Jeopardy!
This week is ‘Kids Week’ on Jeopardy. The kids range from ages 10 to 12. It’s the one week every year where you can watch Jeopardy and will actually know the answers to all the questions. It always makes me feel so smart.
The same basically applies to next week when it’s ‘Teen Week’ – with contestants ages 13 to 17. A year ago I took the online Jeopardy test in hopes of appearing on Teen Jeopardy. At the time, I was addicted to watching Jeopardy ever since Ken Jennings made his 74-game win streak on the show. That guy was a beast. Even though Jeopardy gives tons of money away every show, I wanted to be on for the experience. I thought it’d be cool to be on TV.
Hopeful contestants were supposed to take a preliminary test at home online, then if you did well enough you’d be called in for an in-person interview and test here in Chicago. I remember the test because it was both easy and hard. There were about 60 general knowledge questions for me to answer. Each question would appear, and I had 10 seconds to type in my own answer. They make sure that you don’t have enough time to Google the question while you’re taking the test. I never got a callback which means that I must have done bad, or just not as well as others. I could summarize the entire test into two types of questions: Science and Literature. I knew the answer to EVERY question except any question asking about books and authors – which was a lot. I’m not well read, but I know the big stuff. But still, there were a ton of questions about all these books, charcters, and authors that I’ve never heard of. I’d estimate to say that maybe 40% of the questions were on science (my forté), 30% on literature, 10% on other schools subjects like history and government, and the remaining 20% on other trivia.
The week after next week is College Week. The college level questions are not as difficult as the questions that appear on the regular Jeopardy episodes, so that’s manageable. I’ll definitely be trying out for the college edition in a couple years, so there’s still hope for me to be on. But even if I never get on, I’ll still watch the show from time to time and always enjoy those SNL Jeopardy skits:
