Ken Jennings on Fifth Grader

[silverscreenselect]

Usually, when I visit Mrs. SSS at her home, they have highlights from Family Feud on the TV. I try to spend as little time in the common room as possible on those days. But today, they had an episode of Jeff Foxworthy's Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader featuring Ken Jennings. I was a bit surprised that he was competing as an ordinary contestant and not a charity celebrity. I had to leave before the episode ended but I looked it up when I got home. It took place in 2008, when Jennings was in second place to Brad Rutter on the all-time game show money won list. He won $500K and reclaimed the title.

I had heard of the show, but I never watched an entire episode. The game works similar to Millionaire in that if you miss a high-dollar question, you go down to $25K. The low level questions are ridiculously easy (What does "won't" stand for?) but the "fourth" and "fifth" grade questions can be tricky. They're also harder than what you'll find in a fourth or fifth grade textbook. For the lower level questions, you can quit before guessing, but for the million dollar question, you get the category and if you agree to play, you have to answer. This one wasn't very difficult but Jennings passed (What political party was John Adams a member of?)

I know that only two people won the million dollars and one was a Nobel Prize winner in Physics and the other the Georgia School Superintendant. I can see discretion being the better part of valor in choosing whether to go for the million without knowing the question. However, I would think that most of the people on this Bored could get up to the 3-500K level fairly easily.

Did anyone on the Bored have an experience with the game? Any thoughts about the show? (There's a celebrity version with Travis Kelce now.)

[Vandal]

There is a thread from a few years ago:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=50356&p=501684&hilit=grader#p501684

[MarleysGh0st]

The show was discussed extensively here, back in the day. But, oh wow, you linked to one of the threads I started for the return of the show in 2015. I had forgotten all about that (both the return of the show and the thread).

The Bored's closest connection to the show is still the shoulda/woulda of Emma being cast as one of the original Fifth Graders. From PSM's report of her audition, it sounded like Emma handled the role perfectly, when the producers told the kids to react sarcastically towards the dumb contestants, but TPTB apparently decided to let Foxworthy do all of the sarcasm, himself, except for brief reaction soundbites at the end of the episodes.

[elwoodblues]

One thing I remember about his appearance on that show was his pretending to be unsure about what country the Taj Mahal is in. I wonder if they asked him to do stuff like that to make for better TV, or if he did it on his own for that reason.

[silverscreenselect]

Today, they had the episode with the Nobel Prize winner, who won the million dollars. (In what US state is Acadia National Park located?) Before Jeff Foxworthy asked the question, he mentioned some interesting statistics. As of whatever date that show originally aired, 14 people had won $500,000 (This guy was Number 15.) Of those, ten quit and went home with the $500K. Three of them missed the $1 million question and went home with $25K. And Kathy Cox, the Georgia School Superintendant, won the million.