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.

[Iconoclastic]

I enjoy this show simply because it's like an All-Star game of trivia. I certainly concur with OP's last sentence.

I personally think John Carpenter is going to take it. He's got a winner's attitude, a killer instinct. A lot of these guys' body language tells you they have low self esteem and don't really think too highly of their abilities, whereas John is composed, like Tiger Woods with a lead going into the last round. I would have seeded him #1 over Jennings.

This game is 50% playing the game, 50% knowledge. Many of the contestants seem unable to actually play the game, ie use switches and passes when they can't answer it, remember that it's their turn, etc. The ones who keep their cool and manage their time well do better than the book smart geniuses.

I think I can beat the lower 1/3 of the brackets just by answering the easy questions quickly and passing/switching the hard ones effectively while they take like 20 sec with a question like "What is 3.3-5.6?"

[Iconoclastic]

The old white lady in the first matchup just totally gave up after the first round. One of her 8th grade students would have probably beaten her.

Living in NY, I'm amused by the ineptitude of the NYPD lieutenant in answering first grade addition questions.

[cognito20]

[ QUOTE ]
I enjoy this show simply because it's like an All-Star game of trivia. I certainly concur with OP's last sentence.

I personally think John Carpenter is going to take it. He's got a winner's attitude, a killer instinct. A lot of these guys' body language tells you they have low self esteem and don't really think too highly of their abilities, whereas John is composed, like Tiger Woods with a lead going into the last round. I would have seeded him #1 over Jennings.

This game is 50% playing the game, 50% knowledge. Many of the contestants seem unable to actually play the game, ie use switches and passes when they can't answer it, remember that it's their turn, etc. The ones who keep their cool and manage their time well do better than the book smart geniuses.

I think I can beat the lower 1/3 of the brackets just by answering the easy questions quickly and passing/switching the hard ones effectively while they take like 20 sec with a question like "What is 3.3-5.6?"

[/ QUOTE ]

After watching Carpenter's first-round performance against Thom McKee, there's no way he's going to win this tournament. He's far too bad at mental math (which incidentally is also what did in Brad Rutter in his quarterfinal matchup) to win a semifinal or final matchup. After seeing all the matches to date, I've gotta think it's going to be Ogi Ogas v. Ken Jennings in the final (although David Legler could easily beat Ogas in the semis, he's been great so far in the tournament also and seems to have no weak spots), and that'll be a tossup. Ogas is the best player in the tournament at the numbers questions, but Jennings has the slightest advantage over him in general knowledge and the word rounds, as well as not being a slouch at the numbers round like Carpenter and Rutter are. I'd say it's going to be Jennings winning it, in a close one. I certainly hope it is, since Ogas has come off as an arrogant jackass in each of his two appearances thus far and he's -really- hard to root for.

--Scott

[Perplexity]

Raeding this thread is amazing me. The depth of knowledge you people have of TV quiz shows / "stars" is insane.

[duracell]

I was a little disappointed not to see Bob Harris make the list. He might not be quite in the upper-echelon on Jeopardy champions, but he is certainly more qualified than someone from Tic-Tac-Toe. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].

Bob was a five time champion (my dad came in second to him in his fourth match, but was leading him for much of the game) and has performed reasonably well in tournaments. I met him and he was a nice guy as well.

[cognito20]

[ QUOTE ]
I was a little disappointed not to see Bob Harris make the list. He might not be quite in the upper-echelon on Jeopardy champions, but he is certainly more qualified than someone from Tic-Tac-Toe. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].

Bob was a five time champion (my dad came in second to him in his fourth match, but was leading him for much of the game) and has performed reasonably well in tournaments. I met him and he was a nice guy as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was a little surprised that Harris didn't get on also. He is one of the best-known Jeopardy! champions (certainly one of the most entertaining), recently released a very well-reviewed book called "Prisoner of Trebekistan" about his experiences on Jeopardy! and his life, and (people sometimes forget this about him) ALSO won $200,000 on Greed (he actually won more on that show than he did on all of his J! appearances combined), and was the grand champion of the short-lived game show "Smush!". He would've been at or near the top of the players in Round 3 (the Word Round) because of that, as well as in Round 1 from his Jeopardy! experience. If he has any ability to do mental mathematics, he would've been among the contenders to win the whole thing in Grand Slam.

If Phyllis Harris can qualify for this show as a multi-game contestant, so too should have Bob Harris. I've conversed with him by e-mail (we're two of the rare Americans who are fanatic fans of cricket, rugby and soccer :P), and he's a really nice guy, you're certainly right about that. Maybe he was asked and had other obligations that precluded him playing. He does travel a lot.

Also, I had no problem with them including Thom McKee from Tic Tac Dough in this tournament. As they said in the intro to his first round match, he IS a game show legend (I thought the description of him by one of the commentators as "the original Ken Jennings" was particularly apt), and winning 47 games and $312,000 in _1980 MONEY_ is very impressive, and he deserved to have at least a shot. If they had NOT included him, I would've probably been one of the people screaming, "Why didn't they give Thom McKee a shot at this?" [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] Yes, most of the questions they asked on Tic Tac Dough were ridiculously easy by modern quiz show standards (watch some old episodes and you'll be amazed how softball a lot of them are), and the bonus game was completely luck-based, but McKee played the game that was in front of him, and dominated it. He might have actually beaten Carpenter in the first-round matchup if he had not gone completely on tilt (or gotten slightly easier questions) in the Words round, since he made up enough time in the Final Round where he would've won if he had only had to make up a slight deficit.

--Scott

[GMan42]

[ QUOTE ]
After watching Carpenter's first-round performance against Thom McKee, there's no way he's going to win this tournament. He's far too bad at mental math (which incidentally is also what did in Brad Rutter in his quarterfinal matchup) to win a semifinal or final matchup. After seeing all the matches to date, I've gotta think it's going to be Ogi Ogas v. Ken Jennings in the final (although David Legler could easily beat Ogas in the semis, he's been great so far in the tournament also and seems to have no weak spots), and that'll be a tossup. Ogas is the best player in the tournament at the numbers questions, but Jennings has the slightest advantage over him in general knowledge and the word rounds, as well as not being a slouch at the numbers round like Carpenter and Rutter are. I'd say it's going to be Jennings winning it, in a close one. I certainly hope it is, since Ogas has come off as an arrogant jackass in each of his two appearances thus far and he's -really- hard to root for.

--Scott

[/ QUOTE ]

Bump now that the final aired...good call on the above. It would have seemed a little tainted if the current events category was the only thing that carried Jennings (since they just added it for the final), but fortunately he also won the last two rounds pretty soundly to take it.
Also, Ogi was surprisingly weak (by his standards) in the numbers/logic round...a couple of passes and some long pauses to answer simple ones (I hardly ever get a chance to shout the answer at the TV before he comes up with it, but did tonight). Not being able to take more than 3 seconds away from that round was the beginning of the end for him.

[GMan42]

I enjoy the show. My two gripes--
First, people who waste 10+ sec on every tough question and never use a switch the whole game. WTF?
Second, Dennis Miller and the chick are [censored] annoying. The questioner on this show is Pat Kiernan, who I thought did a great job on the World Series of Pop Culture, and I'd much rather see him in front of the camera than these two dopes.

[TurdFerguson]

I'm guessing Kiernan has some sort of contractual provision like a non-compete clause with VH1, hence he can't appear on camera for another network. I really like him as well; he does a fabulous job on WSoPC.

The format for this game show is terrific, and I am very confident I would crush half the competitors in the math/numbers and word games portions, given what I've seen so far.