(At that time, Edwards was also hosting Barry-Enright's Play the Percentages). The announcer was Johnny Gilbert. It aired at 12:00 noon ET/11:00 AM CT/MT/PT, facing out CBS' The Young and the Restless for the first three weeks, and ABC's The $20,000 Pyramid; however, many affiliates aired local news at that timeslot, preempting Chain Reaction. The show was one of three game shows, the others being High Rollers and Hollywood Squares, which were canceled in June 1980 to make room for the 90-minute talk show The David Letterman Show. Repeats of this version aired for several years on cable, first on CBN Cable from March 29, 1982, to May 4, 1984, then later on the USA Network from September 30, 1985, to the debut of the new version that originated in Canada. GSN aired reruns of this version from October 1997 to April 1998. Main game Two teams of three competed in each game. A team consisted of one contestant and two celebrity guests. The teams were shown the beginning and ending words of an eight-word chain. Each word is related to the word above it and below it; the connection could be either a word association or a phrase. A sample chain could be: TWISTANKLEBRACELETCHAINGANGWARSTRATEGYCHESS The challenging team began the game. In the event two new players were competing, a coin toss determined which team went first. Usually, the challengers were the blue team and the champions were the gold team. As the game continued, the words would be revealed one letter at a time. A player's turn consisted of calling for a letter in the next word above or below one of the already revealed words and then guessing the word (note that the last letter of each word is not revealed). A correct response won one point for each letter in the word (two if the word had a '+' mark next to it) and that team kept control of the board. If the player in control was incorrect or gave no guess, control went back to the other team. The game continued until either one team scored 50 points, or the chain was finished. If that happened, another chain was put up and the game continued until one team reached the goal of 50 points, any letters exceeding 50 points are not included in the player's score. That team's contestant won the game, $250 (later dropped when