Slashdot Mirror
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...
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.
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.