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Twenty-One (game show)

American quiz show

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Twenty-One is an American game show originally hosted by Jack Barry that initially aired on NBC from September 12, 1956 to October 16, 1958. Produced by Jack Barry-Dan Enright Productions, the show featured two contestants playing against each other in separate isolation booths, answering general knowledge questions to earn 21 total points. The program became notorious when it was found to be rigged as part of the 1950s quiz show scandals, which nearly caused the demise of the entire genre in the wake of United States Senate investigations. The 1994 film Quiz Show is based on these events. A new version of the show aired on NBC and PAX from January 9 to May 28, 2000 with Maury Povich as host.

Editorial summary

“Twenty-One (game show)” enters the record as american quiz show. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Twenty-One, game and show can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1956, 1958, 1994, 2000—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Twenty-One, game and show.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Twenty-One (game show)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Twenty-One, game and show provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1958, 1994 and 2000.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Twenty-One (game show) primary sources, Twenty-One (game show) archive and Twenty-One research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Twenty-One (game show)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.