M. Giant's
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Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks


Friday, June 10, 2011  

Jeopardized

I wouldn't have even known about the online Jeopardy! test back in early February if it hadn't been for all the people posting about it on Twitter. In fact I almost forgot to take it. I'd seen the warnings reminding people to sign in 15-20 minutes before it started, so when a couple of well-timed Tweets reminded me that it was only a couple of minutes away, I figured I'd better snap to it, and even then I wouldn't be surprised if I'd already blown it.

The online test, in case you've never taken one, was pretty fun. You have to type in a short answer, and you have less than a minute to do it in, so Google's no help, which is as it should be. They don't give you the correct answer after you guess, or tell you which ones you got right or wrong, or even your final score, so after I was done I just forgot about it.

Or tried to, at least. I knew I got at least two or three wrong for sure, and one of them in particular was going to haunt me for at least a little while. But only because the correct answer was a character in a book I was reading at the time. A quinary character, but still. Embarrassing.

So I was pretty surprised when I got the e-mail telling me I'd "passed" and was being invited to a "follow-up appointment." I was also surprised to see that it was in Kansas City. Here I was thinking that my trips down to Missouri were over for the foreseeable future, and now it looks like I'm going back in just a couple of days. But for different reasons, obviously.

I know it's pretty early in the process to be exhaustively chronicling some whole "My Jeopardy! Journey!" thing, but that's kind of the reason I'm doing it now. I figure there's a pretty strong chance this is as far as I'll get, so I'd better start writing about it now before the whole story ends up being "I tried to get on Jeopardy! once."

There's some stuff I have to do to prepare, obviously. I have to take that day off work. I have to MapQuest the place where the appointment is going to be. They sent this letter that I have to print out and complete, with five interesting facts about myself, like I'm going to be able to come up with that many. I have to figure out where I'm spending the night before the appointment in Kansas City.

Also, I have to figure out when and what time Jeopardy! is actually on. It is still on, right? It's just that I've never actually seen a whole episode, so that's something I kind of need to look into. And did you know the title's always spelled with an exclamation point? That's something I just learned.

Oh, excuse me, "What is something I just learned?" Seriously?

posted by M. Giant 12:41 PM 2 comments

2 Comments:

Good luck!

I, too, got invited too the follow-up and that’s where my odyssey ended.

But it was fun and still slightly boast-worthy.

By Blogger Andy Jukes, at June 10, 2011 at 1:36 PM  

I was on Jeopardy! once, back in the early 00s (season 19, aka the season before they switched away from the max 5-day winner/Ken Jennings-friendly format).

I took the in-person exam in NYC (they had 87 people taking the test in my group, and 6 of us passed) and then we had to do an "audition" kind of mock round (with buzzers and all!). Then there was a brief personality type interview, they took a polaroid of me, stuck it to my file folder, had me fill out some paperwork and I went "into the active contestant file" for that season.

I was a bit gobsmacked to actually get called when I did in fact get called, both because they stressed that they always have at least twice as many contestants in the active pool as are needed in any given season and because that polaroid they took of me was a horrible picture - as in "We can't show THAT on television" bad. (It was taken by a woman about a foot shorter than me, who stood about six inches away and shot directly up my nostrils. It was really, really bad - I'm not being vain here.)

Anyhow, I didn't have to fill out the 5 interesting facts sheet until after I'd been called to be on the show, so it sounds like either you are farther along in the process or they've just switched it up. Hoping it means you're farther along and make it on the show!

(If you want any other info/tips/whatever, let me know - Trash has my email/phone number. But then, you probably know someone with more recent Jeopardy experience than 02/03...)

Good luck! :-)

By Blogger Heather, at June 11, 2011 at 2:07 PM  

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