Shows What You Know!

The answer to the title question posed by Fox's new hit quiz show is: No, you're probably not smarter than a fifth-grader -- at least when it comes to traditional textbook topics. And if that revelation leaves your ego smarting, Jeff Foxworthy feels your pain.

"Like the contestants, I've pretty much deleted those files from memory," said the blue-collar comedian turned red-hot host, whose daughters have already passed fifth grade with flying colors. "The questions I do know are the ones I've helped my kids review for in the past year or two."

The show's concept is simple enough for youngsters and adults to grasp, which might explain why the show has averaged more than 15 million viewers since its Feb. 27 debut. A contestant picks questions one-by-one from a given range of subjects and challenge levels (first-grade math, fifth-grade life science and the like). As in "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," each correct answer yields more cash, but it also leaves players with a choice: Take the money and run or risk it all to try to chalk up another correct response and, potentially, $1 million. The show's ambling pace resembles that of a drawn-out school day -- all the better to keep the suspense level ramped up.

Even if the format sounds familiar, "5th Grader" occupies a class all of its own among game shows in its successful harnessing of youthful precocity. Each time the onstage electronic "chalkboard" delivers a question, a fist-pumping fifth-grader at a "desk" adjacent to the contestant jots down his or her own response on a sheet of paper and participates in the back-and-forth banter.

But unlike in an actual classroom, stumped contestants are encouraged to take advantage of three opportunities to "cheat" off their young classmates -- all of whom, incidentally, are paid actors.

"It's pretty funny to watch a 35-year-old guy that's runnin' his own business, with $100,000 on the line, say, 'Can I peek at your paper?'" said Foxworthy, 38.

It's that folksiness that has served Foxworthy well since his days as a student, when he was earning high marks of his own -- and unwittingly honing his future career path.

"When I was in fifth grade," he said, "I was busy tryin' to make the class laugh."

ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A 5th GRADER?

Thursdays

8 p.m., Fox

Could You Outsmart a Fifth-Grader?

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Not unless you ace this battery of sample show questions culled from actual elementary school textbooks. (No cheating!) Check your answers below.