My Jeopardy Audition Experience

5 hours, 2 cities, 233.9 kilometres. I was spinning around downtown Toronto for a while, and it was difficult to decide where to park, but I ended up finding a nice location close to the Fairmont that costs only $5. Not bad. Now that we have gotten the mundane driving out of the way, let's get to the interesting stuff.

I arrived at around 1:45 to the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. Once I went in, I saw no signs, but one of the hotel people approached me asking me if I'm here for Jeopardy, and I said yes. So then he pointed me to the elevators saying it's on the 18th floor. Oh...so that's how they keep away the curious onlookers...no sign, no nothing, just some nice greeter. Once I'm up on the 18th (and that was a pretty shaky elevator ride), I opened up to see 4 people waiting there. They were chatting about where they came from, and turned out one came from Waterloo as well, which is nice. The surprise is there's another fairly animated guy (I think his name is John) who flew all the way from Calgary to take this test. "I had nothing else to do, " he said. He looks to be an interesting character, actually. After a while, people started flowing in, and it got a little bit crowded. The woman from Waterloo came to me and we chatted for brief moments. After a while, another woman started asking John some questions from her book, allegedly bought on the main floor of the hotel. When he couldn't answer a question, she threw the question to all of us, and that led to a lot of questioning from her for the next while. There was this interesting energy and dynamic around this room, where you just know that people here know quite a lot of things (well...except me). Eventually the Jeopardy staffs showed up, and we were let in to the Upper Canada Room.

Once inside, we were all seated, and that loud and energetic staff member started talking to us about how great Toronto is etc. etc. basically trying to woo us, I believe. Then we all played a short practice game where another staff member gave some hints for solving Jeopardy clues. Then a short instructional video, which was pretty funny, actually. In there, they tell you that you don't need to phrase your response in the form of a question, spelling doesn't count unless it's a spelling category, and don't worry if you put the answers in the wrong slot hehehe (I remember doing that in high school...). And there's the test. It wasn't as impossible as I imagined it to be, as I'm confident that I got at least 15 of the 50 questions right, and maybe get a few other guesses. I'm not allowed to discuss anything about those questions, though, so that will have to stay with me for the rest of my life... One thing I should note is that after each clue appears, you hear people start to scribble down an answer, and that sort of made me panic a little and forced me to write something as well! Of course most of what I wrote didn't make sense... After the test is over, Cheryl from the clue crew came in and "entertained" us while we wait for our papers to be graded. That was really cool, actually, to see a person that's on TV! Too bad I didn't get a picture or an autograph or anything... Then the papers were back, and they announced that 4 people passed the test, which...of course didn't include me. Apparently you need at least 35 right answers to pass...so, still a long way to go. The interesting thing is that woman from Waterloo? She passed. I didn't get to congratulate her, unfortunately, as she was surrounded with people...but I hope to see her on the show some day. Then we stormed out of the room, caught an elevator, and went our separate ways. I recognized Andy Saunders from the Jeopardy message board and his website Andy's Thoughts, but I was too shy to talk to him...ah, sucks to be shy like me... Oh well. Overall, a very nice experience. The staffs were wonderful, and I had a great time. Maybe I'll do it again when they come here next time... As for souvenirs, I brought back a couple of Fairmont Royal York Hotel pens, and some candies.