Dare to be Alex

Believe it or not, the comically misnamed Game Show Newsnet does occasionally cover game shows. Sure, the game show items are buried under a bunch of stuff about reality TV, cooking shows, talent contests, improv comedy, sports, and most anything else on television. But once in a while the site does live up to its comical misname.

An example is their "Games Gone By" section. This page covers game shows from the distant past...Buzzr territory, you might say. In fact, this week's entry highlights a show that Buzzr currently carries on weekends, Double Dare (see screenshot). Game Show Newsnet calls it a "forgotten game show," so they must not get Buzzr on their cable systems.

No, we're not talking about the well-known slimefest from Nick. That's long been a sort of confusion, intentional or otherwise. This Double Dare is the short-lived CBS quizzer from the '70s. Alex Trebek hosted the quiet, cerebral game where the clues to the answer in each round got more and more revealing as the round went on.

As in a certain rigged show, Double Dare featured isolation booths, though Charles Van Doren never put in an appearance. GSNN opines that the format might have been a little too "brainiac" for its own good. That's certainly possible, and another drawback was that the rules got complicated with all the daring and double daring. But the show was a passable quizzer, and it adequately fills some throwaway hours on Buzzr.

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