Online Test Discussion (Central), January 18, 2012

[Setho]

Either 40 or 41 for me, depends if my answer of gauga is accepted for gauguin. Either way I passed. Fingers crossed I get my second interview. I've had 2 years to come up with my stories and I am confident I have much better ones this time.

[Andromus]

36 right for me, playing off of the transcript. A bit harder than last night's test.

[Bamaman]

I got 29 on the test. One of these days, I'll remember the painter who went to Tahiti, I miss it every time he's on the show.

[eureka]

Tonight's looked harder. I got 25, take away at least 3 for nerves. Pop culture, for the most part, was alright. All my usual glaring problems with composers, geography, the elements, etc. I did get the Falklands, thanks to the Simpsons.
I wasn't able to guess anything, unlike last night.

[cinemaniax7]

I did better than I thought, coming in with a score of 45. I missed Pakistan, Wilson's 14 Points (inexplicably said 18 in the heat of the moment), Armenia, the AMA, and I ran out of time while writing "Borneo." I honestly didn't know Everest or Queensland but managed to puzzle them out. Now if I can only make it past the random drawing, I just have to figure out a way to make the ten-hour drive to the audition. But as Maggie Smith says, "If you don't mind, dear, I prefer to take my fences one at a time."

[kslgbr]

So when Jason Keller says he had tried out I think 15 times, does that mean actually getting invited to a contestant search? I remember Vijay Balse from the TOC a couple of years ago talking about how many times he had tried out too.

[okstater04]

I'm nothing if not consistent. I usually score 39-40 on these tests, and tonight I scored 39. 40 last night, so yeah.

[bomtr]

46 seems to be my number, and I should knock wood as I say that, since I take the test for real tomorrow night. Taylor Swift, War Horse, Numbers (stupidly; bible always a problem for me), and AMA. This is, of course, off the transcript, so no clock, but I also am sure I didn't give myself 15 seconds for the ones I couldn't think of right off.

Whenever I see "what is this dagger I see before me" I hear it in John Wayne's voice, thanks to Robin Williams.

[kslgbr]

Whenever I see "what is this dagger I see before me" I hear it in John Wayne's voice, thanks to Robin Williams.

I did too, which threw me off. I first started thinking of a John Wayne character, and then realized that it was a Shakespeare category.

[jpahk]

felt significantly harder for me, too, but then i ended up getting exactly the same score as last night. it could be because there were plenty of answers (everest, AMA, the firm spring to mind) that i did get right but didn't feel at all confident about, where there was only one that i can remember yesterday (rembrandt). on the actual show i would have clammed those clues.

i had a terribly frustrating experience with the bridesmaids clue—just could not think of maya rudolph's last name. (maya lin, of all people, would not leave my brain.) at the last second i scrambled "poehler" into the box and aaarghed. then, of course, rudolph wasn't right anyway. oh well.

on borneo, i wrote "papua new guinea", felt pretty good about it, and then at :02 realized that it's not an island. i tried and failed to delete "papua" (damn keybord shortcuts not working), but that, too, turned out to be irrelevant, since new guinea wasn't right.

[jeff6286]

I got 29 on the test. One of these days, I'll remember the painter who went to Tahiti, I miss it every time he's on the show.

I was actually able to get that one on this test, and I'm pretty sure I owe it mostly to TPH, as there have been numerous discussion on this board and/or the Sony board based around a comment he once made, something like "Who the heck is Paul Gaugain, anyway?", which I believe may have been originally a Calvin & Hobbes reference, and it may not have even been TPH that first made it, but regardless, I've seen references to it enough times that Tahiti=Gaugain finally stuck in my head.

As for the other 49 question...now that I've been able to re-examine the transcript, I think that I got 32 out of 50, with about 6 more that I very easily could have or should have known.

I blanked on Titanium as a hard metal, instead spending too many precious seconds trying to figure out who the metal would have been named for, and didn't realize until later that it was the Titans.

I blanked on the Egyptian-themed Vegas casino, as my mind bounced too quickly around many different famous casinos, and couldn't even come up with a decent guess before time was up. I think by about 3 or 4 questions later I had come to the conclusion that Luxor was what they were looking for, but alas, it was too late.

When I saw "these two scientists" I immediately thought of Watson & Crick, and the thought didn't even occur to me that their DNA discovery didn't come for another half century. With time still remaining I noticed that the name was French, and considered changing to the Curies, but decided to stick with my first instinct.

I immediately wrote down "eminent domain" instead of "manifest destiny", and had a strong feeling that it was wrong, but couldn't get the right phrase to pop into my head in time. Once again, it wasn't until a question or two later that the correct answer finally dawned on me.

For the HBO series I instantly typed Boardwalk Empire, but had a feeling that I was mixing it up with another recent series, which turned out to be correct, as it was Game of Thrones.

I went with Java instead of Borneo as the world's 3rd largest island, remembering the recent FJ that had Java as one of the world's most populous islands.

I drew a total blank on the "Palmetto State", typing Mississippi but having a feeling it was wrong and not coming up with a better option before time was up. I quickly realized that MS is the Magnolia State, and it soon dawned on me that Palmetto State is right there on the South Carolina quarter, which I think I've seen about a million times, so that one was a real killer.

