The 1% Club

Patton Oswalt hosts this quiz show, which has 100 contestants vying for money.

The questions posed to the contestants get progressively more difficult. Missing a question means elimination, as the pot grows larger. The difficulty of the questions is determined by testing them on groups beforehand. But these are not questions of fact or tests of knowledge; they are designed to test one's abilities of perception and logic.

The major problem is that it is very difficult to design the wording of such questions without any ambiguity. For instance, one question asks the contestants to imagine that some letters are turned 45 degrees, but it does not say on what axis. And it uses the terms "left" and "right", but a clockwise orientation might be more accurate. This might not matter as much if contestants had a minute to consider their answers, but they only get about 25 seconds, which doesn't allow for much trial and error or testing of hypotheses.

The banter with the contestants is hit or miss. Sometimes it is interesting, but mostly it is boring, especially when Oswalt asks a contestant why they missed a question and they are embarrassed, so they give senseless excuses for their answers.

Update 7/16/2024: By episode 7, the banter has improved, with Patton showing his humor. The ambiguity has reduced somewhat. I am bumping my rating up by one.

I like Patton Oswalt but he can't make a 100 fake smiling laughing people interesting. There is a ridiculous amount of filler asking the contestants "get to know you" questions. They are randos - I don't care to know them. Every question just drags out to the point where I just fast forward in between each question. Patton isn't funny enough to carry this if this is the format they are sticking with.

Password, another recent gameshow in comparison is filled with laughs and good times. This is just people smiling, fake laughs (password too) and bad conversation.

The questions and concept of show seem fine, it's just not entertaining.

I enjoyed this show from its inception, but I prefer the new host. No hate for Patton, I just enjoy the new environment more. A bit more edge and Joel says what we are all thinking at home watching, The interactions with the contestants are fun and the hosts self deprecating nature is very funny. Some of the questions this season seem a bit too easy, but in general it is still an interesting watch.

As someone who is so used to the UK version, I have to say, this version just feels like a bootleg. Like, a lot of the questions on this version aren't anywhere near as interesting. Yes, just like the UK version, this one does have filler too, with conversations with the contestants in between the questions and what not, but at least there was entertaining banter in the UK version, something this version is lacking. The contestants here just feels like NPCs by comparison, if you ask me! Also, admittedly I've never heard of Patton Oswalt before, but he's just not a good host for a show like this, just... no. Surely they could have found someone better?

If this whole show, so far, is anything to go by, I don't expect it to be anywhere near as successful.

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!