Every answer…
To every question…
Is right here…
Before your eyes…
And now…you…see…it!
Now you see it!
And the star of our show, now you see him…Jack Narz!
A Goodson-Todman production, with one of the greatest theme songs in game show history (Quincy Jones’ "Chump Change"), "Now You See It" premiered on CBS on April 1, 1974, at 11:00 A.M. Eastern time.
The object was, basically, for contestants to find words hidden on a 4-by-14 board of scrambled letters. In the first round, the Elimination Round, two 2-person teams competed against each other. One person on each team would be facing the board as the host read a question. The first player to find the answer would ring in and call out the number of the line in which the answer appeared; the other member of the team would then have to turn around and quickly find the answer and say it and the position number of the column where it started. The point value for each question was determined by adding the line and position numbers together.
The team that won the first round then split up, with the contestants playing against each other in the Qualifying Round. In this round, after the host asked a question, the letters in the answer would be revealed one at a time, with each player trying to ring in first and call it out.
The first player to correctly answer four questions would then move on to the Championship Round against the winner of the previous show. This round was played the same way as the Elimination Round without the 2-person teams, i.e., the first contestant to ring in would have to say the answer, the line number, and the position number.
The contestant who won the Championship Round got to play the bonus round, the Solo Round, for a prize that started at $5,000 and went up by $1,000 every day until it was won. This time, the contestant tried to answer 10 questions in 60 seconds, calling out the answers and circling them on the board with a Telestrator.
Eventually, the rules were changed, dropping the Elimination Round and the team concept. Instead, two contestants played the Qualifying Round, and the first one to correctly answer five questions went on to the Championship Round, where the points were now doubled halfway through the round.
"Now You See It" went off the air as of June 13, 1975, but returned on April 3, 1989, with the same theme song but a new host, Chuck Henry, and somewhat different rules.
The Qualifying Round was now played like the 1974-75 Championship Round, except that the point values for a correct answer were based on a timer, starting at 100 points and going down every second, although not all the way to zero. After the timer stopped, the host revealed which line the answer was hidden on to make it easier for someone to ring in. Again, the point values doubled halfway through the round, and the first player to reach 1,000 points went on to the Championship Round against the previous show’s winner.
In this version, each board of scrambled letters used in the Championship Round contained six answers that fit a category. The first contestant to ring in and name one of the answers had 20 seconds to find and name the remaining five and win a dollar value that ascended with each board, starting at $100 and going up to $200, $300, and so on.
The first contestant to accumulate $1,000 in the Championship Round not only won that amount of money, but also went on to the Solo Round, which was played exactly the same way as the original version.
This version aired at 10:30 A.M. until it was canceled as of July 14, 1989.
Reruns of the Jack Narz version have occasionally shown up on Game Show Network, but Chuck Henry, who is currently an anchorman for the local news on KNBC in Los Angeles, apparently refuses to allow the reruns to be shown because he feels they would undermine his credibility or something like that.