BTW, I just finished seeing Nancy vs. Ogi again. I thought Ogi did a really great job, and I can’t wait to see his match with Brad Rutter on Saturday!

Here’s the new schedule:

Saturday, August 18 at 7 PM ET
Featuring Brad Rutter vs. Ogi Ogas and Leszek Pawlowicz vs David Legler
Encore showing at 8/18 10 PM ET, Wed. 8/22 at 8 PM ET and Thur. 8/23 at 10 PM ET.

Saturday, August 25 at 7 PM ET
Featuring Ken Jennings vs. Phyllis Harris and Michelle Kitt vs. John Carpenter
Encore showing at 8/25 10 PM ET, Wed. 8/29 at 8 PM ET and Thur. 8/30 at 10 PM ET.

Saturday, September 1 at 7 PM ET
Featuring semifinal matches
Encore showing at 9/1 10 PM ET, Wed. 9/5 at 8 PM ET and Thur. 9/6 at 10 PM ET.

Saturday, September 8 at 7 PM ET
GRAND SLAM Championship
Encore showing at 9/8 10 PM ET, Wed. 9/12 at 8 PM ET and Thur. 9/13 at 10 PM ET.

***In addition there will be a GRAND SLAM marathon on Championship Saturday, September 8 from noon to 7 PM as a lead in to the Championship show. All seven previous episodes will be replayed.

Whamini - this format seems to have worked very much in favour of the young guns courtesy of its speed emphasis. Certainly, Kitt over Olmstead proved as much. This is an incomplete format because there’s so few questions of sustained thought, but that wouldn’t make as good a television spectacle.

It’s going to be fascinating watching the rest of the tournament unfold!

So far, it looks like the purpose of this tournament is to prove that youth will trounce the old every time. Was it necessary to bring McKeon and Spangenburg out of mothballs for a royal beating? What do they get for their trouble? Just an all-expense paid accomodations? Jennings already lost his Ultimate Tourney. What is he doing playing for smaller stakes? A possible rematch with Rutter? How many more contests must he lose to humanize him?

I hope you’re catching my tongue-in-cheek drifts. Believe it or not, I’m not trying to stir things up. These are mostly my ruminations in the form of questions.

The right to claim the title of “Best in the Land”? …Until the next Grand Slam.

“Correct me if I’m wrong (Ogi) but was he perhaps there to redeem or make up for not going for the million?”

Very perceptive. Everyone else in the tournament won a top prize in their respective game show… except me. And I came so close, but blew it because of my anxiety and lack of confidence at the moment of truth. This was a hugely motivating factor for me: I spent a lot of time reflecting on the mistakes I made on Millionaire, and vowed to not repeat them in Grand Slam.

For example, one major function of the “meditating” I was doing was to keep myself calm (I get emotional pretty easy) and to prevent myself from having a “Hot Seat Flashback” to Millionaire — on both Grand Slam and WWTBAM, the contestant sits in a chair surrounded on every side by the audience, and I was worried that the Grand Slam chair would automatically trigger an adrenalin surge.

Also, all the other competitors had some sort of claim to the record books, and I wanted my own shot. I watched 8 Mile’s final rap battles over and over. I still think those rap battles are very similar to Grand Slam.

But anyway, it seemed apparent that Ogi was there TO WIN, while Nancy was taking it a bit ligh heartedly. Correct me if I’m wrong (Ogi) but was he perhaps there to redeem or make up for not going for the million? It seemed like Nance was like “I already have the million…this is just fun.” Ogi was very serious.

Do you think Ogi was actually insulted by Miller’s comments??

And while you’d like to thing that due to the “battle” nature of this show the contestants would have a bit of a sense of humor (as seen in the teasers and promos showing them making those “bring it on” gestures), I was willing to give the whole Dennis Miller smartass thing a chance until he straight-up made fun of Ogi’s parents for naming him Ogi..

In the art of truly being a GOOD smartass, one needs to recognize that there is a line between funny and insulting.. Sure, there’s a time and place where you can outright rip on someone unsolicited — say, at a Comedy Central roast — but certainly not a game show.

And speaking of which, Tivo is the best thing ever for shows like this — I can watch both matchups skipping right to the faceoffs — pure questions & answers, no commentator bullshit, no commercials — in a total of about 15 minutes.. good times :D

Thanks again for responding, Ogi.. Brain scientist represent!

LObs

No, the British clocks were also at one minute, although it was only 30 seconds for the final round. However our version did have five/six rounds. The original British line-up was general knowledge, numbers, contemporary knowledge (whatever that actually was), words and letters and the final round. After the first set of match-ups, a sixth “keyword” round was introduced after contemporary knowledge where each of the questions featured a certain word.

The US show certainly has a bias for mental dexterity over knowledge which is quite interesting given that you don’t really have shows that test that sort of thing. I’m wondering if the “keyword” round was added in our version to give more of a chance to the trivia people - you can have fine mental agility skills and still know an awful lot, but it doesn’t necessarily follow the other way around. We do have shows that test mental arithmetic and word skills in Countdown - indeed, our competition was won by a Countdown champion against a Mastermind champion.

I’m all for limiting switches to one per question.

In the numbers and words rounds in our show, there were 13/11 different “forms” of question which cycled round - presumably so if both contestants answered perfectly they’d each get a crack at the same sorts of questions. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the question stack in the US show, but I don’t think the comment that your questions are more exacting is unfair. And they were pretty difficult as it was. Ours didn’t have the “and logic” bit, though.

I was willing to give Dennis Miller the benefit of the doubt, but I have concluded he is a bad choice. His references are just too over-the-top and obscure, and his mocking of contestants is uncalled for. This show plays up to the audience with Pat Kiernan and a challenging format, then destroys a lot of that with Miller.

If the show comes back, they need new sideline commentators. Amanda is OK, but I could imagine others who would do vastly better. Michael Davies, what were you thinking?

It would be better to give the audience some info about the internal “rules” of the show like Ogi has shared with us. Otherwise, we are sometimes left scratching our heads.

Also, am I wrong or did the British version use 1:30 clocks instead of 1:00? With less crap commentary we could easily have a bit more game.

Yes, there ought to be a switch button, and moreover, a limit of one switch per question. Too many wasted switches with the “switch back” option. That would improve the game play and strategy immensely.