XANNI BROWN
You might have found your way to this website because I appeared briefly on America's favorite quiz show. There are lots of great guides for how to prepare for Jeopardy! so I won't re-write the book here, but I will share a few reflections on my journey and tips for the potential contestant. Of course, the main piece of advice I have for anyone considering a Jeopardy! journey is simply to take the online test - you never know where it might lead you!
PREPARATION
The perhaps obvious fact is that the best way to prepare for Jeopardy! is to watch a lot of Jeopardy! I grew up watching the show every night with my mom, which gave me a good baseline of familiarity with both the rhythms of the show and the body of knowledge it tends to draw from. It's also highly entertaining and packages a large amount of trivia into a fast-moving quiz - you really can't do much better on study material than that. Plus, as corny as it sounds, spending time watching the show meant that the Alex Trebek Stage felt familiar, even comforting, when I finally had the chance to step on it.
There are some other habits I'd recommend as long-term preparation, which mostly just serve to cultivate curiosity. Do a daily crossword, play pub trivia, and/or join an online league. (I recommend Learned League -- six well-crafted questions a day that touch on a wide range of topics.) And as you engage with whatever mode of trivia is fun and energizing for you, look up the things you don't know! That will help you make connections between various new facts and expand your base of knowledge. If you want to memorize specific categories of facts, use a flashcard software like Anki. When you're ready, take the online test. I had taken the test for many years (since the moment I finally aged into eligibility for teen Jeopardy) and of course when I made it on was the time I took the test on a whim between meetings. My advice is not to build the test up in advance, just find a moment where you're feeling confident and give it a go!
PASSING (THE AUDITION)
If you do well on the online test, you may receive an invitation to audition. This is a very exciting achievement, so take a moment to celebrate it! When I last tried out (spring 2022), the first round was another proctored test over zoom. It's very similar to the anytime test on the J! website, so if you did well on that then there's every reason to believe you'll be successful again. If so, you might get called for an audition. For me, this was another zoom, this time playing some simulated games of Jeopardy! with a smaller group of potential contestants.
The key thing to remember here is that they are casting entertaining, knowledgable people for a television quiz show, not searching for the World's Smartest Person. Come ready to play the game -- so, practice buzzing in, answering in the form of a question, and picking a next clue by category and amount. You want to demonstrate that you can step on the stage and compete immediately. You should also think of a couple fun anecdotes about yourself - what you do, where you live, or how you'd spend the money. Being confident and likable will help you get on the stage (though you of course need to know some right answers as well).
PERFORMANCE
Bear in mind that this advice on performance comes from someone who lost her first game, and whose Jeopardy! journey might well have ended there if not for the Second Chance Competition.
That said, the main thing you should know is that the taping of a Jeopardy game happens fast - perhaps even faster than it appears on TV. If something is going wrong, you have about half a minute to identify it and the other half to fix it, all while trying to ring in and answer rather obscure trivia questions. I'd suggest practicing trivia and recall while you're doing other activities. I listened to a lot of J! episodes while I was at the gym, cooking, or doing other tasks. I really tried to let Jeopardy become a consistent background music to my life for those last few weeks of prep.
I also did the best I could to approximate a dress rehearsal before I went. For me this was turning a large campus auditorium into a pretend Alex Trebek Stage. I put on my game one outfit, played the previous day's game on the projector, and had a buddy pause it to let me answer first whenever I rung in with my clicky pen. It was a clunky approximation, to be sure, but it helped me get the jitters out. Think about which parts of the tape day experience are likely to be challenging for you (wearing makeup, speaking clearly, knowing what to do with your hands behind the podium) and give yourself some time to practice and work out strategies.
A few other tips for day of:
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Eat breakfast even though it's an early call time.
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Chat with the other contestants - it's an exciting and stressful day you're all going through together, and it's both easier and more fun if you decide to bond over that chaos.
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Do the math for your final jeopardy wager multiple times on the scrap paper before you write anything.
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Don't do too much math while you're playing - trying to figure out what the score gap is and how many clues are left while the game is running will take away brainpower that should be focused on ringing in.
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Remember to have fun. Unless you're Ken Jennings, you're always going to want more time on the Alex Trebek stage than you're given. Don't waste that time beating yourself up for a wrong answer or worrying about what your facial expressions are doing - just play the game.
PRIDE
Whether you win or lose, you'll be part of Jeopardy! history your whole life, and that's something to be proud of. You can't control what opponents or categories you face, but you can control how you choose to think about your time on the Alex Trebek stage. For me, seeing how much it meant to my family, friends, teachers, and coaches helped me take a step back and appreciate the experience. So when my competitive self wants to retroactively critique my category selection or dumb responses (almost everyone is going to say at least one dumb thing on that stage!), I just remember that being there was something that brought joy to people I care about. And with Jeopardy! being a widely-loved institution, you never know who else your play might be meaningful to.