Absolutely this. They just want three people who won't humiliate themselves and leave 20 Triple Stumpers on a really easy board. Even if knowledge bases overlap, and some questions on the show are deliberately easy for play-along people who aren't uber trivia-heads, fine tuning the test-to-test reliability for the Tues/Weds/Thur test probably isn't a priority. Plus, the written test at the audition can be an equalizer. I assume they invite like 200 people to the audition, and then only 100 or so get to go back and play, right? (Numbers may be wildly inaccurate, but that was my experience way back in 2000 with Millionaire auditions.)davey wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 11:39 am To be a bit contrarian - I found the Wed test (43) a little easier than Tuesday's (41), thought most of my misses on Wed were in the second half. As long as they get a certain number of passers, I don't know why they would care about the perceived relative difficulty of certain tests. You can't watch the show and believe that they're only interested in the highest end trivia minds...
Plus, they want interesting folks. They have about 2 minutes to fill when they come back from the first commercial break - they want people who interact well with Alex, who are relatable, and who the people at home will root for. Getting on J! isn't a strict meritocracy - maybe more so than, say, "Millionaire", where you're on stage alone and have to show some personality multiple times, but there's still some "soft' factors that go into contestant selection. I'm sure J! could fill up their ranks with doctors, lawyers, librarians, and teachers from NYC and LA, but they also want a large cross section of North America. And even if the goal were to be a strict meritocracy, I think a 15-minute, 50-question test has a pretty wide margin of error when it comes to determining who's a better overall trivia player.
Anyone from last year remember how soon they send out audition emails? I would imagine it's a month or so before the audition in the selected city to give advance notice while still avoiding a ton of cancellations.