St. John's woman competing to be 'Canada's Smartest Person'

An engineering student from St. John's will compete on television Sunday night for the title of Canada's Smartest Person.

Katy Warren, 21, is a contestant on the CBC program of the same name.

"The show is based on the idea that right now we define a lot of our intelligence by can you get a 100 on a test, or are you good at trivia," said Warren.

"But this is a new theory of multiple intelligence. It's based on the idea that a really smart person is a well rounded person."

The show pits four contestants against each other in a series of challenges testing different aspects of intelligence, including linguistic, musical, social, physical, logical and visual smarts.

Improv experience a big help

Warren is an engineering student at MUN, as well as a roller derby enthusiast and avid improvizer. She said her experience in improv really helped her in the show.

"Improv is great because it's all about learning quickly and changing quickly and adapting to what's going on. And also not being nervous," she said, adding that preparing for the show was mostly about feeling confident.

"You can practice doing logic puzzles, or practice doing word puzzles, but when it comes down to it a lot of it is kind of based on your ability to adapt."

Warren said she applied for the show for fun, and was surprised to receive a phone call from the producers a few weeks later asking her to do an intelligence test.

"I was just kind of hanging out with my mom and we thought it would be a cool thing to do," she said.

"I filled it out and almost completely forgot about filling it out, because you don't go into these things saying 'I am Canada's smartest person, this is right.'"

Warren will go up against three other contestants from across Canada in an episode Sunday, which airs at 8:30 p.m. NT. The winner will move on to a spot in the finals.