Over fourteen weeks in 1956 and 1957 this tweedy young academic beat all comers on a prime-time quiz show and won $129,000 — because the producers had been handing him the answers beforehand.
The full story
Charles Van Doren won $129,000 over a 14-week run on NBC's Twenty-One ending 11 March 1957, having been given questions and answers in advance by the producers. On 2 November 1959 he told the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight he had been 'involved, deeply involved, in a deception'; NBC dropped him and he resigned from Columbia University. He had lied about the rigging to a New York grand jury, and on 17 January 1962 pleaded guilty to second-degree perjury in the Court of Special Sessions, receiving a suspended sentence.
The clues we handed out
— He admitted it to a Congressional subcommittee in 1959, resigned his university post and was dropped by the network in the same week.
— He had also lied about it to a grand jury, and pleaded guilty to perjury in 1962. That sentence was suspended.
— He came from a celebrated literary family, which was part of why audiences believed in him.
— Robert Redford directed a film about the scandal decades later.
— Initials: C.V.D.
How this case played
ALLEGEDLY* edition No. 33. Three strikes to name Charles Van Doren, with a free clue
unlocked after every miss.
*A blind item you can check. Every puzzle is drawn from the public record —
court records, official rulings, and moments that unfolded on live television — and the
records are linked above. Allegedly.
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