Ion Aramendi makes a return to the competition genre this Monday with the program Chain Reaction. The host will oversee a multi-stage format where contestants untangle chains of words that share a connective thread, forming a web of related ideas.
Each weekday episode of Chain Reaction features two teams, each composed of three members connected by some relationship—friends, colleagues, or relatives—sharing a common bond that ties them together on screen.
Across five rounds titled Chained Words, Mini Chain, Center of the Chain, Funnel, and One Leads to the Other, the teams strive to link words, identify mysterious characters, or uncover songs using linked word strings. The goal is to accumulate as many points as possible through clever wordplay and rapid associations.
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Game 1 – Chained Words: contestants must name six words related to a general theme selected by Ion Aramendi. The twist is that the last letter of one word starts the next word, creating a seamless chain of connections.
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Game 2 – Mini Chain: players must guess a song by identifying five words from its lyrics, using two extra words provided by the host to bridge the clues.
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Game 3 – The Center of the Chain: contestants must unravel a seven-word chain that shares a common denominator, with each word linking to the one before and after. The host supplies the first, the last, and the central word in the sequence.
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Game 4 – Funnel: Teams work to uncover a hidden character, object, or place by solving up to five clues.
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Game 5 – One Leads to Another: The aim is to guess a sequence of seven interrelated words, each connected to the preceding and the following. In this round, only the first and last words are shown by the host.
Winning complicity, decisive and elimination game
After the initial five challenges, the two teams engage in a high-stakes knockout round titled Winning Complicity. Each team plays a single sixty-second round, during which players must guess as many words as possible. The team that wins may choose to keep the prize money accumulated so far and return the next day; the team with the fewest correct guesses is eliminated from the competition.
In this stage, one member of each trio sits at a buzzer station. The objective is to define a word without naming it, contributing one clue at a time until the correct definition is reached. Each time a marker is activated, the countdown pauses. Points are earned with successes, while mistakes deduct money from the score on the scoreboard.
Final stage
The victorious team from Winning Complicity earns a place in the final round, The Last Chain. In this round, teams must decipher all the words that form the chain. If they manage to complete the chain, they win the accumulated prize money; however, each mistake costs a portion of their earnings, with a deduction applied for every incorrect guess.
[Citation: Production notes]