TV HOST JESSI CRUICKSHANK TESTS HER IQ AND YOURS IN CBC’s COMPETITION SHOW “CANADA’S SMARTEST PERSON”

Are you ready to test your brainpower? Host Jessi Cruickshank spills the beans on CBC’s most exciting competition show, Canada’s Smartest Person, and how you can play along.

To say that Jessi Cruickshank’s charm and bubbly wit is infectious would be an understatement. The Canadian TV host became a household name after landing a hosting gig at MTV and, of course, for the insanely popular The Hills After Show.

Recently speaking to Cruickshank from her hotel room in Toronto, she explains that although she now calls L.A. home (she’s the West Coast reporter for eTalk), her love of all things Canadian remains true to her heart, which is why hosting the new CBC competition show, Canada’s Smartest Person, was a dream gig.

“I was doing a lot of speaking engagements across Canada and one night, while I was in a hotel room in Thunder Bay, I came across the CBC special of Canada’s Smartest Person and I was glued to my TV watching it. I had to wake up early the next day but I stayed up rooting for the competitors and I got so invested in it,” Cruickshank recalls. “So when I was approached to host the show, the producers were explaining to me what it was all about and I was like, ‘No, no, no, I know what this is all about. I got this!’”

Co-hosting alongside Jeff Douglas, Canada’s Smartest Person is an hour-long unscripted series set to discover the “smartest” people across the country. The contestants will compete in an array of activities to challenge their wits and intelligence. And, according to Cruickshank, that degree in neuroscience may not necessarily give you a competitive edge.

“It’s throwing away the idea of IQ tests as being a true measure of intelligence and adopting the new, and quite cutting edge, theory of multiple intelligence which says that everyone’s intelligence profile is built on six different categories: visual, physical, logical, social, musical and linguistic,” she explains. “You see these guys winning on Jeopardy and you think, ‘Wow these people study hard and are really smart.’ But just because they can lock themselves in a room with no windows and study the entire encyclopedia, doesn’t mean they are more intelligent than others. The show is testing a range of intelligence that people have.”

It’s these varied competitors’ backgrounds, according to Cruickshank, that really makes the show interesting and entertaining. “Spoiler alert! We have a man who sells cheese for a living on the show who dominated in areas we never expected, and a physicist struggle in areas you wouldn’t expect,” she says.

The competitors, which will begin with a group of 32, will go through some unusual and fun challenges from being a DJ, singing karaoke, dancing to speeches and motivational pep talks to a peewee hockey team.

During the broadcast, viewers can participate in all the challenges from home in real-time using the groundbreaking “Canada’s Smartest Person app” and test their smarts with family members, friends and see how they stack up against the rest of the country.

According to Cruickshank—who also had the chance to test out her smarts—you may be surprised where you excel most. “If you’ve always thought you were bad at math, like I was, you’ll be surprised to see how your logical brain processes to be successful in other scenarios like, for example, a pipe-fitting challenge where you have to solve a plumbing crisis, which was something I was really good at!” And then for the physical challenge I took, I was a gymnast growing up so I thought my pretty scrawny body was pretty agile, I essentially had to be airlifted to the hospital,” she quips. “It was pathetic!”

Canada’s Smartest Person premieres Sunday, Sept. 28 at 8 p.m. ET.

Meet The Competitors:

‑By Toni-Marie Ippolito