now...You...See...It...NOW YOU SEE IT!"
- For the 1985 pilots and 1989 revival: (word grid fills in) "Hidden in this jumble of letters is (insert question here). Can you find it? (answer is highlighted in grid) Now you see it! That's how we play... Now...You...See...It...NOW YOU SEE IT!"
- Pilot:
- The original series pilot was taped in October 1973, and the only things different about it that are known is that there were six contestants with three of them on both sides of the staircases when they made their entrance, also the neon lights on the bottom of the contestants' desk weren't installed yet. A brief clip was used in promos.
- The original series also did at least three test episodes to try out the new format in 1974. The third one aired on Buzzr in September 2015.
- At least two were done for an attempted syndicated revival in October 1985, hosted by Jack Clark with Gene Wood announcing. These pilots had an new first round involving partners identifying words by giving their definitions.
- Pilots were also taped for the 1989 revival in October 1988.
- Progressive Jackpot: Used for the Solo Game in the Narz and Henry runs. Both started at $5,000 — the Narz-era jackpot had $1,000 added per day and capped at $25,000 (in accordance with CBS' then-winnings cap), while the Henry-era jackpot increased by $5,000 and had a limit of $100,000.
- Scenery Porn: The Narz era's giant rotating letter grid and neon sign combo, and the Henry era's giant lifting disc things that lit up in the intro.
- Shout-Out: One version of the word search board shown during the Narz-era intro had the partial titles of other Goodson-Todman shows hidden within - "Line", "Clock", "Truth", "Tattle", "Price", "Match", and "Password". Notably, the board also has "Web", presumably referring to the company's anthology series The Web, which ran for several years in the 1950s.
- Transatlantic Equivalent: Had several remakes in the UK on ITV and in Australia, some of which had kids as contestants.
