. . . and are you willing to admit that? 
One of the senior members was a 5-time Jeopardy! winner, back in the era when one had to retire then. (I forget who this is, sorry.)
If you are not that poster, have you ever auditioned? Do you have any suggestions for auditioning well? (Aside from complete personality overhaul?)
When it comes to repartee, I always do the “frozen rabbit in the headlights” thing.
Study the usual things, but if you get invited to a live audition, practice a few sentences of “tell me about yourself” or “what would you do with your winnings.” I mean, really rehearse yourself. In front of a mirror or video camera. Know it cold. Practice your body language. This is more important than last-minute cramming of trivia.
Bear in mind that the entire session will be filmed.
There’s a great online community called J-board where you can read about people’s experiences.
I auditioned for Jeopardy! back in the early 90s, and tanked…not during the exam, I scored high enough to go to the simulated game portion, but during the click the button for your turn portion; I was either too fast or too slow (there’s an exact moment where you can “buzz in” - I simply could never get it). I was however on WoF during “best friends week” in '96, we each won enough $ to buy a car outright, plus some cool give-away gifts (luggage, kitchenware and a weekend in Palm Springs, plus other stuff). It was a fun experience. My grandmother was (unofficially) known as the “Game Show Queen” having appeared on 18 different shows from 1945 to 1993. Her 1954 episode of What’s My Line is on YouTube (she was 36, and 100% of what is shown is true). I’m not certain why or how it got there, but I was notified by a family member who was doing a random search - the episode has the Game Show Network logo on it, and I know she was a participant in a live version of WML in the early(ish) 2000s. I don’t know if I can post a link, so I won’t.
Best advice I got during the audition phase have FUN! Show your enthusiasm, not just for the game, but altogether. And never tell them you’ll pay down student loans, or your home. They’re looking for unique stories. Everyone has one, so dig deep for yours.
I didn’t do the online test, but a paper & pencil test, with answers flashed on a large screen at the front of the room and writing down the response (not in the form of a question). Those answers flashed quickly and you lliterally had a few seconds before the next one.
If you passed the test, you then did a short mock game with 2 other people, and, yes, it was filmed. They were looking for people who had interesting anecdotes (I think they asked what you’d do with your winnings), and, as importantly, people who kept the game moving at a good pace. If you get something right, don’t hesitate to choose your next category. One of the things they tell real contestants is that their goal every game is to clear the board.
Thanks, all. And that is really fascinating, JustaMom. I will look the episode up on YouTube.
A friend’s son was on last year. He had $18k going into final Jeopardy! but everyone missed the final (I got it right) and he lost.
S tried several times but never was chosen. He did get a bunch of jeopardy T-shirt’s. My friend appeared and got some winnings, including a nice dining set they shipped to HI. They said she’d have to pay for the shipping but she was never charged.
Flagging @Scipio
I am a diehard Jeopardy fan. I’ve been watching since the days of Art Fleming. I usually do pretty well at home. I took the online test the other night. I’ve never felt so stupid. 50 questions, with 15 seconds to answer each one. Each question is a different category. The questions seemed harder than on the show. Plus your brain has to keep constantly flipping from category to category. There’s no chance I’ll be making it to the next round.
For me, the questions this year varied in difficulty from night to night. I took the online test on Thursday this year, which turned out to be the easiest for me. I looked at the Tuesday and Wednesday tests online after they were over, and I believe I would have had an 8 point difference between my highest and lowest scores. Some other posters who have commented on the Jboard also thought that Thursday’s was the easiest, but others scored pretty consistently.
I did the online quiz about 10 years ago and after several months got a call for an audition. I went to Philadelphia for it and took my family, which was a mistake. My son coughed all night and I barely slept. I was a mess for the audition.
There was a bunch of us seated at long tables in a large room. We all took a pencil-and-paper test similar to the online quiz – they projected questions at the front, and you had a few moments to write an answer before the next one popped up. After that, someone played Alex and asked a bunch of questions at the front of the room, and if you knew it you “buzzed” in by raising your hand. He would call on the first or one of the first people who “buzzed.” Then they took turns bringing three auditionees at a time up front for a quick mock game, which they videotaped from the back of the room. Despite feeling like a zombie I did all right on these three aspects of the audition.
this is really good advice from @prodesse – “if you get invited to a live audition, practice a few sentences of “tell me about yourself” or “what would you do with your winnings.” I mean, really rehearse yourself. In front of a mirror or video camera. Know it cold. Practice your body language.”
they will ask for a couple (up to five) interesting brief little stories or fun facts about yourself, the sort of thing Alex briefly asks each contestant about midway thru round 1. I strongly recommend having at least two that are really unusual even if it might be a little embarrassing sharing it with a TV audience. two really unusual attention-grabbing ones would really bolster your chances, and you have to be animated and engaging when you tell them.
most if not all of your “personality practice” in front of the mirror should be focused on how your tell these stories since this is the only part of the show where you really get to show your personality. above all practice getting to the point of the stories and tell them as briefly and entertainingly as possible. I was surprised how many people in the audition had boring, uninteresting “fun facts” that were supposed to be the most interesting things they could tell about themselves. I was also surprised how people could not discipline themselves to share a brief anecdote and just rambled on.
