THE ONLINE TEST

My next opportunity to pursue the Jeopardy! dream came in February, 2006. Jeopardy had changed the audition process - instead of inviting random people to take the test at an audition, they instituted an online test. The east-coast test was March 28, 2006. The 50 questions flew by - there was only 15 seconds to type an answer, then the answer box disappeared and the next question popped up. For an idea of the wide range of question topics, here are the first 10 questions from that test:

1. It is the only Ivy League school in Rhode Island.
2. Vermont's highest peak, Mt. Mansfield, is in this mountain range.
3. Set in New York, this Marlon Brando film won the 1954 Oscar for Best Picture.
4."He" is this part of speech.
5. It is the wonderful land created by L. Frank Baum.
6. The name of this unbalanced Roman Emperor of 37-41 CE means "little boot."
7. It is the geometric structure created by R. Buckminster Fuller.
8. Earth passed through the tail of this object in 1910.
9. Appomattox Court House, site of a famous surrender, is in this state.
10. The Mexican state of Quintana Roo lies on this large peninsula.

Registration for the test included requesting an audition city; I requested Philadelphia because I figured that there would be fewer folks competing for slots there than for DC. The process was that auditions would be filled randomly by those who passed the online test (Jeopardy! has never confirmed what is a passing score, but 35 is widely assumed to be the magic number). The odds weren't great - reportedly somewhere up to 100,000 people took the test, between 10, 000 and 20,000 passed, and 2000 received audition invitations (those are not "official" numbers, but numbers gleaned from the message board - anyone with better numbers please leave a comment). Still, I was hopeful. Why not?

On April 17, 2006, I found in my e-mail a new message from "Jeopardy_Contestant_Search." It began:

Congratulations! You have been selected for a follow-up appointment at an upcoming
Jeopardy! contestant search for the Philadelphia area, exclusively for
those who successfully passed the online test. This is the next step in
becoming a Jeopardy! contestant.

I'd made it to the "next step!"

To the next installment - THE SECOND AUDITION