I may have mentioned this before, but I’m in my late 30s. My wife is in her mid 30s. Between us, we’re a shade over 70 years old. There’s plenty of life left for us (hopefully) and although our physical peaks may be passing us by, the prime of our lives is (hopefully) still yet to come.
You wouldn’t know it by looking at our hobbies.
Sure, we’re both Elder Millennials. My phone constantly reminds me just how much screen time we share during the day, and it’s an uncomfortably high amount. But she’s into cross-stitching, I’m into baseball (the math of the sports world!), we both like solving puzzles and we both like leisurely walks with our dogs.
And, of course, there’s Jeopardy!
We LOVE Jeopardy!
I’m proud to at least say we don’t watch it live, nor do we watch Wheel of Fortune right afterward. The beauty of the DVR is you can skip past the ads and turn a 30-minute experience into the, like, 12 minute and 17 second version we get nowadays. Not that anything will ever be as egregious as an NFL game, mind you.
Still, there’s no denying it: As our nights wind down and we’re sitting on the couch together, eating dinner and decompressing, the main thing we want to do is watch Jeopardy! together. We’ve become our parents/grandparents. All that’s missing is watching the same reruns of old variety TV again and again and OH MY GOD WE CAN DO THAT TOO. PLEASE SEND HELP.
Anyway: If you watch Jeopardy!, you’re probably aware of the “Anytime Test” that they keep mentioning. Essentially, it’s the first step toward becoming a contestant on the show. I don’t particularly want to be on Jeopardy! … but I do like taking tests. And “right now” counts as “anytime,” soooo … let’s do it!
After some brief account registration stuff, I entered my name, uploaded a picture of myself (which reminded me of applying for a job at American Apparel back in the day — a place I assume wanted my headshot to suss out how sexually harassable I was) and was greeted by this:
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but this might be the most meaningful and/or serious test disclaimer I’ve come across. Usually they’re like “Your results may vary depending on how you’re feeling in the moment” or “Taking this test isn’t a substitute for seeing a doctor” or “Sitting here and doing this quiz won’t fill the hole in your life where a personality should be.” (I believe this is how the MBTI started.) I guess it makes sense in this case, though. After all, the ultimate reward for successfully passing this test is an appearance on Jeopardy! — a show with standards. There’s a reason they don’t make you take a test to be on The Price is Right.
Not that I have much of a reason to disparage that show, mind you. It might be a better landing spot for me anyway, because I gotta tell you: these questions were hard. I can’t share any because the test specifically asked me not to, but there were 50 questions in total, each with a ~10 second timer to make sure you can’t really cheat by Googling the answers. I’m pretty computer savvy and I can type a documented 74 WPM, and even that would have been a tall task to open a new tab, search for the answer, process it, Alt+Tab back to the Anytime Test and then type in the answer.
Some of the questions were dead simple. Mostly, these questions centered around stuff I already know a lot about, like sports and corporate business. Many of the questions were incredibly hard. Mostly, these questions centered around stuff I know very little about, like Shakespeare, US presidents, and how to stick with a project for more than two months at a time.
I will say that, on aggregate, I think this was harder than an average Jeopardy! episode. For starters, it focused pretty much solely on trivia knowledge. When you really look at it closely, a lot of Jeopardy! categories massage the corners of “trivia.” There’s a lot of wordplay, a lot of math, a decent amount of punnery, etc. That said, it also didn’t require me to buzz in or play against anybody else. I was allowed to focus solely on the questions in front of me. Maybe that all evens out in the end.
But enough of all that explanation. How did I actually do? Behold:
Oh. So … I don’t actually get graded. Normally, this would massively disappoint me. If I didn’t have a pathological need for grade-based validation, why would I have started Quiz Pop in the first place?! But in this case, I actually don’t mind … mostly because I sort of self-graded as I went along and, uh, I don’t think I passed. Not that there are concrete “pass” or “fail” guidelines anywhere, but I would put my correct answer percentage somewhere around 50 percent — I just can’t imagine that will cut it. Of course, I did submit a headshot, so maybe that will be enough to sway what I can only hope are some very lonely, weirdly fetishistic judges.
Or maybe I’m just not cut out for an appearance on Jeopardy! after all. I guess we’ll all know within 12 months! Wish me luck!!