J! aud writeup to follow later

[ghostjmf]

I have stuff I have to be doing but want to write this up eventually.


Short report is that I did not throw up, & I believe I passed the test, though with at least 5 or 6 misses. And I actually rang in & got called as 1st (whether they really call the person who 1st rang in is something I'm not sure of, at the auds) 3 or so times, & rang in after someone missed & answered their Q correctly at least once. I was so afraid I wouldn't buzz in 1st even at the auds. As opposed to show, where I would probably not even register. But maybe not, I did OK at the auds mock game.


(Beyond "missed 5 or 6" (or more) we are not allowed to discuss our test. They will find out, this being the internet, after all. And they say they don't care about people rehashing the on-line tests, because those are "one & done"; they'll never use them again. This city-to-city test will be reused (I believe it's one of 2 they said they're using this time around). Probably the mock-game questions will be reused too, so I won't be discussing those either.)


I was in the next-to-last group called up to play the mock game, then be interviewed, though. I was wondering if they saved non-passers or people whose writeups didn't wow them for last, but one of my bench-mates, who had said they think they only missed 1 Q on the test, was in my group. So maybe it's just people whose writeups didn't wow them. Or maybe it really is random?


They said, at this aud, that the picking of passers of the on-line test to come for auds is completely random. No reason to disbelieve them on that. They did not say what passing is, of course (I know board lore here & on the J! board says its 35), & they did not say "we pick the passers with the highest scores". They also gave us figures, which of course I can't remember, of how many took the on-line test & how many passed, then how many they will pick to be on show; the # for a season's worth of shows is 400.


OK, I'll go into this later if there is a later, but the secret to wowing them with your write-up is to have pushed some buttons your interviewer happens to be an authority on. My session's interviewer was Maggie (or Margie? I'm lazily not looking this up) who was the one who picked KJ to play; she told us he writes in the dedications of his book that if he hadn't been interviewed by her "this would be a much shorter book on a completely different subject".


Maggie knows quite a lot about a lot of stuff & does a lot of off-the-cuff spiels about it to to the aud crowd, but apparently none of my stuff tickled her fancy.


A warning to people trying to BS on their writeup: Maggie really does know a lot on a lot of topics. That's why they've got her doing the interviews. This is an aud for J!, after all. If you are BSing to her on what happens to be one of her topics, she will catch you on it & call you on it, though in a friendly way I'm sure (that didn't happen at this aud 'cause no-one was lying). The woman in the 1st interview group of my aud apparently really is an authority on craft beer, both domestic & exotic European craft beer, you see where this is going. We're talking beers I've never heard of even though I do read articles on this, not that I'm a drinker; good thing I'm not because my recent ultrasound showed my liver to be fatty. Very bad medically, but at least it's not from drinking. Maggie & the other woman interviewer are rare beer experts too, it turns out. Look for the beer expert to be playing next season.

[silverscreenselect]

Short report is that I did not throw up, & I believe I passed the test, though with at least 5 or 6 misses. And I actually rang in & got called as 1st (whether they really call the person who 1st rang in is something I'm not sure of, at the auds) 3 or so times, & rang in after someone missed & answered their Q correctly at least once. I was so afraid I wouldn't buzz in 1st even at the auds. As opposed to show, where I would probably not even register. But maybe not, I did OK at the auds mock game.

I hope you get the call. From what I understand, your score on this version of the test doesn't matter unless it's so bad that it raises a red flag whether it was you who really took the test originally (they have no way to know who takes the test at home, just like the old phone game). However, they do make sure that everyone gets to answer a few questions, regardless of how quick you buzz in. They want to know how you respond, i.e., do you phrase it in the form of a question, do you project yourself well when you answer, etc.

[geoffil]

Congrats on getting an invite and thanks for the write up.

Can BB"s who did get the call let us know what group they were in for the audition?

[ghostjmf]

There were 2 or 3 people who they had to urge to use "a loud voice", though they did it in a very nice way.


And I didn't phrase my 1st response in the form of a question, though I immediately corrected myself.


Where I think I get points off here is that several times when I answered correctly, I was so amazed at myself that I forgot I had to pick the next category & Q. The 1st time they reminded me, the next times I corrected myself quickly, but I still should not have paused. I know I got that "deer-in-the-headlights" look, even though I had just answered correctly!


I would tell people to go to their local quiz contests, looking for ones that use J!-type buzzers. I have never done this, & it showed.


In a short Q-&-A at the end, I asked "what left-handers usually do, as I am left-handed". I had decided to buzz in leftie. You would think you'd want the side of your brain that does logical stuff to be answering J! Qs, but the artsy-fartsier other side might help in a lot of those Qs. However, we lefties have stuff in our brains more dispersed, are more ambidextrous, etc. I did not go into all this exposition at the aud, just asked what lefties usually do; Maggie replied that KJ is a leftie but buzzes in as a rightie. Interesting.


They did let a contestant run a category, which wouldn't have happened if they were completely picking answerers so that everyone got to play. And when a couple contestants got something right that "no-one has gotten in X # of cities", they told them. Wish I had been one of those.

[Ritterskoop]

Maggie is for real, and she wants us to succeed. She has been the best part of the audition and game experience for many people.

