Yes, the “memorize lots of trivia” thing is one of the keys. As I’ve said before, Jeopardy! rewards superficial knowledge in a wide range of subjects much more than it rewards thorough knowledge of one or two subjects.
When I auditioned for the show around 15 years ago, the staff gave us souvenir click-top ballpoint pens, slightly wider than the standard click-top and with a flatter top. They said they were around the same size as the buzzers. I don’t remember whether it was during the audition or somewhere else that I heard that buzzer timing was a big part of success on the show.
I think I read years ago that younger contestants have faster reflexes which gives them an advantage with the buzzer. Has anyone heard that? Wasn’t that one reason they had the Seniors tournament years ago? I have to say that I don’t remember seeing older (50+) contestants lately.
The categories that trip me up are pop culture-related, since I rarely watch TV or current films, and there seem to be more of those questions these days–a couple of weeks there was a category about Marvel superheroes and I knew just one of them.
Also brush up on Greek and Roman mythology. A little but on Norse mythology too.
A hint with the buzzer; hold your hand as motionless as possible. It’s best to hold your buzzer hand n the other hand or something like that. Holding it free will allow you to engage in extraneous movement, like unnecessary should movement of pumping motions, before pressing it, which can slow you down ever so minutely.
So in terms of very high frequency topics (obviously too many to include, so a few of the most maximal:)
- Main characters and plots of Shakespeare
- First ladies and (vice) presidents and when
- Authors and first lines of classic books
- Plots and characters in major operas
- Mountains, Rivers, Lakes: US, Europe, Africa
- Plots, persons of the most popular movies
- American states, capitals, landmarks, NY, LA
- World countries, capitals
- “World Book” type trivia
One has to give credit to Holzhauer for his advice on reading basic (?written for children) books. Not sure if this is good advice or not though.
I didn’t try to memorize anything when I took the test to get on. And I reviewed stuff like state flowers, none of which did me any good.
What did get me on is that my memory could pull up things I read and have seen very quickly, and that I spend decades reading widely. It’s nothing I’ve worked on, it’s just a natural talent.
It’s much more useful to read reviews of books and movies than to read the books and watch the movies.
Add second lines too, for good measure. I remember one FJ where the clue was the second line of A Tale of Two Cities.
I don’t think contestants were expected to have memorized the second line, but to be able to recognize it because of its parallel with the famous first line. Here’s the whole thing (BTW, it’s all one sentence):
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
IOW, don’t bother memorizing second sentences of famous books.
I didn’t do any cramming before my appearance (way back in 1991-- I won one game), but just relied on a lifetime of reading and absorbing random knowledge. Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t think that trying to memorize a bunch of facts just before the taping would work for me. Either I’d pick the wrong stuff, or I’d remember it wrong.
But since the OP is asking, I’ll list these items, mostly all mentioned before:
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U.S. presidents, including number and order. I.e., if you remember that Lincoln was #16, and they ask about #15, you’ll know they want Buchanan.
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U. S. state capitals
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World capitals
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General geography, which countries are close to one another, etc.