Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? (American game show)

Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?
Logo for the 2019 revival
GenreGame show
Created by
Written bySeth Harrington
Evie Peck
Ann Slicher
Peter Scott
Directed byDon Weiner
Presented by
Narrated by
Theme music composer
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons
  • 4 (Fox)
  • 2 (Syndication)
  • 1 (Nickelodeon)
No. of episodes
  • 103 (Fox)
  • 310 (Syndication)
  • 20 (Nickelodeon)
Production
Executive producers
  • Mark Burnett
  • Barry Poznick
  • Roy Bank (2007–10)
  • John Stevens (2007–11)
  • Jeff Foxworthy (2015)
  • John Cena (2019)
  • Steve Hughes (2019)
  • Sean Kelly (2019)
ProducerJeff Foxworthy
Production locations
Running time
  • 44 mins (Fox)
  • 22–26 mins (Syndication)
  • 22–25 mins (Nickelodeon)
Production companies
Original release
NetworkFox
ReleaseFebruary 27, 2007 (2007-02-27) 
September 18, 2009 (2009-09-18)
ReleaseMay 26 (2015-05-26) 
September 8, 2015 (2015-09-08)
NetworkSyndication
ReleaseSeptember 21, 2009 (2009-09-21) 
March 24, 2011 (2011-03-24)
NetworkNickelodeon
ReleaseJune 10 (2019-06-10) 
November 3, 2019 (2019-11-03)

Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? is an American quiz game show. It originally aired on Fox where it was hosted by Jeff Foxworthy. It is produced by Mark Burnett. The show premiered as a three-day special which began on February 27, 2007, with the first two shows each a half-hour in length. Regular one-hour episodes began airing Thursdays from March 1 through May 10, and the first season continued with new episodes beginning May 31. Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? was picked up for the 2007–08 season, which began on September 6, 2007, and aired in the same timeslot. Following the end of the original run of the primetime version on September 18, 2009, a first-run syndicated version of the show ran from September 2009 to May 2011, with Foxworthy returning as host. On May 26, 2015, the program returned to Fox for a new, 4th season, with Foxworthy, again, returning as host. On February 14, 2019, it was announced that the program would be revived on Nickelodeon with new host John Cena, airing from June 10 to November 3, 2019. The show was revived on Amazon Prime Video with new host Travis Kelce in October 2024.

5th Grader games are played by a single contestant, who attempts to answer ten questions (plus a final bonus question). Content is taken from elementary school textbooks, two from each grade level from first to fifth. Each correct answer increases the amount of money the player banks; a maximum cash prize of $1 million can be won on the Fox version, $250,000 in the syndicated version, and $100,000 on the Nickelodeon version. Along the way, contestants can be assisted by a "classmate", one of five school-age cast members, in answering the questions. Notably, upon getting an answer incorrect, deciding to prematurely end the game, or not winning the top prize in later versions, contestants must state that they are "not smarter than a 5th grader".

Two people have won the $1 million prize: Kathy Cox, superintendent of public schools for the U.S. state of Georgia; and George Smoot, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Two people have won the $250,000 prize in the syndicated version: Geoff Wolinetz and Elizabeth Miller.

One person has won the $100,000 prize on the Nickelodeon revival: Alfred Guy, a college dean at Yale University.

The show also airs internationally, and the format has been picked up for local versions in a number of other countries.