Mondays with Mike: In the form of a question

My first recollections of the TV quiz show Jeopardy! date back to watching TV with my mom, who was an avid watcher when she could catch it—there was no Tivo then. I faintly remember that perhaps it came on late in the afternoon? Well, Esther was pretty damn good at it (she worked crosswords during commercial breaks) and I remember being pretty damn frustrated that I couldn’t hold a candle. Until I could—barely—and that was something of a rite of passage.

Jeopardy! and I drifted apart for many years, until the days when Beth and I and Gus were lucky in the late 90s to live on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and had the time to turn it on pretty regularly. I got pretty big britches competing against myself in the living room, and went so far as signing up for a test and audition to be held the nearest site—Washington, D.C. held that distinction.

That’s the Jeopardy Terminator.

I put on a sport jacket and tried to adopt my smartest looking facial expression—and soon gave up on that. I made the four-hour drive to a hotel I can’t remember in the least. More than 100 of us would-be contestants were herded into a banquet hall to be briefed on the process.

First, we took a test en masse—all of us got a written test. Then, we all waited while Jeopardy! staff graded our exams. Afterward, one by one, the names of people who had passed were called, and each was led to another room. I was one of them.

The audition room was just another hotel meeting room with makeshift contestant stands. We were given clickers, and a staff member read the clues out loud, just as Alex Trebek would if we made it to the show. I did get in a couple answers, but heck if I remember what they were. We also went through a mock get-to-know-you interview of the kind Trebek does.

In the end I made the cut. Which only meant that I’d go into a pool of others from around the country who’d also made the cut. After that, it was pretty much a lottery. I was active for about 18 months, but I never got the call.

Again, Alex and I drifted apart until recently. Because I’ve been working from home more, I sometimes get to turn it on (I still don’t Tivo). And, I got the bug, so last year I signed up to be notified for the next online test.

I’ve felt that the quality of contestants and difficulty of the questions has gone up since I qualified decades ago. Beth says, as diplomatically as she can (which is not very), that it might have more to do with my decline. OK, it’s probably a little of both, but I’m pretty sure that making an online test available results in a whole lot more people passing that first hurdle—or, if they grade on a curve, that means the overall quality of the pool probably increases. (So just shut it, Beth.)

Well, last week, I took the online test. Fifty questions, 15 seconds to answer each—it flies by. So much so that, you really couldn’t cheat with internet searches. By the time you read and comprehended the question, there just isn’t time. (It would not preclude, however, having someone look over your shoulder and help.)

I have no idea how I did—except there were two easy ones that I somehow had a brain cramp on, thinking of the answer too late. Of course, those are the only two I remember.

Anyone who passes will be invited to the next rehearsal/interview in their preferred city.

As many of you probably know, Jeopardy! has been in the news lately: the current contestant has been tearing up the records—he’s already over $400,000 in just over a week. And he’s not just winning—he’s burying people. (Did I mention he and I both went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign?)

I’ve gotten to watch him a few times—it’s at once spectacular and sort of sad. Spectacular because the guy is a phenom. A freak. And sad because he’s mowing through people who went through all that trouble to get on the show just to get completely destroyed. Smart, nice people who earn decent scores and don’t have a chance.

Meantime, I don’t know whether I passed the new online or not. I figure if I don’t hear soon, that it’s like not hearing from an employer after submitting a resume. Still, I think it would be a blast to get on the show.

But not until that Jeopardy! destroyer is long gone.