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As you probably know if you've brushed up against the game show Interwebs lately, Classic Concentration has come to Buzzr. There's no question that Concentration , in all its many versions, is one of the top game shows ever. I ranked it #18 on my latest top fifty list, and others would no doubt place it even higher. But I'll admit that it's never been a personal favorite. The show is just a little too slow, quiet and cerebral for my taste. Too much concentrating, you know. Buzzr has put the first half of Classic Concentration's first episode on their Facebook site. So I decided to review it as if it was a new show I'd never seen before. Sure enough, I thought the gameplay was a little too erudite and not very brisk. Of course, maybe I was just grumpy because I couldn't guess the rebus until they revealed all but four squares. The eventual winning contestant took even longer, which soothed my ego a little. She had to see the entire rebus before she nailed ...

Vicki Lawrence gave an interview to a TV site to plug her new sitcom on Fox. After the obligatory advertising for the sitcom, Vicki chatted a little about Win, Lose or Draw . I assume they asked about the show because of Burt Reynolds' recent death. Vicki had nothing but nice things to say about Burt and the show, which isn't surprising because Vicki usually has nice things to say about everybody. She did admit that she was terrible at drawing, so it's a good thing she was the host and not a contestant. She recalled some of the odder drawings, like a contestant who got "Baked Alaska" and drew a map of the U.S. with a cake on North Dakota. Geography, like math, is tough. Vicki asked: "What happened to Canada?" Before the format became a TV show, Vicki originally played the game with Burt and his then-girlfriend Sally Field at the house of Hollywood producer Snuff Garrett. That's when Vicki discovered she was a hopeless putz at drawing. We can't a...

Sometimes you just gotta smile. Google News is full of items about a marriage proposal on Jeopardy . At least the proposal livened up the occasionally awkward contestant interviews. Michael Pascuzzi came in second on the episode, but he did get a yes to the proposal from his girlfriend Maria Shafer. She even phrased it in the form of a question, which now clean-shaven host Alex Trebek no doubt appreciated. Even though Alex wanted to go to a commercial before her answer, just to build the suspense. Speaking of clean shaves, Alex's facial hair went away at the command of his wife. So Mr. Pascuzzi will soon find out the realities of married existence. If the wife says away with the beard, it's away with the beard . I didn't see this episode but Jboard.tv tells me that Michael put up a good fight on the show but got nailed on an easy Final Jeopardy clue. (One poster on the thread is kind of grumpy about the marriage proposal, by the way.) All the contestants knew the answer,...

Rambling through the game show Interwebs, I came across this interestingly named thread on Buy a Vowel , the WoF board. Forced Bonus Round Losses . As the original poster points out, the title shouldn't be taken literally. We're not going back to the bad old days of rigged game shows. Unfortunately, the o.p. goes on to quote a supposed story about Harry Friedman, Wheel's current showrunner. Except a later poster shows that the story was "borrowed" from a previously published book, and it referred to George Vosburgh, not Harry. The thread wanders though a lot of other twists and turns, including some difficult personal experiences from a poster who I think I've seen on Game Show Paradise . A number of posters give examples of bonus rounds that weren't actually forced losses but were still very difficult for even the best contestant to solve. I dunno, all the puzzles are pretty tough for me, but I don't claim to be a Wheel wizard. The bottom line seem...

I mentioned this a while ago in the faux tweets, but a couple of enterprising young persons have come up with an interesting live knockoff of our little genre. David Sauer and Kevin Letens operate the Game Show Battle Rooms in Minneapolis. Groups of up to twelve (or more on weekdays) can book the Battle Rooms to play game shows like Friendly Feud , Wheel of Phrases and Name That Price . You can probably figure out which shows are getting knocked off here. The Minneapolis location is doing decent business, so the pair is opening another location in Milwaukee in November. The new location will have a beer license, which would make sense for Milwaukee, no doubt. I have visions of franchises across the country, but we haven't come to that yet. The linked story intones: Game Show Battle Rooms tries to make the experience unique and personalized with name tags, a game show host and technical features like audio, lights and a score board to track battle points. We're not messing ...

New seasons of syndie game shows bumped up most of their ratings. There was one notable exception, and it made things really tight among the top three. TV News Check has the largely happy household ratings for the week of September 10-16... Family Feud 6.0 - flat, which was the exception Wheel of Fortune 5.7 - up four ticks for the new season Jeopardy 5.7 - up six ticks to make it a tight race at the top Millionaire 1.6 - up a couple ticks to share in the fun Funny You Should Ask 0.5 - flat, as almost always More of the same for GSN. 377K/262K viewers prime time/total day for the week of September 17-23. The network ranked 38th and 30th in the windows. Pretty similar to the last couple weeks.

By now you've probably heard about Jeopardy's new stunt: the team tournament scheduled for February and March of next year. But if you're gonna have teams, you gotta have a draft. We're into sports here, folks. So Jeopardy went on Facebook, and the six team captains drafted their squads from a pool of twelve past champs. Much to my surprise Roger Craig didn't go #1 overall. That honor went to Alex Jacob, who will play on Buzzy Cohen's team. Roger didn't have to wait long, though. Austin Rogers snapped him up at #2 overall. Mr. Craig wasn't going to fall too far down the list. The last draft pick was Jennifer Giles. So she'll probably do better than any of the higher picks. Isn't that the way it often happens with sports drafts?