<p>Congratulations, and good luck with the next round!</p>
<p>That’s awesome, Coureur. I’m sure I would introduce you to people as the Jeopardy champ, too!</p>
<p>^^mamabear1234, Having re-read your original post, we’re rooting for you to appear on the show and look really smart!</p>
<p>(I can’t guess who coreur is, but wish I could. Winning a single time is impressive; winning five times is eerily smart.)</p>
<p>Also, I can’t spell “coureur,” even with the name practically in front of me!</p>
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<p>No, winning a lot on Jeopardy is more of a “knack” than an indication of how smart you are.</p>
<p>I’ve never met a Jeopardy champion who wasn’t a reader, but in general the knowledge you need to succeed on Jeopardy is a mile wide and an inch deep. The knowledge basically comes from a lifetime of paying attention.</p>
<p>The knack to winning a lot of games on Jeopardy is to have very good reflexes with the button and to have the sort of brain that can sort and store a lot of individual facts and retrieve them very quickly. In terms of real intelligence, you could be smarter than Isaac Newton himself and still get slaughtered on Jeopardy if you don’t have near-instant recall of a wide range of stuff. </p>
<p>Ever see some poor guy just getting killed on Jeopardy - just standing there and never buzzing in? Well, in my experience that unfortunate guy knows just as much as the other two players who are thrashing him. In fact, I’d estimate than on >80% of the clues ALL THREE players know the correct answer. But some are just better at quick recall and getting the timing right on the buttons. Thanks to the written qualifying tests and other hurdles to get on the show in first pace, only on the hardest clues does knowledge actually start to sort out the players on the televised shows.</p>
<p>Coureur, this is why I believe it is essential that, in the tradition of teen Jeopardy and celebrity Jeopardy, there is a crying need for SENIOR JEOPARDY!!!</p>
<p>That way, those of us who fancy ourselves Jeopardy whizzes and have attained a certain level of maturity (in other words, our kids classify us as geezers–showing no disrepect to Geezermom, of course), can play the game competitively with others who are just as “reaction time challenged” but no less knowledgeable.</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>QuantMech, I realized I had the spelling problem you had. My high school French teacher would be so sad … but then again, it HAS been … umm … a few years since high school French.</p>
<p>Senior Jeopardy? Only if the menopausal women get our own tournament!</p>
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<p>The show has been there and done that. There used to be Seniors Tournament every year:</p>
<p>[Jeopardy</a>! Seniors Tournament - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy!_Seniors_Tournament]Jeopardy”>List of Jeopardy! tournaments and events - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>It was one of the first things that Harry Friedman did away with when he took over as producer. He wanted to make the show younger and hipper. The material has changed under his watch too - fewer academic categories and more pop culture.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m always amazed at the pop culture categories that show up on College and HS Jeopardy. For the most part, my kids would do poorly on that. Current TV shows? Forget it.</p>
<p>College Jeopardy begins Wed. May 5, btw, and a girl formerly from our HS is on it!</p>
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<p>And there were some episodes of eerie luck involved also…</p>
<p>^^coureur, I understand what you’re saying about winning. I feel sorry for the contestants who are clearly attempting to buzz in, but just a few hundredths of a second too late, repeatedly. It must be frustrating, and I don’t think less of them for it . . . particularly since Senior Jeopardy! would be my only hope–especially if the popular culture questions all referred to the mid-seventies or earlier. Also, I find “Albert Einstein” amusing as a Jeopardy! contestant, in Ellen’s Energy Adventure at Disney World: Einstein’s busy writing down general relativistic equations, during Final Jeopardy.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I do actually think there’s an element of being really “smart” involved in winning multiple times. The same breadth of knowledge and quick recall probably operate for you all the time, don’t they? If so, it would make reading a newspaper, a novel, or historical work a more complex experience, relative to the experience of people who aren’t thinking in thirty different, but related directions all at once, while reading; and it would also tend to make your fact-network more interconnected. Is this making sense? Even if modesty will not permit you to agree? (I’m writing from the standpoint of someone who has never been on Jeopardy! and never even tried a qualifying test.)</p>
<p>Does anybody here remember “Shep,” who was a Jeopardy! contestant back in the mid-1960’s? (Possibly when Art Fleming was the host?) He won five times and retired. My mother commented once about his range of knowledge–and I think it must have been quite impressive.</p>
<p>^^I cannot comment on your theory of Jeopardy champion intelligence other than to say that I consider myself to be a reasonably bright person but not any sort of genius. I always have my wife as a handy reminder that she got higher grades and test scores in every single college class we ever took together.</p>
<p>I don’t remember Shep, but the current killer Jeopardy player of all time is Brad Rutter. There are hints in a few of his games that he is not totally invincible, but he has never been beaten and has taken down some serious Jeopardy animals including Ken Jennings. There is a term among Jeopardy champions of having been “Ruttered” – which describes going into a game a hotshot yourself, determined to win, and just getting totally run over, crushed so fast than you don’t know what hit you.</p>
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<p>Or too early. If you jump in too soon, before Alex has completely finished reading the clue, your button is disabled for half a second. And in the land of Jeopardy a half a second is an eternity.</p>
<p>MamaBear- did you go on? I saw a woman last night who seemed like she would “fit” as a CC mom, took the online test at the urging of her college kids! Was that you, I saw champion day 4, and where does that prize money fit on FAFSA!!!???</p>
<p>I doubt it was her. There is usually a significant lag between the time you tape and the time she show airs. My timeline: I passed the audtion in February; I taped my games in August, and they aired the following January. The whole process took almost a year, and she is still at the second part of the audtion stage.</p>
<p>The mom certainly embodied what one would expect of a CC sage ;)</p>
<p>No, not yet… although my audition was yesterday in Cleveland, and they said everyone there would be added to the contestant pool for the next 18 months!</p>
<p>I have been watching lately too… the recent winner is very good (but she’s also older than me!)</p>
<p>Good luck Mamabear. Being on Jeopardy is a blast. I was a contestant a few years ago, lost to a 5 time champ (the buzzer killed me too), but met some really nice people, and had a once-in-a-lifetime experience.</p>
<p>Digging this thread up - I am auditioning in Toronto over Columbus Day weekend…anyone who has been through this and can give two or more cents advice on what to expect PM me, I got tuition $$$ to go for lol!</p>
<p>Work on relaxation techniques. You need to be cool and charming on camera. And practice that ringing-in technique - some use their thumb, some their index finger. You need to be precise in your timing. Wear comfortable shoes, and bring something to read and something to snack on. You might also want to wear a little more eye makeup and lipstick than usual so you don’t look washed out.</p>
<p>Great news, Rachacha. Have fun at the audition!</p>
<p>No experience here, so no advice–but two questions to coureur, who does have experience:<br>
Is it possible for a person to learn to identify the mental state that means that an answer really is “on the tip of the tongue,” and buzz in at that point, rather than waiting for the answer to form in full, before buzzing?
Also, how does one avoid buzzing in too early?</p>