The 1% Club

I agree with some of the reviews here regarding Patton Oswalt. I do find him likeable in stand-up, television and movies, but it almost seems as if this gameshow-speak was written for him and he's not crazy about it. It's not completely horrible, but seems a bit forced and rehearsed.

I'm not sure why he has to say, "Let's take a look" before every single question, but it gets old quickly. Again, I think it was written that way, and not Mr. Oswalt's creative choice.

It's an interesting premise, and the questions ranged from super easy to difficult (depending on how your brain works!) But when they gave a drum-roll effect to "revealing" what's happened to the pot since 4 people are out (simply meaning $4000 has been added to the pot), I found myself saying, "UGH, come onnn".

My husband and I watched it and really enjoyed it. Our college-age son lives with us so the next day we asked him to watch it. THAT was so much more fun. He got every question right and we were so proud. Granted, there were some easy questions that everyone should have gotten right. I thought Patton was a great host. He spent just the right amount of time with the contestants so that you didn't feel isolated from them in that "I don't care who wins." way. I don't understand the reviewer who commented that the host was mean and put people down. I grew up with a narcissist and watched "Match Game" with Alec Baldwin so I know what putting people down sounds like. Patton was funny, friendly, and, yes, joked around but you can tell none of it was mean-spirited. I thought the questions were comparable to Celebrity Week on Jeopardy - where they dumb down the questions a bit, but you can solve them and feel smart. I hope the show makes it. We'd be regular watchers.

I'm one of those people who loves brainiac type shows. So of course I thought this was going to be a really great show. The first thing that disappointed me was that they start out way up at a question 90% of the people surveyed got correct and very slowly dwindle down to 1%. I do have a high IQ but I thought these were relatively easy questions. But the majority aren't really questions about intelligence, rather about perception or ability to perceive the twist; riddles. For example one of the questions is: These two states South Dakota and North Carolina can form two completely new state names, what are they? I thought it was very obvious but yet several people got that wrong.

In E2, two questions had more than one way to reach the answer. IE, they say to look at the round numbers to find an equation; they were speaking of the digits that have circles, which is so anti-intelligent you really have to hope for the best in answering because there no rhyme or reason - most people would think they meant the numbers ending in 0. But ironically, if that's the route you chose, you would still get the correct answer.

It should have been more fun than it was. I thought the host was okay but I'm not a fan - I don't really care for hosts who think that teasing is funny or entertaining (and I prefer nice voices). E2 inproves a bit but in E1 it almost becomes an interview of the lady with one kidney. With 100 contestants, we see only a handful and hear from even fewer with the host picking favorites to - well - pick on. I'll also just mention that in episode 3, I felt the guy who was sponsored by The Gates Foundation was a marketing spot. Bill Gates has really become a hated figure after forcing his vaccine on the world and is obviously a paid attempt to soften people's opinions of him. Since his name is on the 2015 covid patent along with Clinton's, we can be pretty sure he's known for a while that there would need to be a vaccine for what we now know to be a relatively benign common cold cousin.

Part of the difficulty is the short amount of time given to reach an answer. But E2 was even easier than E1 almost by leaps and bounds.

But for those saying the 1% question on E1 was unfairly presented, I'm afraid that is just showing that you didn't qualify. The directions that it was a word is literally in the term "password"; while popular to call every digital key that unlocks something a password, a key that uses numbers, acronyms, or symbols is technically a passCODE. But thank you for solving my question of why that was so difficult for our finalists. You would probably hate the film Exam (2009).

I'll continue to watch this as it becomes available, I know the British version is very popular. However I do hope there are more challenging questions to come - but that aspect does make it fun for the whole family. Another example is, basically, in the English alphabet which picture represents the 23rd letter. Several people got that wrong. Of course, initially you do have to figure out that it's discussing the English alphabet. Some reviews mention it's designed to make everyone feel smart. Maybe that's all there is to it but I think a lot of people would disagree.

But the fact is, anyone can get stumped by age old verbal tricks or riddles like "A plane crashed in the desert; where did they bury the survivors", or "If y e s spells yes, what does e y e s spell". Trust me, these do stump many people. This show may be just a series of this type of riddle.

In many of the questions, solving is more easily done by eliminating the wrong answer such as turning the + sign 45 degrees. Only 2 answers had the plus in the 45 degree angle and of those, only one had the 2nd symbol turned almost 90° to the left.

I was one of the people who was initially stumped by the 1% question in episode 3, and yet looking back it was quite obvious.

As I said I'm not fond of the host (never heard of him before) but I don't hate him either. Hopefully they're just on a learning curve right now. If he's a comedian, then I agree he should be allowed to adlib. Might make it more interesting.

I would have rated this a 9, but was so upset that the final question was terribly phrased. The question referred to a "password" made up of 6 letters, from 4 letters shown on a keyboard. Obviously, some of the letters were repeated.

An actual password can be made of many different characters, but in this case only letters were used. Actual passwords are better if they don't use an actual "word", rather use random letters.

The answer was based on an actual "word", but the instructions didn't mention anything about the password having to be a "word". The instructions only asked for a certain arrangement of those letters - in which case, there could have been many correct answers.

Hard to believe this question was allowed to be used the way it was worded. Someone should have caught the error. I guess the staff that works on the show are far from being 1% themselves!

Lee Mack of UK version is way funnier than Oswald (and still without being mean or snarky like host of Australian version). Questions on UK version are much better. More varied, interesting and fun, and more original ideas. American version questions are overloaded with boring wordplay puzzles. Many of the questions are word puzzle types that will be familiar to many people (and will give those people an advantage). Like a lot of game shows other than Jeopardy, there is a fair amount of filler, such as explanation of how the game works, and music that goes on too long before results are revealed.