Dopers on Jeopardy! THE List

Cafe Society
21

(To preface this story, I’ll cut to the chase: I was NOT a contestant on Jeopardy!.)

They had tryouts here in Memphis about a year and a half ago. I and a few thousand other folks showed up downtown one morning to try out. You were given a sheet with 10 questions on it and a Jeopardy! pen. You sat down at a very crowded table and answered as best you could, and then just sort of made eye contact with someone working there, who would come over and grade your exam right there. Some people were given a signed sheet of paper and asked to come back the next day, and some were thanked, sent on their way, and told they could keep the pen.

Searching back through my e-mails from the time, here are the seven questions I was able to remember (answers at bottom in a spoiler box):

  1. Of what country is Santiago the capital?
  2. What writer created the detective Sam Spade?
  3. On what peninsula are Romania and Bulgaria?
  4. What salad is made with grapes, apples, walnuts, and mayonnaise?
  5. What Francis Ford Coppola film was based in part on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”?
  6. What 19th-century president had the middle name “Birchard”?
  7. The star Betelgeuse is the second-brightest in what “hunter” constellation?

I got nine right (missed #6 above because I didn’t think of the middle initial “B”) and was asked to come back the next day. Interestingly, a male friend of mine got eight questions right and was NOT asked back, while a female friend of mine also got eight right and WAS asked back. I suppose one must bear in mind that they’re casting a TV show, not looking for the most perfect group of quizzers.

Anyhoo, when I came back the following day, there were maybe 120 people who had passed the first day. We were given answer sheets with 50 blanks, and a recording of Johnny Gilbert reading 50 fairly difficult questions in rapid succession was played for us; there was one question every eight seconds as I recall, and we wrote down the answers as best we could.

The answer sheets were taken out of the room, and while they were graded we all just sort of sat around for a while. They came back in fairly quickly and read the names of those of us who had gotten above some threshhold–for some reason I’m thinking it was 37 out of 50. I was in the group who got to stay.

Those of us who’d passed stuck around, and the others left. We did the mock-Jeopardy! thing with buzzers and so on, and our pictures were taken and we gave our names and contact info, etc. I bragged to my friends for a couple days, then forgot all about it.

About six months later, Jeopardy! called; it was October 10, 2003, and they wanted me to fly out and be on the show on November 10, one month later. Unfortunately, I had to be on a business trip that week and couldn’t do it. The guy expressed his regret and said they’d probably call me back, but they never did.

Damn, I’m bitter about that stupid business trip.

Answers to the questions above:

1. Chile
2. Dashiell Hammett
3. The Crimean
4. Waldorf Salad
5. “Apocalypse Now”
6. Rutherford B. Hayes
7. Orion

22

I tried out for Jeopardy! last week (didn’t make it :frowning: ) They only took four out of the almost seventy people who applied, and they said that was a high number.

The questions are more show-like than commasense’s experience; for example: “The name for this star closet to the sun contains the first letter of the Greek alphabet.”

And that joke about missing it by one is still around.

23

Tracy Lord: I need your details for the list. When did you play, and how did you do? Thanks.

24

I taped in December 2003, and the shows aired in February 2004.

I technically lost both the games I played, alas. Because it was a tournament set-up, I moved on to the next round as one of the “wild cards” (having been the 3rd highest scorer out of the 15 contestants). I lost rather more spectacularly in the second game. Total winnings were 14,999.

Does that help? :slight_smile:

25

Thanks. By winnings you mean your final score, right? How much did they actually pay out? And what was your best finishing position? Second? Third? (Just trying to fill out the table.)

And congratulations!

26

Well, in the tournament set-up, they don’t total all of the scores together. In my first game, I finished with 14,999, and in my second I finished with 0. The payout was $5,000, which was because I’d made it to the second round. Everyone who made it to the second round was paid the same amount, except for the finalists, who were paid more.

My best finishing position was 2nd place, in the first game; overall, I finished 5th out of 15.

grin And thank you!

27

I apologize in advance for a nitpick that has nothing to do with the subject of this thread, but the answer in the spoiler box for question number 3 is incorrect.

28

The questions about mechanics have been pretty well answered. I spent my winning on taxes (sigh), paying bills, throwing some money in IRAs, and getting the roof recoated and the brick repointed on my house. The big splurge was $5K on landscaping my side yard, a long narrow space – we put in a new fence and steps at the front, a long flagstone walkway, and new steps to the back, and planted a couple of smallish trees/biggish bushes (crape myrtle, witch hazel, oak-leaf hygrangea, hibiscus, buddleia). Most of the other planting I’ve done myself.

29

Yes, if I understand correctly,

The answer should be the Balkan Peninsula. The Crimean Peninsula is part of Ukraine..

30

I agree that this is the way to do it. We switched homes with a friend of ours in LA, so it was low stress. They seem to have an assortment of close by people and far away people in each taping - the far people get on first, so that if they don’t use anyone, the close people aren’t out as much. (Bay Area counts as close.)