I don’t recall being asked what I would do with my winnings.
I think you do want to practice Q&A before the audition since three components of my audition had to do with the ability to answer questions in a rapid-fire environment. Here is the best source I found for practicing actual Jeopardy questions:
http://j-archive.com/
I thought I blew the audition but got a call six months later to be on the show. @JustaMom is right – getting the timing right on that buzzer was absolutely maddening. I was well behind late in the game but got on a roll in a category we were all avoiding. we all missed Final Jeopardy but since I was leading and bet conservatively, I won a game. I lost the next game despite leading in Final Jeopardy for one shining moment before the final contestant’s answer was revealed. oh well. sure was fun while it lasted.
A year or two later I tried the online quiz just for fun and utterly bombed it.
Good luck and I hope you get the callback!
I was on the Teen Tournament my sophomore year of high school: 1991! It was a fantastic experience.
I found perusing the Almanac to help in preparation for the test.
I was on Jeopardy! back in the 90’s (before the money went way up). I won the first day and came in second the next. I won a nice amount of money and a trip.
The tryouts were not stressful at all. Maybe because I didn’t study, had no idea what the buzzer test was going to be and how the interview would go. I did the tryouts at the studio in Culver City.
I did the online test on Wednesday. There were about 3 questions where I knew the answer was somewhere in my rusty brain, but I wasn’t able to come up with them in time. I can remember one of those questions, and my brain’s still trying to find the answer. It was an American history question, which I’m awful at since I grew up in Canada. There were a few questions that I knew in my sleep. There was one question where I surprised myself with knowing the answer. I thought I did pretty well overall, but maybe not enough to audition. I’m sure I would have done better 25 years ago.
The spouse of someone I worked with was a multiple time champion in the early 90s.
I took the online test last night, and got 35/50 questions right. That’s about the usual minimum for getting called to an audition. I’ve been trying to get on Jeopardy for the last several years, after moving to the L.A. area in the 1980s. I’ve been called to do the in-person auditions twice, but haven’t been on the show. As others have mentioned, I think the main problem for me is that I don’t think I’m that interesting, so I probably don’t come across very well. If I do get another chance, I have to try to come up with some good anecdotes about myself. Plus I’m probably a little too soft-spoken for their taste. But I keep trying anyway. It’s been a life-long dream of mine to be on the show, ever since I started watching it when Art Fleming used to host.
Flagging @Scipio
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Yes, indeed I was Jeopardy champion back in the day. Back in the 90s I won five games and then retired as an undefeated 5-time champ. In the Tournament of Champions I won in the quarterfinals but tragically and narrowly lost in the semis to the eventual champion.
The tryouts were in person and you wrote the answers on paper as described in post #4. It was 50 clues as I recall and they said that all 50 were of the same difficulty as the hardest clues in Double Jeopardy (the bottom row of the category board). About 100 of us took the test at the old studios in Hollywood. Exactly six of us passed and went on to the mock games and interviews. I never saw any of the other five appear on the show, so I think I was the only one of the six who passed that day who actually got to play. Although why I was chosen and the others weren’t I couldn’t tell you.
During the mock games and interviews they said they were looking for “good energy” - meaning that they wanted you to be lively and engaged but without going into over the top hysterics like they have on The Price is Right or The Wall. Every game show has its own sense of decorum, and part of getting picked for any given show involves being able to deliver the sort of personality and manners they are looking for.
In some ways winning on Jeopardy has overshadowed everything else I have ever achieved in my career. Even all these decades later many people still marvel over it when they find out. It also imbues you with enormous credibility. Some people will assume you know pretty much everything and are disappointed when it becomes apparent you don’t. I tell them that the knowledge you need to win on Jeopardy is a mile wide and an inch deep. Learning and remembering all that information comes not from cramming for the test or the show but from a lifetime of paying attention.
I did some cramming. Everybody does. I memorized lists: State capitals, state nicknames, state flowers, the US presidents in chronological order, the states in which each president was born, etc., etc. But I think all my cramming got me only about a half dozen clues right across my seven games that I wouldn’t have known anyway.
Playing well on Jeopardy is something of a knack more than a marker for intelligence. A truly dumb person can’t win on Jeopardy, but you sure don’t have to be a genius. One thing I will say is that every Jeopardy champion and player I ever met was a reader. You can’t gather all that info without reading a lot of books.
I was recently a contestant. Amazing experience! Wish I still had my reflexes…it’s all about the buzzer. But I didn’t embarrass myself, which is all I was hoping.
My one suggestion: if you get an audition and they ask what you’d do with your winnings, say anything except travel!
@scoutsmom Why not travel? If I had the time and money, I’d spend all of it travelling.