There’s another 24 hour gameshow marathon happening today, this time in Las Vegas whilst the Trivia Championships of North America are in town. This one is promising international quiz celebrities as well as a load of geeks.

It starts Noon PDT, which is 8pm UK time, details of the line-up are here, the Twitch stream is here, you can donate to Extra Life here.

Things happening in the next fortnight:

• Alphabetical with Jeff Stelling takes over the The Chase slot from Monday promising 200+ questions an episode. It’s based on Pasapalabra (itself quite an extreme European reversioning of The Alphabet Game) which has a legendarily difficult endgame with a jackpot that rollsover when it isn’t won which has gone into seven figures several times. It will be interesting to see if they’ve modified it to make it a bit easier for this test run, otherwise don’t expect a winner.
• The Big Fat Quiz of Everything – It seems a bit odd starting a three episode run of this during the second week of the Olympics but there we are. 9-10:30pm on C4.
• Spotless – a “one-off Summer special” where contestants must do challenges whilst avoiding getting covered in paint, as measured by the ICONIC Spotless Scanner (it says on the embargoed press release you’re not allowed to look at until the 16th August despite being freely findable on the ITV Press site) for big cash prizes. That’s on Saturday 20th at 8pm against the last proper day of the Olympics. It’s also by Possessed.
• Murder in Successville – Our favourite “look, it is sort of technically a gameshow even if it isn’t really in the spirit of one” leaps from online only BBC3 to Sunday nights on BBC 2 from August 21st at 10:30. We now prefer Chief Gordon Ramsey to the actual Gordon Ramsey.

Lots of things apparently starting on the 22nd August (MEGA MONDAY):

• Think Tank – New series of reasonably agreeable if unexciting quiz, although it’s now going out at 3:25pm which probably counts as a promotion of sorts. BBC1.
• Debatable – Patrick Kielty and three celebrity guests try to persuade a plucky contestant hoping to walk away with thousands of pounds that they know best. 6pm, BBC2.
• Make Me An Egghead – The artist formerly known as Are You An Egghead? returns after Debatable, it’s a quiz tournament for people who want to join the Eggheads. 6:30pm, BBC2.
• 500 Questions – Yes! Finally the UK version of throw things at a wall and hope it sticks format starts its four episode run at 9pm on ITV with none other than popular ITV personality Giles Coren in charge. To be fair, it’s not set the US alight but it sounds like it’s done pretty well in Germany, and by the sounds of it it’ll be similar to the German version, so.

I’m actually putting this up here as a reminder for me to watch it after it was suggested to me last week, it looks like a Japanese brainpower quiz played by universities – this episode seems to be Oxford vs Tokyo and looks quite interesting and entertaining.

Youtube can translate auto-detected subtitles on the fly which may well be a feature worth turning on.

Here’s a suggestion that the format of the air rifle competition could be adapted into a gameshow.

I’ve just remarked that fencing is the The 21st Question of the sporting world i.e. because it’s complicated.

What have YOU noticed?

It’s The Olympics this week which will pretty much take up most of television over the next fortnight (the football starts tonight even though the opening ceremony isn’t until Friday) and I thought “wouldn’t it be great if I could illustrate this, right, with a clip of Rio from Gladiators playing Hang Tough hence rings like an allusion to the Olympic Rings?”

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a clip so here’s a video Keith Strachan uploaded from Talking Telephone Numbers (telephone rings, you see) with Emma Forbes and… Danny Baker?