Is it just me, or is it getting very difficult to call the Grand Slam games recently? It seems most of my calls have been on such petty items that it seems more like a guess than anything else. Anyway, on today’s Grand Slam on GSN at 7PM ET, we see Ken Jennings face off against Phyllis Harris and Michelle Kitt versus John Carpenter. Let’s take a look at Jennings/Harris.
This one is tricky because of how they both stand. Jennings is obviously a trivia giant and used to the speed of a game because of Jeopardy!. Phyllis Harris has been on roughly two million game shows and has experience across the board; on shows that require and don’t require speed. I’m going to actually go with Phyllis Harris to win. As I saw in Ken Jenning’s initial round, he’s awesome at trivia but not as much on the word and math round. Phyllis is very well rounded because of her massive game show experience and that will easily come in handy. Where Jennings gets her on trivia she can easily make up on words, logic, and math. I’m calling Phyllis Harris to beat Ken Jennings.
And now we come to the other match: Michelle Kitt versus John Carpenter. I’ve been talking to a few people about this one, and I am truly stumped. John Carpenter is, again, one of those masters of trivia obviously. He answered 25 Millionaire-level questions correctly without a lifeline; 28 out of 30 in total. However, Who Wants to be a Millionaire does not involve any remote amount of speed thinking. This is where Michelle Kitt might have an advantage. It took me a bit of time to realize it, but think about this: Weakest Link and Grand Slam are very similar in the style of the game. The only huge difference is the voting. Michelle Kitt’s game involved trivia, words, logic, math, and more under intense time pressure. You have to be the perfect player to make it to the end and win over $100,000 on that show. Sadly, I have no clear opinion of who will win this one. On just some weird hunch I’m going to say that Michelle Kitt beats John Carpenter and I am completely ready to be totally wrong. What are your pre game and post game thoughts? If we’re lucky, maybe Ms. Kitt can tell us of her experience on the show.