TVSquad

For the pink tile ... it's Trivial Pursuit! The ultimate trivia challenge finally makes the leap back to the television airwaves [thanks posters-jh]. The upcoming syndicated Trivial Pursuit: America Plays has cleared 55% of the nation, including eight of the top 10 markets. What this means to you and me is it's virtually a lock that we'll be able to participate in this new show soon.

Yes, you read that right. The show will feature viewer submitted video questions. You could get your ugly mug ("No, no, not you ... you're beautiful ... I'm talking about the rest of them.") up on the screen asking your very own trivia question. Man, I hope they have a pretty hefty screening process for this. I don't want some redneck yahoo standing there in his cutoff jean shorts and too small high school football jersey yelling "How many interceptions did I make in the big game against the Duke County Daisies in '76? ... or was it '77?"

There don't appear to be many more details as to how this show is going to be put together, but the Trivial Pursuit brand name is pretty well established, and they've put out variations from everyone from specific years (remember the box sets of cards for 1992, 1993, etc. to specific TV shows (SNL), so it should come out of the gate pretty strong. The fun of it is that trivial knowledge is far more challenging than traditional game shows. Even Jeopardy has more of an intellectual slant to it than a typical Trivial Pursuit game, where questions can run the gamut from politics to history to obscure sports statistics to guest casting on a hastily canceled television show from the '80s.

It's a nice turnaround to the dumbing down of American game shows we've seen where the most challenging new game show intellectually is one that pits Americans against fifth graders (and ultimately proves that a pretty face can at least get you graduated from high school--Hi, Kellie Pickler!). As a huge fan and collector of every variation of Trivial Pursuit that I can find, I'm very excited to see if they can pull this off and make it as challenging and fun as the board versions. And I'm buying the home version of the show.