Tag Archives: Jessi Cruickshank

Canada's Smartest Person

Canada’s Smartest Person casting now open

From a media release:

A new hunt is on for CANADA’S SMARTEST PERSON as CBC’s hit competition series returns for its third season. Starting today, Canadians coast to coast to coast are encouraged to apply or nominate someone online at cbc.ca/smartestperson for the chance to participate in the television event of the season. 

CANADA’S SMARTEST PERSON is looking for enthusiastic and dynamic competitors from all backgrounds. “We’re thrilled to be back for another season. This series is really about acknowledging all the different ways we’re smart. You don’t have to be a trivia buff or math wizard. We’ve had athletes, artists, teachers and first responders shine on our stage,” said executive producer Robert Cohen. Successful competitors can expect to have their intelligence tested by new and exciting challenges. Applicants must be 16 years of age or older as of January 1, 2016 to apply. Casting kicks off today and will close on July 24, 2016 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Hosted by Jessi Cruickshank, CANADA’S SMARTEST PERSON inspires and entertains Canadians with a new spin on the way to look at smarts. Each week, competitors from all walks of life go head-to-head in fun and revealing challenges that test six categories of intelligence: musical, linguistic, social, physical, logical and visual. Audiences can also join in on the action from home in an interactive play-along experience. Canadians will never look at smarts the same way again.

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Canada's Smartest Person, Featured

Heartland star lands Canada’s Smartest Person return

I competed in Canada’s Smartest Person, and I won. OK, I didn’t compete in a full instalment of the intelligence test, but I did come in first in a head-to-head special journalist edition matchup against my buddy Denette Wilford in The Gauntlet. (For proof, check out the video below.)

Meanwhile, contestants from across the country once again descended on Toronto to compete in Season 2 of CBC’s mind-bender, returning Sunday at 8 p.m. with 16-year-old wunderkind Maya Burhanpurkar of Barrie, Ont., rapper Anthony Craparotta (a.k.a. iLLvibe) of Toronto, diversity executive Richard Pinnock from Montreal, and new mom Jessica Joy of Golden, B.C., facing off.

Smartest_Person2

With the title of Canada’s Smartest Person up for grabs, the four competitors test the theory of multiple intelligence in six categories: linguistic, logical, physical, musical, visual and social before the top two scorers race through The Gauntlet to determine a winner.

“In Season 2, you really want to go bigger and better and we have,” says host Jessi Cruickshank. “The challenges in every episode are unreal, the new challenges are so spectacular and we have fantastic guest stars appearing.” Among them is Heartland lead Amber Marshall, who pops by for Human Lie Detector, telling a mixture of truth and fiction to test social skills. (One unforgettable story recounts a memorable Christmas involving a puppy and an ex-girlfriend; tune in to see if it’s true or not.) Upcoming celebrity guests include Mary Walsh, Steve Patterson, Perez Hilton and Alan Thicke.

“All of Alan Thicke’s stories were so over-the-top for Human Lie Detector,” Cruickshank says with a laugh, noting just one person read Thicke perfectly.

Canadians will once again have the chance to compete at home via the show’s app and—new this season—compete with friends and family in Head2Head. Jeff Douglas, who explained the app and noted test result trends across the country, is not back for Season 2, meaning Cruickshank is doing all of the heavy lifting, juggling hosting with challenge explanations and playing cheerleader to the weekly players.

“As much as I’m running the challenges, it’s my job to bring out the personalities of the competitors,” she says. “We have smart and incredibly charismatic people this season with a wide range of abilities and it’s my job to make them shine.”

Canada’s Smartest Person airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on CBC.

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Canada's Smartest Person, Featured

Preview: Canada’s Smartest Person an addictive test of intelligence

Are you the type of person who is naturally successful at word puzzles? Do you wow your friends with your sports prowess? Think you’re just all-around more intelligent than everyone else in the room? Canada’s Smartest Person may very well be for you.

Debuting Sunday at 8 p.m., CBC’s rollicking game show goes beyond the standard I.Q. test–dismissed as too narrow to gauge real intelligence–to find the Canadian who is successful in a total of six categories. After an exhaustive cross-Canada search, 32 finalists compete in the categories of Math & Logic Intelligence, Visual & Spatial Intelligence, Body & Kinesthetic Intelligence, Linguistics Intelligence, and Musical Intelligence and Interpersonal Intelligence.

Sunday’s two-hour debut introduces viewers to the first four finalists–who by the time the episode ends is trimmed to one who moves on to the finals–and co-hosts Jessi Cruickshank and Jeff Douglas. Cruickshank, known for her personality co-hosting The Hills After Show on MTV Canada, is a natural to corral the show finalists. Her reactions to blunders and successes are classic, as are the numerous ways she contorts her body in a physical reaction to how well the finalists fare. Or don’t. As It Happens Happens co-host Jeff Douglas is the dude who explains the six ways of measuring intelligence and serves as the at-home viewers’ guide through app and online game play. Slow and steady, he’s the one with the task of explaining the results as they arrive in real-time from across the country.

But the real star of Canada’s Smartest Person is the online and smartphone app available for viewers to play along at home. With an easy-to-use interface and plenty of instruction by Douglas, viewers are encouraged to play along in games that are related to–but not always exactly like–the games the show’s finalists are playing. Enter a few extra bits of login information and at-home players can see how they rank against friends and family and other participants across the country. It’s adds a level of fun, addictive game play that honestly at times overshadows the television series.

Canada’s Smartest Person airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on CBC.

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