Contestants get to sit in the audience during tapings before we go on, in a special section (to the left), and then in the regular audience after. I split. The one time you mix with people is when you go to the Sony Commissary for lunch, but an AD is there to make sure you don’t get hints from the cafeteria ladies. :slight_smile:

I think they screen you for TV suitability after the quiz - one guy complained that he passed several times, but never got on. How long did it take people to get on. I aced the quiz (I doubt if I got more than three wrong) and I got on the second week of taping for the season. I wonder if there is a correlation.

Oh - and did your show get repeated? Mine did, but it turned out fairly dramatic.

31

I didn’t win money; back when I was on, 2nd and 3rd place contestants won prizes. In my game, Amy Fine (still all-time third-highest female money winner, I believe – she kicked ass) was slightly behind and it was her fifth day, but David, the guy who was actually leading, had the presence of mind to deliberately bet enough to only tie Amy for the win; therefore, she could retire as a five-day champion with the $$, he could return as champion with the $$, and I got the trip to Ireland instead of a silver service.

And I went to Ireland a few months later and had an absolutely wonderful time.

While waiting to tape, the contestants for that day sat in the audience as a group and tried really hard not to think about going up against Amy. I can only imagine what people going up against Ken now must be feeling like.

Between tapings, we’d go outside (this was on the old lot in Hollywood, before they moved to the Sony lot in Culver City) or back to the contestant room. In fact, at one point we were outside and Charles Barkley was filming a commercial not 50 feet from us, but nobody was allowed to even get his autograph – unless we wanted to immediately not be contestants any more, of course.

My memories of the actual show? Unbelievably, incredibly fun. Very highly focused fun. About the fastest half-hour of my life. I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I could!

32

Wow, all these stories make me look forward to my upcoming experience in the Dutch version of Jeopardy, sometime this year.
It’s a show called Per Seconde Wijzer (every second wiser) and you have to answer trivia questions against the clock, not against other contestants.

I auditioned for it this year and got in. The test was to answer about 200 questions and I got about 120 right, which seemed good enough. Of the 60 people in the room, about 15 made it through. The second part of the audition was a talk with the talkshow host to see if you won’t freeze up and go “uh” when he makes small talk with you. Apparently I passed that test, but it probably was a big help that I’m a woman, because so few women apply for these shows.

I haven’t been up yet, (they told me I might be up sometime this year) but the experience so far was fun, already. Many of the contestants have these quiz-shows as a hobby, so they could tell me all these backstagestories. One particularly nice guy told these cool stories about how he had been on the Dutch version of “survivor” (two teams competing on a deserted island).

I don’t expect to make much money out if it, though. If I’d win two rounds, I would have won maybe 1500 euro’s (so about 1500 dollars). The chance I’ll end up with a horrible statuette is much, much bigger. :smiley:

I’ll keep you guys updated when my Big Day comes.

33

Interesting. Back in 1991 at the old studio, a craft service area was set up for the contestants and crew in a garage adjacent to the set. IIRC, Alex did not eat there.

BTW, I’d like the following details to fill out the table:

annieclaus: How much did you win altogether?
Captain Lance: How much did you win and in what place did you end on your third show?
Colibri: All your details, please.
richardb: Same.
The Man: In what place did you end on your second show?
Twickster: In what place did you end on your fourth show?

(Anal retentive? Me? Why do you say that?)

34

Wow. You know, I think this is literally the first time in the ten years since I was a contestant that I remembered the craft service area. And the food was pretty good, plentiful if uninspired. I had a chicken breast, as I recall.

But definitely no Alex. We were specifically told, as I recall, that he wasn’t allowed to talk to contestants until after we were actually on stage for the official taping.

35

[QUOTE=commasense]
Twickster: In what place did you end on your fourth show?

[QUOTE]

Second.

36

Colibri- By any chance, would you have video or audio tape of your apperance(s)?

37

Are you given the subjects of the questions ahead of time so you can study up for them? For exampel, questions will be based on Cars, Laxatives, and Medieval Torture devices?

38

No, not at all – thus the challenge of the game, there’s no way in hell you can study for it in advance. The one thing I did both before the try-out and then (my short-term memory being what it is) again before competing, was memorize state capitals, which often seem to come up in one form or another. I don’t recall them doing me any good on the show, but this is a long freakin’ time ago.

Beyond that – what on earth can you memorize with any kind of guarantee that the information will come up? Which list do you choose to learn: Best Picture Oscars, Popes, or English monarchs?

39

I reviewed US, Canadian, and Australian state and provincial capitals, world capitals, and at a very superficial level opera, mythology, the Oscars, and U.S. presidents.

For me, the best part about the cramming was that it kept me doing something instead of sitting around obsessing. Which was a far greater help than any facts I picked up. Although I ended up, as luck would have it, with a mythology category and was able to get two answers as a result of my cramming. So clearly, you never know!

40

The closest Jeopardy! comes to category tipping is on the celebrity shows, when it is obvious that certain categories were inserted to cater to the celebrities’ strengths. Doesn’t always work, though! Reggie White of the Green Pay Backers is a lay minister, but he did terribly in a Bible category.