Trivia World

The 1996 Process

This page looks at how I qualified for the show in 1996, in the pre-Google era. The process is rather different now. See above for some more recent links.

Before the try-out

For trivia nuts like me, the Holy Grail is the TV game show Jeopardy! In December 1996 and again in June 2003, after a series of small miracles, I finally qualified myself, after passing the audition. Here's how it happened.

Because of the usual onslaught of interest, Jeopardy! runs its contestant searches like contests; answer five questions correctly and if your name is picked, you get to go to the tryouts. I found the entry form in TV Guide, made a few calculated guesses (was Noah really "a just man and perfect in his generations"?) and sent it in. And then I waited. {Note: since this essay was written in 1996, the format has changed.}

Waiting was the worst part, since I was competing, not on the basis of skill, but blind luck. Baton Broadcasting, which ran the contest, got 12,000 entries, of whom only 300 would go on to the try-out. That’s a 1 in 40 chance. Good thing I didn’t know that waiting by the phone.

But somehow, I made it through. BBS Promotion Co-ordinator Kevin Watson called me with the good news, and I spent the next 10 minutes jumping around the office.

For the next two weeks watching the show, I realized, to my horror, that I was blanking out on the simplest things. That woman in Ghost, Whoopi Something, isn’t it? Dull panic began to rise. I had found a book written by the Jeopardy! staff that warned against studying for the test, but it began to occur to me that I’d better do something to reconnect all those little grey cells.

So I found a couple of my favourite references and simply browsed. Mostly, I was reminding myself of things, but I was also boning up on those subjects that Jeopardy! loves but that I loath: the Bible (too many J names), the Trojan War (too many A names), US presidents, state capitals, that kind of thing ...

Try-out day

Finally, it came time. Laura decided to come down with me and visit some editors, and as we drove down to Toronto the night before the test, I went over the notes I had made. Laura even gave me pop quizzes about colleges and universities, that other Jeopardy! fave. The women’s college in Poughkeepsie? Vassar, of course. My brain was getting very full.

We found a hotel not far from the Sutton Place, where the tryouts were. I slept well, and by the time I woke up, Laura had already gone off to meet some magazine editors. I had decided that I wasn’t going to study anything at all on test day, so I rattled around drinking cappuccinos and waiting for 1:30.

Gradually, I made my way to the Sutton Place. Oddly, once I was in the hotel, my nerves vanished. The 300 winners were divided into four groups of 75 each, and most of us herded in half an hour early. I was hoping that the 74 others in my group would be slack-jawed morons who used a lot of reference works to get the initial five answers. No such luck. They all looked depressingly bright.

They had come from all over Ontario. There were at least four of us in my group from Ottawa, two from Sudbury, and someone from North Bay. They were nice people, too. I gravitated to one group, where we encouraged each other and joked about how dumb we all really were. I had read that Jeopardy! contestants tried to play mind games on each other. Not in Toronto.

What actually happens when you try out

We all filled out the usual waiver forms, and went in at 1:30 sharp. The room was set up as if for a conference, with long tables, glasses of water, pencils and paper. Up front, there was a TV screen. Fifty questions would appear, which a tape of Trebek’s voice would also read aloud. We would have eight seconds for each question. And each of the questions were drawn from the lower two, and hardest two, rungs of the Jeopardy! categories you see on TV.

You need 35 right questions out of 50 to pass. That was a bit worrisome. The Jeopardy! book I had found had two sample contestant tests, and I had scored in the mid- to high-30s each time. It was going to be tight.

The first question came up. I had been terrified that it would stump me, and the ensuing panic would scotch the test. But instead it asked for the country across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco. Spain! No sweat.

I got the next one, too, as well as most of the next 20 or so. I was doing well. I had to take it as a good sign when one of the first questions asked for the women’s college in Poughkeepsie. That wasn’t the only stroke of luck. There were a lot of questions about moderately obscure US politicians that I happened to know--the man killed in a plane crash in 1996, the senator from Kansas, the most recent Supreme Court justice--but I could tell the crowd was getting frustrated with all this Americana. The fact that I’m a junky for American politics probably saved my baked alaska (the answer to another of the questions, by the way).

A couple of the questions stumped me. I didn’t know the Greek god of shepherds (it's Pan), or the name of a heavily fortified Spanish wine (it's sherry), or the Latin words for "it does not follow" (it's non sequitur). And the answer to the last question, an eight-letter word starting with A that meant "lineage," didn’t occur to me until after the questions were picked up ("ancestry," of course).

But I was confident. Alex Trebek himself came in and answered questions that ranged from the deferentially hero-worshipping to the surprisingly aggressive. I asked two questions myself, and found out that we wouldn’t get our scores. All of us were to say that Alex had told us personally that we missed by one (which is exactly what a number of people told the Baton TV crew waiting outside).

Once you qualify

Finally, the scores came in. Five of the 75 had passed. Now I was doubting myself. The names were called one by one. The first woman was so excited she jumped out of her seat and ran toward Alex, just like on The Price is Right. My heart was beating now. I was wishing I had been quicker with that 8-letter word for "lineage."

Alex read the second name. "Where is Paul ... Paquet?" My hand shot up. I was delighted. He’d even pronounced it right.

After the five of us were named, we were moved up front as everyone else filed out. The people I had talked to beforehand were clearly disappointed, but gracious enough to congratulate me. I was simply smitten with pleasure.

Once the hubbub had died down, we filled out more forms, including the one they use to find those tidbits they talk about on-air with the contestants. I told them that I live down the street from Alex’s alma mater, but it is surprisingly hard to come up with three amusing anecdotes on the spur of the moment. (Or, more exactly, it is surprisingly difficult to come up with three anecdotes that you would want all of North America to hear!)

The next step was the mock game. The set-up wasn’t much different from what you might do with three buzzers, your kitchen table and a bunch of cards, all of which I found a little disorienting. It was a lot of fun, though, especially since I managed to hold my own.

Jeopardy! films the mock game, as well as a brief interview afterwards. Usually, about three times as many people qualify for the show as they need. This lets them pick and choose who they want. Getting on the air actually depends less on test scores than TV presence and raw demographics. Jeopardy! would rather have on a train conductor than yet another lawyer, for example, and tries to get more women on. They also don’t want too many people from the same city.

Afterward, the local CTV station and a crew from Canada AM interviewed me. I managed to slip in a plug for Cornerstone, but (unsurprisingly) it didn’t surface that evening on the Toronto news. However, a whole flock of my in-laws saw me on TV; for some reason, my nephew was delighted that I said the words "polar bear" on the air.

What happens afterward

Now I wait for The Call. My name stays in their files for a full year, during any point of which you can get a month’s notice that you’re needed in Los Angeles. The odds of being needed are about 1 in 3. Better than 1 in 40, but nerve-racking enough. I may never get on, if the numbers don’t fall right.

In the interim, I am killing two birds with one stone by studying new subjects under the guise of creating quizzes for this Web site (which explains the games on subatomic particles and the Old Testament). Having a genuine excuse to ferret out this knowledge had led to a spurt of learning I haven't experienced since university. I can finally tell the difference now between Keats and Shelley, between Job and Jonah, and between a proton and an electron.

So, strangely enough, the accomplishment seems to rest, not in getting to go to LA, but in qualifying in the first place. To know that I’m as good as the people on TV is oddly affirming, especially for a confessed trivia junkie like me.