TORONTO, Ontario – SeeTV has just released details of its brand new game show that is scheduled for a fall 2023 release. From the producers of smash game shows Are You Smarter Than a Petroleum Geologist and Macro Function Mayhem, Name That Depositional Environment (NTDE) is a quiz type game show that has an answer-and-question format in which contestants are presented with clues in the form of answers and must phrase their responses in the form of a question. Think of the intersection of the wildly popular Jeopardy game show with the ever scintillating subject of petroleum geology, all coupled with the old school Liars’ Club game show.
In NTDE, 3 contestants are pitted against each other and the answer board, and they take turns selecting a geological region column and a tile beneath it labelled by its prize value. The contestants are then presented with the name of a depositional environment and all three participants must then describe the environment in detail. A panel of judges then decide which one is correct and award the prize before moving onto the next tile. Contestants are given 30 seconds to formulate their answers. After 3 rounds, the contestant with the highest score moves on to a speed round.
When asked if only geologists are allowed to be contestants, the new show’s executive producer, Lee Nover, told 2P News,
Lee Nover, executive producer
“The beauty of this contest is that you don’t have to be a geologist to play this game because the way they cook up and describe depositional environments is complete random bullshit to begin with – it just has to sound impressive and confusing, its alphabet soup, but much worser.” – Lee Nover, NTDE executive producer
A pilot episode for the Name that Depositional Environment concept filmed last month was released to a number of CRTC critics and a test audience throughout the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin – it was met with mixed reviews, but producers are still forging ahead with the show’s fall release.
The contestants on the pilot included a seasoned professional geologist, Larry, with over 41-years of exploration industry experience; Susan, an APEGSA Member-in-Training who graduated 6 months ago, and diversity-friendly Zephyr, a Gen-Z, non-binary person in the 9th grade. For the benefit of its readers, 2P News is providing a transcript for part of the pilot episode below.
Host: “Susan, it is your turn.”
Susan: “Alex, I’ll take fluvial environments for $500.”
Host: “The answer is Viking Glauconitic sandstones”
***Susan buzzes in first, while Larry scratches his head and Zephyr was busy Snapping to her friends***
Susan: “What is characterized by an abundance of linguoid bar and dune deposits (planar and trough crossbedding) with no well-developed cyclicity, probably owing to a lack of topographic differentiation in the river (no evidence of deep, primary channels, abandoned areas or overbank areas), all interleaved with horizontally laminated sand plus subordinate amounts of sand showing planar crossbedding and ripple marks, formed during flash floods and may be most typical of ephemeral streams?”
Larry: “What consists mainly of longitudinal bar gravels with sand lenses formed by infill of channels and scour hollows during low water?”
Zephyr: “What is enecontemporaneousization of syndepositionaized of stratigraphic locationalized horizontal primary courses overlain on fining-upward sequences dominated by sand or gravel deposits on the snap group channels with valley-fill filters up to 60m thick?”
Host: “Thank you, Zephyr, that sounded like it came straight outta ChatGPT. Now over to the judges to decide who wins this $500.”
Seeing as the pilot will serve as the season premier episode, we will leave it at that and not spoil it for you. But please tune into SeeTV on October 17th and don’t miss the first episode!
