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My Jeopardy! adventure gets underway, at least for all of you, on July 10. I’m publishing a series of posts reflecting on my experience. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.

My road to Jeopardy! began unremarkably enough. Back in January 2009, a friend (I think it was Allen) mentioned to me that an online test was happening and suggested that I might want to take it. On the day it was being administered to West Coast participants, I signed up on the website (I still have the confirmation email) and took the test.

The online test is pretty simple: it’s fifty questions long, and you have fifteen seconds to enter each response (to minimize your ability to look up the answers; that amount of time actually seems longer than I remember, but the show’s own website verifies this detail). There’s no need to phrase answers in the form of a question or worry about the various other challenges of a real game (selecting categories, Daily Doubles, etc.). This is just a simple knowledge test, spanning the usual range of categories that the show’s viewers have come to expect. In any event, I took the test, figured I got maybe 44-45 correct out of 50 questions, and, assuming there was no way I’d actually make it onto the show, promptly forgot about it.

That is, until I got an email in July of 2010 (yes, a year and a half later), saying that the show’s contestant search was coming to San Francisco in September of that year, and I was invited to audition. Whoa, I thought — that’s pretty cool! I was given two business days to RSVP, which of course I did immediately. I booked the time slot on my calendar and made plans to leave work early that day two months in the future.

The Jeopardy! team soon responded, letting me know that the audition would take place at the Westin St. Francis, and that it would consist of three components:
1) another fifty-question written test
2) a mock game to assess my game-playing skills
3) a personality interview

I was instructed to come up with five brief tidbits about myself to potentially be used as my interesting anecdote during the on-air interview with Alex Trebek. Here’s what I managed at the time (perhaps each of these deserves its own blog post someday):

• Was once dissuaded from writing a letter to Pat Sajak
• Recently encountered an unusually enterprising elephant
• Once starred in a Celebrity Jeopardy! skit with an invisible man (actually, I told this story in my last post!)
• Recently returned from vacation to discover my car missing…or so I thought
• Once got a part in a play by calling the director an idiot (I’ve told this story too)

As the day approached, I felt some mild pressure to prepare for the audition, but I never had the sense of urgency that, in retrospect, I probably should have. Too many other things were going on — work was busy, I was lazy, and I figured that I didn’t have much chance of getting on the show anyway. I knew that I was at a fundamental disadvantage being so young, and I cursed myself for not having tried out for the Teen Tournament or College Championship. In any case, I did finally muster the focus to spend several hours reading Wikipedia the weekend before the auditions.

On the big day, I took off early from work and headed to the Westin dressed in a suit (because the email said, “come dressed as you might for an actual appearance on the show”). I could tell immediately when I arrived that I was one of the youngest people there — the average age was probably ten or fifteen years older. I would discover over the course of the afternoon that about half had tried out before; that plenty of traditional Jeopardy! professions, like “freelance editor”, were present and accounted for; and that one guy had won $32,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, had won Ben Stein’s titular money, and (unless I’m exaggerating in hindsight) had also won the National Spelling Bee. (No, he wasn’t Indian.)

The audition was run by Contestant Coordinators Maggie Speak and Glenn Kagan (both of whom I would meet again later in my Jeopardy! journey). We filled out some paperwork, had Polaroids taken (Glenn joked about how hard it was to find the film cartridges these days), and then went into the next room. Glenn showed us an appropriately cheesy DVD greeting from Alex himself and then walked us through a sort of crash course in modern Jeopardy! gameplay — things like what to do when you have control of the board, how Daily Doubles work, or what the “Rhyme Time” and “Before and After” categories mean. This was all information that any reasonable expectation would demand that you know before you audition for the show, but I guess they consider it important for the process to feel like a level playing field, so they make a point of starting from the beginning.

Glenn also explained the process of actually getting on the show from there on out. Apparently, we were all now entered into a contestant pool for the next eighteen months; we might get a call at any time during that period offering us a spot on the show, or we might not get such a call. We would only know that we hadn’t been accepted once eighteen months of silence had elapsed, after which we were eligible to take the next online test they offered. (This is but one of a million incarnations of that old show-business mantra: “don’t call us; we’ll call you.”) So I would potentially sit on this until March 2012, after which the next online test would likely be in January 2013. And to think that Maggie told a story of a recent five-time champion who’d tried out six times before being invited to appear!

After Glenn’s overview, we took our fifty-question written test, the mechanics of which were identical to the previous online test, but with clues being projected on a screen and read aloud by Alex’s recorded voice. I did worse this time — I estimated perhaps 42 out of 50 — but had no clue how that might compare to the rest of the room. (I’ve since read claims in various places that 35 is considered a “passing” score, but I didn’t see evidence of an explicit cutoff at my audition.)

