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Remember the GLORY DAZE?

© Brooke E. Smith

Back in the early '80's, Trivial Pursuit was the hot game for social get togethers? Soon everyone had memorized all the cards in the original Genus edition and needed new question sets. Hasbro came through with new editions, including sports and film (“Silver Screen”), but for those born after World War II the most sought after was the Baby Boomer edition. After all, we figured that we ought to be able to beat out the competition on any game tailored especially for us.

But we were wrong. We found out that there were few gimme questions in a game which grilled players on the fine details of history, music, film, literature and culture. Soon we learned that living it was not the same as knowing it, and that it actually was true that most of us couldn’t remember the Sixties (at least not well enough to complete our pies).

Now the Trivial Pursuit craze has died down (except for those who play NTN’s Six but for any of who miss “Baby Boomer”, NTN’s “Glory Daze” is right up your highway. Presented in an elongated Countdown format, this hour-long premium game draws 7 questions each from the areas of Music, Culture, Screen, and History. A final 2000-point question of varying subject matter allows for a 30,000 perfect game – rarely seen by any location except in repeats.

GD has one of the more interesting histories of all the hour games. Originally it began as a specialty game played only by the Damon’s restaurants across the country as competition within the chain. While other NTN’ers were engaged in regular Countdown or Wipeout rounds, the Damon’s teams fought only each other for national rankings.

Because of its popularity at Damon’s, several years ago NTN expanded GD to all locations. However, it had difficulty finding the right time slot. Variously GD was played on Wednesday and Sunday nights, with sometimes the same game being repeated during the week. Currently GD is one of the split time zone games on Tuesdays, coming before Showdown for the East/Central people (7 p.m. EST) and after Showdown for the Mountain/Pacific players. While no combined rankings are given, both GD East and GD West scores are provided by NTN

In terms of subject matter, GD is heavy on popular music, literature and television, fashions, and politics (know your Russians). A representative game featured music questions on the Beach Boys, Four Tops, Elvis, the Archies, Al Hirt and Bobby Darrin as well as the lyrics to “All in the Game”. Culture items included Bob Fosse’s triple-play Oscar-Tony-Emmy awards in 1973, the Altair personal computer, shag rugs, Kmart, Quaker puffed rice, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” and golfer Pat Bradley. In “Screen Scene” players were quizzed on H.R. Pufnstuf, “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”, “Three’s Company”, Lawrence Welk and Porter Wagoner. People were asked to remember historical facts about Neil Armstrong, Richard Nixon, and the Chicago 7. The final question asked everyone to link Phyllis George with “Candid Camera”.

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