Canada's Smartest Person is a Canadian reality television competition series. Contestants compete in a series of different challenges based on American psychologist Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences to earn the title of "Canada's Smartest Person." The first three seasons of the series were hosted by television personality Jessi Cruickshank, and the fourth by actor Paul Sun-Hyung Lee. Actor Jeff Douglas co-hosted the first season in 2014 with Cruickshank.
The show was produced by Media Headquarters and broadcast nationally on CBC Television. The first version of the show aired in 2012 as a 2-hour special. The series was picked up and the first full season aired on CBC as a 9-part series in 2014. It was the number one new Canadian series of the fall season, with almost one in four Canadians tuning in. In 2016, it was the only original Canadian format to be nominated for the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television's Golden Screen Award for highest rated reality series. The second season began airing on October 4, 2015. On March 31, 2016, CBC announced the series would return for a third season as part of their fall/winter schedule. The fourth season, a spin off known as Canada's Smartest Person Junior, began airing on November 14, 2018. Canada's Smartest Person had one of the highest percentages of family and co-viewing ever on CBC.
During the broadcast, viewers participate in all of the challenges from home in real-time using a smartphone app. The play-along app has been an industry-leading success. The first season of the series saw over 175,000 downloads of the app and nearly one million individual intelligence tests taken across the country. As of 2017 there have been over 300,000 downloads of the app, making it one of the most successful peer to peer gaming applications in Canada.
Every week four Canadians compete in front of a studio audience. They are given a set of five challenges designed to test their abilities in one or more of the following intelligence categories: musical, physical, social, logical, visual and linguistic. There was always one challenge that combined two categories together.
In the series finale, eight finalists compete to earn the title of Canada's Smartest Person.
The 2014 series opened with a one-hour documentary that explored the Theory of Multiple Intelligence.
The format is being exploited internationally by multi-media studio Electus. Electus has licensed Canada's Smartest Person to Turkey's TRT and Sera Film for production, and has secured deals in France, Norway, Sweden and Portugal
In the season finale, the winners from each episode competed in a series of competitions for the title of "Canada's Smartest Person".
In the season finale, the winners from each episode competed in a series of competitions for the title of "Canada's Smartest Person". The seven Gauntlet winners from the previous episodes were joined by a wildcard, determined by the Gauntlet loser who had accumulated the most points in their episode.
The fourth season of Canada's Smartest Person (officially entitled Canada's Smartest Person Junior) premiered on November 14, 2018. As the official title implies, the contestants are all preadolescent. Paul Sun-Hyung Lee hosted this season.
Unlike the previous three seasons which followed a knockout format, this season followed a traditional competitive reality television series format.
Each of the first three episodes began with a Speed Round, which consists of six small challenges in a rapid-fire succession. After the challenge, the lowest-scoring contestant was eliminated from the competition automatically and the highest-scoring contestant was deemed safe from elimination. Then, the remaining contestants were paired based on their rankings in the Speed Round (2nd place with 3rd place, 4th place with 5th place, etc.) and competed in a team challenge. After the challenge, all but the bottom two pairings were deemed safe from elimination. Afterwards, the remaining four contestants competed in a head-to-head challenge and the top two performers were deemed safe after the challenge. Finally, the remaining two contestants competed in the Ultimate Elimination round, which consists of various sudden-death challenges that two contestants compete head-to-head in. Once a contestant won three rounds, that contestant was deemed safe and the other was eliminated from the competition.
The fourth episode also began with a Speed Round, but unlike the first three episodes, the highest-scoring contestant was not deemed safe from elimination after the challenge. Then, the remaining contestants competed in a head-to-head challenge instead of a team challenge. After the challenge, only the highest-scoring contestant was deemed safe from elimination. The latter two challenges of the episode proceeded the same way that the latter two challenges of the first three did.
The fifth episode was a Redemption episode in which the first eight eliminated contestants were given a chance to return to the competition and qualify for the finale as a result. Like usual, the episode began with a Speed Round, but, after the challenge, the two lowest-scoring contestants were eliminated from the Redemption episode automatically and the highest-scoring contestant still had to compete in further challenges with the rest. Then, the remaining six contestants competed in a head-to-head challenge that, afterwards, would eliminate the two lowest-scoring contestants from the Redemption episode. Then, the remaining four contestants competed in a head-to-head challenge that, afterwards, would eliminate the lowest-scoring contestant from the Redemption episode and would return the highest-scoring contestant back into the competition. Finally, the remaining two contestants competed in the Ultimate Elimination round. The winner of the face-off returned to the competition and the other was eliminated from the Redemption episode.
The sixth and final episode consisted of five head-to-head challenges in which, after each one, the lowest-scoring contestant would be eliminated from the competition. The last of these challenges was the Super Gauntlet, a Canada's Smartest Person classic, which resulted in Mateus Soto being declared the winner of Canada's Smartest Person Junior.