Like most Jeopardy fans, you may have wondered what playing the game is really like. Is it fun or Hooksexup-wracking? Would you do well or forget everything you ever learned? Is Alex Trebek a creepy know-it-all or a funny know-it-all?
Josh Fruhlinger, who writes the hilarious Comics Curmudgeon blog, recently appeared on the show, and he's provided a thorough account of his experience. We recommend that you read the whole thing, but here are some highlights:
Trying Out
Everyone else in my tryout group -- there were about 20, and we were the third group of the day -- was funny, personable, attractive, and, of course, terrifyingly smart. This obviously made me nervous, but it was still a fun event.
Jeopardy’s team of contestant wranglers, led by Maggie and Robert, are really great -- funny and nice and warm. And why wouldn’t they be? They have a great job. They put us through our paces, playing a fake game, doing a fake interview-with-Alex segment (“Tell us what you’d do with the money… not anything boring!”), and generally assessing our TV-worthiness. We also had to take another written trivia test (the logic being that you could have had all of your smart friends in the room with you when you took the online version), which felt pretty much the same about as I did the online test. Then they staple your paperwork to Polaroid of you and bid you good luck. I was in the pool for the next 18 months, and if I hadn’t heard from them in a year, I could sign up to take the online test again. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
I headed back to the Baltimore not sure how to feel -- I thought I had done well, but I didn’t feel like I was an incredible standout. I knew that they had hundreds of other potentials from around the country. I knew that one of the other people at my D.C. tryout was there for his second go-round. I hoped I’d get on, but at some level I didn’t think it would happen, and as the months went on, I resigned myself to signing up against next year.
Then, in March, I got The Call.
Buzzing In
You know how sometimes you’re watching the show at home, and one of the contestants just never seems to ring in, and you think, “Gee, they’re not so smart, how’d they get on this show?” will pretty much guarantee you that they’re having problems with the buzzer.
Buzzing in is not just a matter of being fast (which is just as well, as I wouldn’t have done well with that either). The clues are very easy to read from where you stand behind the podium, so you’re probably going to finish reading in your head it before Alex’s mellifluous voice gets even halfway through it. But you can’t just buzz in and interrupt him; that would be rude! And if you tried, nothing would happen. There’s a real live person sitting at the judge’s table, and he or she throws a switch that activates your buzzer once Alex is done talking. This also turns on a set of lights on either side of the board, which you can’t see at home; that’s your cue to buzz in, though some people on the Internet advise just listening for the last word in the clue instead. If you buzz in too early, you’re blocked out for a half-second or so, which is invariable enough time for someone to beat you to it. You’re supposed to pump the buzzer repeatedly rather than just pressing and holding it.
The whole thing just made me anxious.
Playing the Game
The game itself is still something of a blur to me -- when I watched it later, I was surprised at how little of it I actually remembered. But what I definitely remember was how hard it was for me to buzz in. It took what was probably only three or four minutes, but what felt like me to be an eternity, to get my first chance to answer a question, and that threw me. Once I got started, though, I did OK. I answered several high-value clues in the first round and ended up in second place at the end of it -- closer to Joanne, our third opponent, than to [returning champion] Mark, but still in second.
The second round was more of the same: I did better than Joanne, but not as well as Mark, and Mark slowly pulled away from me, helped by the fact that he found (and got right) all three Daily Doubles. At the end of the Double Jeopardy round, I gave my first wrong answer, in the “State Fish” category: I said “swordfish” when I should have said “sailfish.” Yes, I do know the difference, and I swear the thing I was visualizing in my head was a sailfish, but there it was. This had me frantically checking my score (which you can see, by the way, above and to the left of the game board). I was worried that by losing that $2,000, my score had dipped to below half of Mark’s -- which would have meant that I would be unable to catch him unless he bet very stupidly in Final Jeopardy, something he had shown no inclination to do to that point. Fortunately, the round ended with me at $12,800 and him at $25,200. If I got the Final Jeopardy clue right and he got it wrong, I would still win.
Final Jeopardy
When the clue was finally revealed, this was it:
Born in Kiev & later a U.S. citizen, this leader became Prime Minister in 1969 of a country founded in the 20th century.
This is in many ways a typical Jeopardy clue, in that it’s packed with information -- there are at least four different data points in it from which to construct your guess. And I drew a blank. I saw “Kiev” and “country founded in the 20th century” and my mind immediately went to the ex-USSR. Then I saw “1969″ and knew that that couldn’t be right, but my mind stubbornly refused to leave Eastern Europe. What Eastern European countries were founded in the 20th century and existed in 1969? Poland, but I couldn’t think of any Polish prime ministers; Yugoslavia would have also fit the bill, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. What about Czechoslovakia? 1969 … Prague Spring… maybe Alexander Dubcek, the reformist Communist leader who was ousted by the Soviet invasion and replaced by people more loyal to Moscow? As that famous music, which I was hearing for the seventh time in two days, was hitting its last note, I scrawled his name out as fast as I could.
I should say that, even as I went through this chain of circumstantial logic, I knew -- knew with absolute certainty -- that I was wrong. And in fact later research revealed that Alexander Dubcek met virtually none of the requirements of the clue. He had never been a U.S. citizen (though he was conceived in the United States); he wasn’t born in Kiev; he wasn’t Prime Minister (his title wa “First Secretary of the Communist Party”); and he came to power in 1968, not 1969. But at least wrote down something.
I ended up in third place. Joanne hadn’t gotten the answer either, but had bet small (smart, in her position). Mark, as he had been doing all week, got it right: the answer was Golda Meir.
Photo: yellojkt via JoshReads.com
Previously:
Sarah Silverman, Norm MacDonald Sign Up for New Match Game