One thing I’ve noticed is that so far this season, Trebek hasn’t declared any of the female contestants to be “a very bright young lady” in his patronizing tone of mild surprise. Hmm.
And they STILL won’t call me.
I auditioned on the set in LA, and though it was a long time ago it was mostly men. Some people there said that they auditioned as soon as they were allowed to but never made it - they were all men.
I found the test trivial, but it has nothing to do with IQ. I think it helps to have read widely and to have the sort of memory with very good connections between concepts. I can dredge up book titles from ads in the Times I read decades ago. I would guess this is only loosely correlated with intelligence.
I took the written test, once, long ago, and there were more specific questions than general knowledge questions. Topics included movie, war, and sports trivia. The only specific question that I remember is: X was the first person to swim the English Channel. Who was the second person to do so?
I’d have done better with more general questions.
I’ve tried the online questions, more recently, and I’m just not fast enough.
It is tougher for a man to get on, because of the balance issue, but the passing score is the same for both men and women, so I would not say men have to be “better” to get on.
I do agree men tend to be more competitive, which on the whole tends to enhance one’s chances of winning the game.
If passing the test guaranteed you an appearance on the show then I’d agree with you. But you have to do more than just pass the test, you have to finish the selection process in the top 3 of your gender at least. So men have a harder time, and do need to be better to get on the show.
Agreed. Passing the test just gives you a chance to be chosen to audition. And the screeners at the audition are looking to cast people who will make for good Jeopardy television, not necessarily trivia masters.
I didn’t get the impression that they were taking the top 3. When I took the test about a dozen people passed it and went to the audition process. They never said top three, but they did screen. One of the guys had a stutter, and told me that he passed the test several times and never got picked.
I suspect that aside from that kind of screening they are also looking for energy - not WoF jumping up and down energy but better than speaker who puts you to sleep energy.
As a rule, to get in front of a camera on a game show, you have to have more than just the skill to play the game. You have to be interesting, compelling, or in some way entertaining. Because it’s not just a game, it’s a game show.
Is Jeopardy unlike other game shows in this regard? Is it pure meritocracy?
This could be a Playboy spread - The Girls of Jeopardy.
I got to be around a lot of professional child actors, and those who have it can “turn on” for the camera, casting director or agent. You can tell who does this and who doesn’t very quickly. I bet the second stage of the Jeopardy audition is to look for this ability, to the level they want it.
Some stats from the J! Archive:
Season 29 (9/12-8/13): 185 non-tournament episodes.
57% of the 555 contestants were men and 43% were women.
66% of the winners were men and 34% were women, which I do not believe is a statistically significant variation from their proportions of the population.
If I remove matches that were single gender (14 all male and 4 all female) the numbers are:
167 non-tournament episodes.
54% of the 501 contestants were men and 46% were women.
65% of the winners were men and 35% were women.
Ignore my comment about statistical significance. I think I screwed up the math.
No, they film a practice game in the auditions and are looking for people to make a fun, fast game. They tell you to be loud and quick.
Thus will I never be on it, alas, and will quit trying.
I just meant that only 3 people appear on the show, so in terms of your performance during the selection process the worst you can do and still end up on the show is top 3. The 4th best auditioner doesn’t get on the air.
EDIT: Though I’ll agree that “better” isn’t strictly limited to your mental ability to answer trivia questions, which may have been AppallingGael’s point. But the men do have to be relatively better (at trivia, on camera, in terms of personality, looking, whatever) than the women do simply by virtue of having to beat out more competitors to get on air.
I auditioned in 1989. In my test-taking group there were about 50 people, and only about 10 women. I passed to the second level - 7 people left, I’m the only woman. I passed to the third level - 3 people, I’m the only woman. I was called to do the show about five or six months later, and I came in third against 2 men. Technically I was tied with one of the men, we each were left with the same amount of money, but I had less money going in so I got the third-place consolation prizes. I still have the wet-dry shop vac that I won.
A few months after that, I was called into Merv Griffin’s office (he owned the show back then) to be a tester for a new game he was developing based on Monopoly. He had picked the Jeopardy contestants he liked best to be testers. We got something like $20 cash for an hour or two of playing the game.