"9 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets From Jeopardy"

Would be of interest to would-be contestants.

(When I was in graduate school, I took the Jeopardy qualification test. It was hard. Far more difficult than the SATs and the AP exams.)

Comments

[Bernie]

I took it too, Craig. The thing about trivia is if you know the answer then it's easy, if you don't then it's practically impossible.

Since I took the test a looong time ago, I can only remember one question (which I didn't know). Category: Food - What is a fluffernutter?

[Joe R.]

Did they give you questions or answers?

As a viewer, I always found that facet of Jeopardy pointless and annoying - that the contestant had put the response in the form of a question. It grew tiresome very quickly.

[Bernie]

I don't remember. But I agree completely. It's a dumb idea which should have been dropped a long time ago.

[Larry]

I went to a tryout around 12 years ago. It was held in the ballroom of the Eden Roc hotel in Miami Beach. If you answered 35 of the 50 questions correctly you got to do mock games. Everyone else went home. In those days there were no interviews. I felt really comfortable in the mock games and some other contestants told me afterward that I did extremely well. Unfortunately, I was never called up to do a show.

Some time afterwards I heard that one's chances of getting on the show after getting on the list was about one in six. I have no idea where that figure came from.