That’s so true. The category could be “Opera Houses” and the clue something like “designed by Maxwell Juniper in 1875, it sits in this capital city of Canada.” You don’t need to know the architect, anything about opera, and the year is a red herring.
Ordinarily this phenomenon doesn’t bother me, but it can make the fact that you have to decide on a Final Jeopardy wager based on the category name seem unfair. You might see a category like “Fashion History” and think “oh good, I know all about Coco Chanel and when the corset was in heaviest use” and you get a clue that really turns out to be asking more than anything, “what body of water defines the border between France and Germany?”
For the increasing popular wordplay categories, you don’t necessarily need to know anything about anything. They have always had occasional anagrams and crossword puzzle type clues. But not almost every game.
This is an illustration of why I do not try out for Jeopardy!
I know the Presidio. I was there about six months ago. But even from my sofa I could not get it off the tip of my tongue in time.
I would have buzzed in and said, “uh, ummm…sorry.”
mmm
Yeah, that happens sometimes. You can occasionally see it happen to the contestants, when one of them will ring in, then just blank on the answer.
During one of my myriad Jeopardy auditions, I completely blanked on the author of Don Quixote. Now, I know very well it’s Cervantes, but in that moment, I couldn’t pull his name out of my brain. Just one of the challenges of the show.
It is Cervantes, isn’t it? 
Yes; and you even phrased it as a question.
I can’t believe nobody got FJ today. I have never seen the show but if you knew anything about it or had ever seen a promo picture it was obvious that there could only be one answer.
Yeah. To be fair, I thought of three different things and picked the only one that made sense (by location and genre). The answer given by two contestants did not make as much sense, although it did end in 1983.
Yup, and we visited a mission.
I never saw it, and had no idea where it was set, so no way to make the connection.
I could not come up with the FJ, but I knew enough that “MASH” - which was the answer by two contestants - would not be considered a drama.
mmm
ETA: Answer hidden because I’m not clear on the spoiler rules
In a roundabout, a person who watches too much TV, could think MASH is correct, because Tour of Duty, a show actually about Viet Nam, was filmed on Kauai. The other show was filmed in…California. And it looked it.
Aw who am I excusing! There was only one obvious answer. 
How many times DID you audition for Jeopardy!? In person or online? At the actual studio or a remote location?
Details, please - lots of details. Inquiring minds want to know. My hat is off to you.
Ditto here. I had no clue, and actually thought that MASH was a good guess…better than anything I came up with in 30 seconds.
I believe that, post-COVID, most or all of their auditions are done via Zoom now. But I was on in the days before COVID, and things were different.
I was called for in-person auditions three times. The first was in Chicago, then in Detroit, then in Chicago again. They did auditions in a conference room at some big hotel, and you were in there with maybe 30 or 40 people. Everybody did a pen-and-paper 50-question test, then they talked about the game and its various rules and such.
Then you went up to the front of the room three at a time, and played a little mock Jeopardy game for about 5 minutes or so. That’s to give them an idea of how you would handle actually playing the game. Can you speak clearly, can you pick the next category quickly and keep the game moving, that knid of thing. Then they did a little interview with each of us, asking us similar questions to the interview portion of the actual show. Then they sent us all home with a “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You!” admonition. You stay in the contestant pool for 18 months, and they could potentially call you at any time.
As I say, I had to go to in-person auditions three times before I actually got on the show, but I met people who had auditioned more than that. What criteria they actually use to select contestants is a mystery known only to the producers.
To answer another frequently asked question, Alex Trebek was not there. Nor was anyone else the general public has ever heard of. Just the contestant coordinators, who were all very nice people, but not famous.
As for the Final Jeopardy question, I didn’t get Hawaii 5-0 either, although I probably should have. My only guess was The Rockford Files, for no good reason other than the fact that Tom Selleck guest-starred on it a couple of times, as a rival P.I. that Rockford hated (although the character was not Magnum).
I guess whenever I think Magnum I think of him in a Hawaiian shirt. Judging by online comments, I am not the only one who found it easy.
I might be able to offer a bit of advice on that. When you’re doing the mock interview segment, and they ask what you’d spend your winnings on, don’t say “hookers and blow”.
Oh yes, Tom Selleck was brilliant on Rockford. He played Lance White. While Rockford was cynical and broke, Lance was idealistic and optimistic, and no matter what he did everything just fell into his lap.
That role did get him noticed for Magnum P.I..
I suspect this is a generational thing. Maybe now that I say this everyone is going to pile on saying they’re younger than me, but I think it reveals how both the SDMB and the Jeopardy viewership skew boomer. I was a little kid when Magnum, P.I. was on the air. I’ve never seen it, and all I know about it was that it was a detective show starring Tom Selleck. I had no idea when it was set and also never knew when the original Hawaii Five-O (another show I’ve never seen) ended, and it never would have occurred to me to make a connection between the two.
I’m 61 and feel the same way. Although I did watch Hawaii Five-O in the 70s Tough obscure question. Very tough.
I thought that was Terminal Island, that also featured Roger E Mosley (TC). Oh wait - that was the movie, when they both showed up on the first day, looked at each other and said “We will not mention that movie. Ever!”
Oh, I strongly disagree! They have enough (far too much for this olde farte) about pop music after 2000 that I swear they are making up band names out of thin air. And categories with TV shows (programs? Which is the one old people use?) that are only on streaming.