Grand Slam (the game show)

[Bulldog]

Anybody watching this? It is the best new game show format in a while (anything except these one-player at-a-time, escalating prize, one-miss-and-you-are-out formats, please.)

GSN's Grand Slam page

They took 16 "Game Show Champions" and seeded them in a single-elimination bracket based on their total game show winnings. There are five best known from Millionaire, including John Carpenter, four best known from Jeopardy (Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, Lt. Frank Spangenberg, and Leszek Pawlawicz), two from Twenty One, one legend from Tic Tac Dough (Thom McKee), the top US winner ever in Weakest Link, one of the guys who won the World Series of Pop Culture, and in a gift to lame GSN game shows of the past, one spot to the top Lingo winner ever. Also, one contestant has been on six games shows but won most of her money on Super Greed.

I won't give away any spoilers even for episodes that have already aired, because you can catch a lot of repeat broadcasts. Brad Rutter has the #1 seed, because his ToC winnings, including an "upset" win over Ken Jennings, are more than Jennings. There are, of course, some bright players low in the seedings, mostly because of winning limits back in the old days of game shows.

Anyway, the format for each match is four rounds, head-to-head. Each player gets a minute, and their clock is counting down while the question is on them (being read or thinking about the answer). A correct answer or a "switch" (they get three each) puts the onus on the other player, stopping one player's clock and starting the other. When one player runs out of time, the round is over.

For the first three rounds, the players are collecting their leftover time, which is added to their minute for the final round. So some final rounds start something like 2:30 vs 1:00, while others are more like 1:40 vs 1:15.

The first round is general knowledge (including some pop culture-type stuff), but after that it gets good. Round two is numbers and math. A lot of these are something like "What is 9.1 minus 5.7?" or "In 4x + 5 = 85, what does x stand for?" Simple enough, but a lot of these champs are struggling to procedurally do math with that clock running. And, it seems, that once a player is rattled, the rest of the round goes poorly.

Anyway, the third round is words and letters, with questions like "Separate the state from its capital in this sequence: PHAENRNSRYILSVBANUIRAG" or "Spell FASCISM backwards" or "How many consonants are in the word FACETIOUS?"

The final round, when they add back in the time they saved, is questions of all types mixed together.

Dennis Miller and some Irish chick "host" as studio commentators discussing the game between each round, with the questions coming from an unseen guy who I'm pretty sure is the same guy who asks the questions in the World Series of Pop Culture.

They plays two matches per hourlong episode, and have completed the first round. There are some upsets according to the seeding but there still are some potential titanic showdowns left to come.