Probably my stupidest miss was Salieri, as I just recently read some of the plot summary of Amadeus, and I knew that Salieri was the main character and rival of Mozart in that film, but upon reading the question I didn't make the connection fast enough that "Italian rival of Mozart" was essentially the exact definition of Salieri in my brain and the only thing I know about him. I think I wrote either Puccini or Vivaldi, just typing the first Italian musical name that I could think of, having no idea if it was even within 100 years of Mozart's time.

So about 8 of my 18 misses I could have gotten, with Salieri, South Carolina, and manifest destiny being ones that I would probably get 80-90% of the time if those particular clues came up in a Jeopardy! game. Quite sad that I was that close to hitting 35, the presumed magic number, despite not feeling all that confident about my performance at all.

[cool_hand]

42 today. 40 yesterday. After hearing everyone say how tough it was, I was glad I hadn't taken it today, then after looking at the transcript I was sorry I hadn't. My pattern is that I ace two of them, and narrowly fail a third. Tomorrow's my day, but now I'm extra nervous.

For the record: Blanked on Sun Also Rises, Moliere on the French author question, thyroid for pituitary, Mars for Vulcan, Red Cross for AMA, Phoenix for Firebird, sedimentary for metamorphic.

[Joeverdrive]

New member here. I just got into Jeopardy! during the recent ToC and am new to the JBoard. What a great resource. I'm elated to share a message board with the likes of Craig and Pahk.

I can't wait to take the Online Test tomorrow, so in the meantime I've been taking practice tests.

I got a 27 on this one. It's a fail, but I know where my weaknesses are (literature & art). As long as I study and can continue scoring higher than my age, I'll likely get a phone call sometime before I die!

[seaborgium]

44 tonight (thanks Some Guy!). I missed 14 Points (said 8 Points, proud of myself for remembering "points"), Borneo (changed my mind from it to Java, really should have paid attention to the Malay Peninsula bit), AMA (knew the date was too early for Red Cross but said it anyway for lack of anything better), pansies (knew penser right away, probably should have actually said it to myself: thought peonies and poinsettias and went for the former; pansies never crossed my mind), War Horse (blanked out, said Equus!), and Bolívar (total blank).

Lucky guesses: Taylor Swift, The Firm.

[tagNV]

Got 42 tonight (off the written transcript), one better than last night.

Probably the only person who guessed hypothalamus (I thought of pituitary, but it didn't feel as correct in the brief time I considered the two). Thinking I'm not the only person who guessed Sumatra (yes, not as big as Borneo, but much closer to the Malay Peninsula, and it crosses the Equator).

I got lucky remembering it was 14 points...I remembered Clemenceau remarking "Even the good Lord contented Himself with only ten commandments, and we should not try to improve upon them." No, I didn't remember the exact quote, just the basic gist of it.

[ej!fan]

37 this time. I said Sumatra for the island because it's crossed by the Equator and it's got an even closer proximity to the Malay peninsula. It's just not the world's 3rd largest. Spelled Gauguin "gaugin" and varicose "vericose" so even if those aren't counted I still have 35. It's a squeaker.

[pudge94]

Got a 38. hopefully it will be enough to get me to DC.

[earendel]

IMO this was a tougher test than the Tuesday one, probably because there were more pop culture questions. I might have squeaked by with a passing score on this one but it would have been close.

[slam]

Thank you, Ricky Gervais!

Because I wanted to see some of his hijinks this weekend, I watched some chunks of the The Golden Globes. I hadn't seen either Bridesmaids or Game of Thrones so the panning to Kristen Wiig (who I think is the worst thing to hit SNL ever) made me realize she must have been in it. Although I might have linked George R.R. Martin to Game of Thrones, hearing Peter Dinklage thank him cemented it in my mind.

Anyway, I think I got a 44 if "The Curies" is acceptable for "Pierre & Marie Curie". Since TPTB drill into us to just use last names, I think they'll give it to me.

Other misses:
4. Pakistan (flaked out and said India)
12. Everest (wrote Everest and crossed it out and said Pike's Peak)
20. Voltaire (said Descartes)
31. War Horse (kept thinking Avenue Q even though I knew it couldn't be right, left it blank)
42. Borneo (first wrote Sumatra, then changed it to Java)
43. AMA (left it blank because I was overthinking it)

The test seemed to start out hard with me needing to make an educated guess on Paine and taking until the last second to write "Swift" (even though I had that name identified with her - the brain just worked slowly). Turned out I got most of my educated guesses.

Let's just hope my name comes up for an in-person audition in NYC. Until last year, that kept happening on a regular 2-year cycle (2005, 2007, 2009). I passes last year, but there was no call for a live audition.

[billiej]

When I saw "these two scientists" I immediately thought of Watson & Crick, and the thought didn't even occur to me that their DNA discovery didn't come for another half century. With time still remaining I noticed that the name was French, and considered changing to the Curies, but decided to stick with my first instinct.

I immediately wrote down "eminent domain" instead of "manifest destiny", and had a strong feeling that it was wrong, but couldn't get the right phrase to pop into my head in time. Once again, it wasn't until a question or two later that the correct answer finally dawned on me.

For the HBO series I instantly typed Boardwalk Empire, but had a feeling that I was mixing it up with another recent series, which turned out to be correct, as it was Game of Thrones.

I went with Java instead of Borneo as the world's 3rd largest island, remembering the recent FJ that had Java as one of the world's most populous islands.

I made these exact same mistakes. This is the one I took for real and got my lowest score yet by far, 29 . Frustrating, I guess I should have rushed home Tuesday night to take the test in my own time zone, I would have passed that one.