With the written test out of the way, it was on to the mock game. There were maybe twenty-five or thirty people in the room, and we would go up three at a time (with everyone present) for a brief gameplay session plus our personality interviews. No one kept score, at least not officially — we just played from an infinitely refreshing game board, where once a category was exhausted, it would immediately be replaced by another. The purpose of the mock game was not to test your knowledge but rather to test your comfort with the gameplay mechanics and with the dreaded buzzer.

It’s worth taking a moment to discuss exactly how the buzzer works on Jeopardy!. The first thing to realize is that the buzzer is incredibly important and often determines the outcome of the game, since at least two contestants will know the answer to most of the clues that come up. Beyond that, the important thing that most people don’t realize is that it’s actually illegal to buzz in before Alex finishes reading the question, and if you do, your buzzer is forcibly locked out for a fraction of a second (a fifth or a quarter, apparently depending who you ask), which can make all the difference between successfully ringing in and watching your opponent do so. An additional wrinkle is that the release of the buzzer lockout isn’t automated based on Alex’s measured cadence; rather, the buzzers are manually enabled by a production assistant who sits, listens for Alex to finish, and then presses a button. When this happens, a set of lights illuminate around the gameboard indicating that it’s safe to ring in (these aren’t visible on TV, and honestly, if you want to have a prayer of competing, you don’t wait to see them in the studio anyway). So when we say that someone is “fast on the buzzer”, it’s actually less about speed and more about timing your release.

In any event, none of this complexity existed in the audition. Our set of buzzers didn’t even lock the other contestants out once someone had successfully rung in. They just each lit up whenever we pressed our buttons. Maggie told us to mash the button as fast as possible (which is how you play the real game) and made a judgment call about who’d rung in first.

My turn came about two-thirds of the way through the group. I ran the “Potent Potables” category in the mock game; “don’t tell my mom!” I quipped jovially to Maggie. (In hindsight, I think it’s not unreasonable to speculate that this particular turn of events may have been the primary reason my audition was successful; it may seem surprising given how many dorks appear on the show, but the contestant coordinators definitely do look for personality and telegenicity, or at least what passes for it in a gaggle of geeks.) The personality interview was more in-depth than on the show — several questions rather than just one or two — and I distinctly remember answering a question from Glenn about how Google makes money on search results.

And just like that, the audition was over. I had dinner with Chrix and Taj in the city, went home, and promptly forgot about the whole thing.

That is, until I got a call this past February 2, in month 17 of 18. Robert James, another contestant coordinator, called me in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday, and I have to say that it was one of the longest phone calls of my life. Robert introduced himself as being from Jeopardy! at the very beginning of the call, but he happily left me to speculate wildly as to the reason for his call while he asked me various qualifying questions. “Do you know anyone personally who has appeared on Jeopardy!?” “Do you or anyone in your immediate family work for Sony or any of its subsidiaries?” “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” I answered these questions more carefully than almost any questions I’ve been asked in my life, my heart in my throat as I dreaded screwing it up after coming so close.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, came the clincher:
“Have you ever appeared on television?”
“No.”
“Would you like to?”
“…Absolutely.”

I have no doubt that Robert takes great pleasure in toying with prospective contestants’ emotions this way.

Robert explained to me that my taping date would be on March 6, and that my episode would air the week of July 9. Taping would be at the Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. I should call Lucy the Thursday before my taping to confirm my attendance and give the names of any guests. I would be receiving a full contestant information packet soon with paperwork I’d need to fill out and promptly return by fax.

I got very little done the rest of that day; my head was buzzing. I IMed a group chat I have with some current and former colleagues:

[pb] holy [expletive] guys, I’m going on jeopardy
[hry2000] holy [expletive]
[nundu] YES
[hry2000] that’s the coolest thing i’ve heard in a year
[dave] !!!!!
[nundu] YES
[dave] YES
[nundu] YES
[hry2000] YES
[bshih] !!!
…
[nundu] that is basically the coolest thing ever

I also sent an email to my family. Instead of a breathless exultation, I just sent them the summary of the administrivia Robert had relayed to me, under the subject “Jeopardy! appearance info (!!!)”. My mom’s reply captured perfectly my state of mind:

Awesome Prabhu!!! Your life’s dream!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now you have to actually prepare……

…right. Prepare. To go on TV in front of ten million people and compete in the most prestigious knowledge competition that exists.

I had work to do.