Blockbusters is a television quiz show originally created in the United States in 1980, but it achieved its greatest success and cult status as a British game show that premiered on ITV in 1983.
The show is famous for its unique honeycomb game board of yellow hexagons, its teenage student contestants, and the legendary catchphrase, "Can I have a 'P' please, Bob?".
The Core Game Mechanics
The show was built on a simple question-and-answer format designed to test whether "two heads are better than one":
- The Matchup: A solo player competed against a team of two players.
- The Board: The game took place on a 5x4 grid of 20 interlocking hexagonal tiles. Each hexagon featured a letter or letters representing the initial letter of the correct answer.
- The Objective: Players took turns selecting a letter. The host read a trivia clue corresponding to that letter. For example, "What 'C' is a fluffy feline creature that purrs?" for Cat.
- Winning a Round: The solo player had to create an unbroken vertical connection from top to bottom, which required 4 correct answers. The pair had to connect horizontally from left to right, which required 5 correct answers.
The Australian Version
An Australian children's version hosted by Michael Pope ran from 1991 to 1994 on the Seven Network, where school teams competed over a rolling weekly format to win educational resources.
Now you play with one of our pre-made sets of questions in the classroom, or download a template to make your own set. You can allow students to use it to revise - solo mode - or to pair up in duo-mode - or play the classic version - team vs solo or team vs team.
We designed this to be a better solution to to 'flash cards' or 'quizlet'. Once you have added it to a class, you can easily pass the template to an AI to generate questions for you, or if you're still old school like us - make your own!