Culture on My Mind
Classic Concentration
January 19, 2026

Almost as a rule, members of Generation X talk about watching The Price is Right when they stayed home from school. That show was engaging and energetic, and acted as a feel-good balm when you really felt like crap. On those sick days, The Price is Right was one popular option. Another was Classic Concentration.

Classic Concentration was a memory puzzle game that ran from 1987 to 1991 and was hosted by Alex Trebek of Jeopardy! fame. The game board had twenty-five tiles in a five-by-five grid. Behind each tile was a prize, and if two matching tiles were found, part of a giant rebus puzzle was exposed. If a contestant correctly guessed the puzzle, every prize they found was theirs to keep.

As a kid, I loved rebus puzzles. The format is centuries old with roots around the world. They use pictures, symbols, and letters to spell out phrases. For example, this one from the November 3, 1987 episode spells out “Alex Trebek” – A + legs is Alex, and T + rib + peck sounds like Trebek.

Concentration has existed on television screens since 1958. The first version was hosted by Hugh Downs (then an announcer for Tonight Starring Jack Paar and later host of newsmagazine show 20/20 with Barbara Walters) and debuted on August 25, 1958. After 15 seasons, it became the longest-running game show on NBC and held the record for longest continuous daytime run on network television until The Price is Right sprinted right past it. The show bridged the black-and-white to color television eras, and eventually Downs was replaced by Bob Clayton in 1968. Ed McMahon served a brief stint as the show’s host, but audience reaction and declining ratings brought Clayton back.

The initial run of Concentration was cancelled in March of 1973 after The Price is Right (launched in September 1972 as The New Price is Right) pulled away more than half of the audience.

Concentration returned in a new form in September 1973 and ran for five years. This version was made for syndication and was hosted by Jack Narz with Johnny Olson as the show’s announcer. Ironically, Olson was the announcer for The Price is Right from that show’s debut until his death in October 1985. This version of Concentration was cancelled in September 1978 after ratings fell and stations either dropped it or moved it to non-prime time slots.

The show was revived again as Classic Concentration in 1987. Alex Trebek was selected as the host, giving him two game shows on the air at one time alongside Jeopardy!. Diana Taylor was the prize model, but she was soon replaced by Marjorie Goodson (producer Mark Goodson’s daughter) who stayed with the show until it ended in 1991. Long-time Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions announcer Gene Wood was hired for this show as well.

The five-by-five grid hid up to three Wild cards and (later on) four Take! cards. A Wild card could be used to make a prize match. If two Wilds were matched, the contestant earned a $500 bonus, and another $500 was awarded if all three were matched in one turn. The Take! cards were green (first debuted in 1987) and red (introduced in 1988, though they were originally lavender until viewers complained about the color on their screens), and matching them gave a contestant the power to take a prize from their opponent.

If time ran short, all remaining prizes, Wild cards, and Take! cards were removed from play as the puzzle was revealed one square at a time. The first player to buzz-in with the correct solution won, but if a player guessed wrong, they were locked out until the other player guessed. If both were incorrect and the puzzle was fully revealed, Trebek would start to describe it until someone guessed correctly.

This gameplay continued in a best-of-three format. The champion played a bonus round where they could win one of eight cars displayed on the soundstage. The bonus round was played on a three-by-five grid where the player matched car models in 35 seconds. One car did not have a match, and if it was the last one standing after every match was made, the player won the car. In 1990, the time limit was changed to add five seconds every time a champion returned to the bonus round until they won.

Aside from the rebus puzzles, the appeal was Alex Trebek – I loved Jeopardy! – and the pure late-’80s neon and palm tree visuals. I stumbled across some episodes on YouTube recently and the nostalgia was amazing. You can tell how much fun Trebek had on this show, especially as he settled into the hosting duties and loosened up in comparison to his Jeopardy! role. It was a fast and loose game show that focused more on having fun and immersing itself in the ’80s vibe.

You can find episodes scattered across YouTube, though no one has the full 1,090 episodes on hand.

The Price is Right is the juggernaut of daytime game shows, but Classic Concentration will always have a warm spot in my heart as an artifact of my childhood.

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Culture on My Mind is inspired by the weekly Can’t Let It Go segment on the NPR Politics Podcast where each host brings one thing to the table that they just can’t stop thinking about.

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