I did another round of the ESPN Jeopardy! tryouts Tuesday evening. I did not do well. And I'm not just saying that to be self-effacing or to attempt some sort of reverse jinx. I objectively did poorly. It wasn't what I expected. I thought there would be a live interview/audition portion to it, but there was no interaction with anybody at all. It was just another quiz, much like the first one, but on a Zoom call. That's fine, but it wasn't fine in this particular instance because I missed a lot of questions, and the quiz wasn't even very hard.
Do you ever go to address somebody you know extremely well, say, your child, and for some reason their name won't come out of your mouth? You do that thing where you stammer and stutter and then call them their sibling's name and then your spouse's name and then maybe the family pet's name before you finally get the proper response out? That happened to me on this quiz, repeatedly, and my time ran out before I could get to that last "proper response" part.
The first four or five questions went well. I knew them all except for one about a European soccer coach—totally fine. Surely, I wouldn't need to get all 30 correct to move on. Then the clue was something like "This man won MVP of the NBA and the NBA Finals in 2025." Perfect. This will be a lay-in... haha... I could tell you every NBA champion since, like, 1957, so all I need to do is think of who won it all last year, and the answer will be obvious. Let's see, it went Knicks this year... Celtics two years ago... The Nuggets three years ago... Who won two years ago?! The Warriors? The Bucks? No, those were earlier... Shit, my time is almost up... I gotta type something: JOKIC. But I know that's wrong, dammit!
Then a few questions later, it happened again, and again it was with a basketball clue: "This star WNBA rookie is nicknamed 'The Spectacle'." Oh, it's that little point guard who wears the glasses... She's really good... Plays for the Lynx... Light-skinned Black lady... Wears her hair in a pulled-back quasi Afro puff... Jesus, why can't I think of her name?... 3-2-1... Uh, uh: VANDERSL. You idiot! It's not Courtney Vandersloot. She's like a 37-year-old veteran, not a rookie, and she's white! And you didn't even have time to type in her full name!
So it went throughout the rest of the quiz. I would say there were at least five more clues for which I "knew" the correct response but just couldn't get it typed out in the allotted eight seconds for whatever reason. Another one I have a hauntingly clear memory of: "This two-word phrase was turned into a meme featuring a picture of gymnast McKayla Maroney making a face." I confidently typed in DOESN'T CARE, and then as the clock hit zero, I had a panicked realization: Wait, no! It's "honey badger doesn't care." It's "McKayla's not impressed." I've confused my memes! I want to change my answer! NOT IMPRESSED! NOT IMPRESSED! But nobody could hear me shouting this because I was only thinking it, not saying it aloud, and also I was on mute, and also also they wouldn't have changed my answer even if they could hear me.
They don't tell you your score or give you the answers, but my best guess is that I missed 10 of the 30 clues. I legitimately did not know at least two of them, and then I botched at least six of them. Toss in two that I missed that I thought were right or don't remember getting wrong and that's 10. I have to think that's too many. Jeopardy! is notoriously opaque with their qualifying criteria—the tryout process is very black box-y—but rumor has it that you need to score at least 70% on their tests to even be considered for the next phase. Well, you can do the math: 20 / 30 < 0.7. I'll be stunned if I get selected to move on.
Of course, once the quiz was over, all the answers I couldn't come up with sauntered easily back into my brain. The Thunder—it's SGA. Miles—Olivia Miles. Red Devils—Belgium. "Team Spoon"—Teresa Weatherspoon. It's so frustrating. It's the worst way for things to go. If I did really well on the quiz (as I could have) and didn't get selected for the show, then that would have been fine. It's not in my control. If I would have just not known a bunch of the answers, then that would have been fine also. Well, maybe not fine, but it would have been less frustrating. I could have just chalked the whole thing up to not being good enough (like I did when I took the real Jeopardy! test and didn't make it past the initial stage). To not perform to the best of my abilities is the absolute worst—or at least it makes me feel the worst.
But maybe there's no meaningful distinction, as far as Jeopardy! goes, between getting things wrong because I don't know them and getting things wrong because my recall isn't consistently fast enough. My immediate reaction when the test was over was It's so unfair to only give us eight seconds on each clue! That's such a huge disadvantage to people who can't think quickly! Then I had a Pam moment and thought about what contestants on the show actually need to be good at... I guess that's fair.
So, I think that's a wrap on my ESPN Jeopardy! bid. I don't know that for sure, but I kinda do. I might try again someday; I might not. I mean, who knows if this show will even exist long enough for me to get a second chance. I've seen about a half dozen of these sports trivia shows (Stump the Schwab, The Two-Minute Drill, etc.) through the years, and they never last very long. And then there's the uncomfortable, inevitable fact that my brain is only getting slower. If my recall isn't up to snuff now, it's not like it will take a jump in my fifties.
It's all very disappointing. I was legitimately bummed and slept horribly Tuesday evening, replaying all my mistakes in my head. But I'm okay now. I've got other things going on. That's one reason why it's good to try a whole bunch of different things. When one thing doesn't work out, you've got something else coming up right behind it.
Alright, that's enough on this topic. Until next time...
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