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Jeopardy! Tryout Screenings Go Online
KingSkippus writes "According to a CNN article, the television game show Jeopardy! is now offering online contestant screenings in addition to conducting contestant searches in various cities across the country. Potential contestants will still have to pass an interview and an additional test in person to be considered for the pool of 400 contestants each year, but now the next Ken Jennings can apply without leaving the comfort of his or her own chair. The first online screenings begin March 28."
So now I can scream the answers at my computer instead of the TV! Gotta love technology...
Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness...
Finally, a shift away from having to fly to California and waste about $500 on room and board for a chance that you may not get on the show.
That's Therapists
I just hope that the website works cross platform. I'd hate to miss my chance to appear on Jeopardy (not that I have much of one) just because I refuse to run IE and/or Windows
Don't Tread on Me
man was it hard. we assembled in a hotel conference room in midtown manhattan. the staff played a little intro tape of the talking head of trebek wishing us good luck and giving us the intructions, then it was off to questions: 50 fill-in-the-blank questions
;-P
you needed to get 35 right to move onward. stuff onvloving the minutiae of the battle of bull run, and various french names for certain foot movements in ballet. very hard
i would say out of a roomful of 200 people, 5 moved forward
no, i wasn't one of them
i can only wonder at what sort of cheating preventatives they'll employ for online: like a huge pool of questions (so repeating the test won't yeild value), and a 5 second countdown to answer questions... i hope
or we won't be seeing the next ken jennings from online jeopardy applications, we'll be seeing the next script kiddie
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This will last all of 2 weeks before the list of questions and answers is published in its entirety on the Internet and the spike in successful entries causes Jeopardy to shut down the program.
On a side note, I took one of these tests when the Jeopardy bus was touring the US and thought the questions were very age-biased. There were a disproportionate number of questions about events about late 60's / early 70's pop culture. I wonder if they target those in their mid 30's to mid 50's, as this is probably their target viewing audience as well. As a child of the 80's, I could have told them who shot John Lennon or Ronald Reagan, but not who shot Andy Warhol. I also would have preferred they ask about bumbling superheros with suits from outer space and not superheros with the powers of an Egyptian goddess.
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
Alex Trebek: And in last place with negative 120,000 (sighs and pauses) Sean Connery.
Sean Connery: Well, well, well Trebek. Fancy seeing you here. It's been a while.
Alex Trebek: Not long enough.
Sean Connery: That's not what your mother said last night.
Alex Trebek: Okay Here are the categories for double jeopardy. (Board appears)
They are: POTENT POTABLES, COLORS THAT ARE RED, JAPAN US RELATIONS; I have no idea what that category is doing up there.
Sean Connery: I had relations this morning Trebek, hope we didn't wake you. Your mother's a screamer.
Alex Trebek: For your information my mother's in a nursing home in Alberta, Canada.
Sean Connery: Oh she was nursing it alright.
Also the article summary clearly states that you still must pass an interview and another written test.
Good luck making those into a "googling-contest."
This will bring whole new meaning to the term "slashdotted":
Trebek: "You wagered everything you had and your answer is... CowboyNeal? The hell...?"
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
Not to be a stickler - but it amazes me that Ken Jennings is always quoted in stories that relate to Jeopardy - like he's the greatest ever or something. Brad Rutter was actually the winningest Jeopardy contestant before Ken Jennings came along and there were restrictions on how long a contestant could be on the show. Then he proceeded to kick Jennings' a$$ on the Jeopardy Master's tournament and reclaimed the title. So - in fairness - we really ought to say "the next Brad Rutter". I'm just sayin....
I was one of the test subjects for this process. I'd signed up for future auditions on their website, and got an email one day: Go to this website on this day - at this specific time - to take an online test.
They had a page with a Flash application that gave you questions and a place to enter your answer. Didn't have to be in the form of a question, which was fortunate, because you didn't get much time to enter it. There were plenty I barely answered, so I can't imagine typing it into Google first. (Just realized: Because it was Flash, you couldn't copy and paste it there, either.) No going back to previous questions, either.
I evidently did well enough, because I was called to an in-person audition as well. It sounds like it was about the same as previous auditions as mentioned elsewhere in this thread. In any case, the people there said they were testing this to do the initial filter on contestants - previously, they'd pull dozens (hundreds?) of hopefuls, they'd take the test, wait an hour to get them tested, and most wouldn't do well enough to go to the next step. (One audition was mentioned where NOBODY did well enough on the test to move forward.)
The one I was at had maybe 30-40 people, and everyone passed the written: They made us take another test, similar to the online one but written rather than electronic. Different questions, just the answers again, and not a lot of time to get it right. (But you could, if you wanted, go back and change your answers. Not that you had time for that.)
Evidently, the rest of the audition was just like it used to be: Take people three at a time to play a mock game, to see how you handle being in front of people. I thought I did okay...but haven't heard back yet. And they said that the only way we'd know how we did was if we heard back within a year. Still waiting...
TSG
show some love, you thankless twit
you got cash for your knowledge of minutiae, and were in a position thousands of others would love to be in
why show so much negativity over a life experience which can only be exciting?
what personality disorder do you suffer from exactly?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it