[SpacemanSpiff]

Can BB"s who did get the call let us know what group they were in for the audition?

I was in the first group. Not sure how they determined the pairings, though. Don't recall anyone else from my auditions getting the call (but, then again, all I saw were the back of the heads!)

Maggie is for real, and she wants us to succeed. She has been the best part of the audition and game experience for many people.

True that. She's definitely worth the price of admission!

[ghostjmf]

Not everybody gets interviewed by Maggie; they split the people for my 3:00pm Boston session into 2 groups. They did not vet the auditioners at the door. Strangely enough, they did not even card us. So I guess if your identical twin takes tests better than you, they could have subbed for you; it would have to be an identical twin, because they did take Polaroids. Or photos by whatever company is now making Polaroid-like cameras. You could do this digitally if you hooked a digital camera up to a printer, but G-d bless Polaroids.

Even if I don't take the best picture. It wasn't terrible, but I do look washed-out. I wanna get hold of that Fiji film they make for people of darker-hued skin. NPR recently interviewed an African-American photographer about it. The original values for developing film were based, by Kodak, on one very blonde lady. The interviewee found this out when investigating why the color portraits they took of their own family looked monochromatic, strangely flat, though black-&-while film portraits always looked fine. Of course, all that color-values stuff now has to be translated to digital printing, or the travesty continues.


At any rate, as I was saying back up at the top there, each group of 30 or more got a diff set of interviewers. My group got Maggie, Jimmie from the Clue Crew & a lady whose name I believe starts with "K". The other 30 or more didn't.

[TheCalvinator24]

You got Maggie and (probably) Corina. The other group probably had Glenn and Robert.

I never had an audition with Maggie, but I still got on the show.

I'm also convinced that they don't only take people who pass with the highest scores because the best score I ever got was a 42. Most of my scores were in the 38 range.

[ghostjmf]

Corina sounds right. My brain just wanted to put a "K" on it. She was doing the tech stuff for our group because they were down one tech.

My estimate of my score is getting lower & lower; its now officially at 8 wrong aka 42 right. I got a last name wrong. I never was convinced they take only the highest passers. But the interview process confirmed what I already knew from BAM interviews; you've got to tickle their fancy (&/or hit one of Maggie's or your head interviewer's areas of expertise) & I, sadly, didn't.

[ghostjmf]

Oh yeah, I wanted to mention the warning lights. I've read about these somewhere, probably in other J! aud writeups. There are a series of grey squares on either side of the board for the mock-J! game. You are not supposed to buzz in until those squares light up yellow. I've have read interviews with Actual Players that say you buzz when Alex T stops talking, but leaders of the mock game were very clear that you wait for the squares to light up, not when they stopped talking. I have a feeling that on the real show, the lighting of those squares is more closely coordinated with the end of Alex T tallking than it was with whomever was reading the clues, probably Maggie, during the mock game last Sat. In all honestly, I can't even remember if she was reading the clues aloud, but she probably was. Just as on BAM, though we know Regis read the clues aloud for the FF round, I don't remember ever hearing his voice read them when I was on the show.


Maggie pointed out both in the whole-audience mock game before the test, & the "3 people, just like on a real show" mock games after the test, that some of us were raising our hands, in the whole audience game, or buzzing in, in the 3-people mock games, before the squares turned yellow, which is why she wasn't going to call on us that turn.


A housemate of mine did a J! aud many moons ago (like, 20+ years ago) & was given a fake buzzer to take home & practise with. All we got were souvenir pens & earbuds, but if you can see those yellow lights on your TV (I believe the real show doesn't do closeups of those lights, sadly) you should practise answering only after they light.


Unless you take Arthur Chu's advice & buzz in continually, because, as he's said in interviews, a 10-second lock-out is only 10 seconds. Of course, he always knew the answer, too. I mentioned his advice to Maggie from the "floor" & she kind of grumbled & said "yeah, you couldn't see many other things Arthur Chu did", & told us not to take this advice. She did tell us to notice, which many of us have, that KJ often rings in before he knows the answer, though. That's OK, but ignoring the yellow lights is not. I got the distinct impression Arthur Chu was not the show's favorite conspicuous winner.


She did mention that one of the Decades contestants we would be seeing this week also used that "darting around the board" method (in search of Daily Doubles) Chu used, years before. The show has no problem with that. She said.


I do want to mention that buzzing in, once I got the hang of watching those squares, was not so hard. At a couple points I could get an empathy-like vibe of me & the woman playing next to me, who'd I'd been talking to earlier (they didn't usually take seat-mates for the mock games but had abandoned that rule for my next-to-last's group) having the answer dawn on us at the same time, as we practically pressed our buzzers in our outstreched hands in unison.


A little practise in some local game wouldn't hurt, but I want one with J!-like hand-held buzzers, please. Which don't actually buzz, by the way. At least not in the mock games at the auds. I could get into this. I might not be so bad at it after all. Even if they were picking late-buzzing people at the auds so "everyone got to play". They wouldn't have called on me 4 or 5 times just to give me a chance to play at all.

[tlynn78]

Good luck for THE call, and thanks for sharing all the good info.

[Bob78164]

A little practise in some local game wouldn't hurt, but I want one with J!-like hand-held buzzers, please. Which don't actually buzz, by the way. At least not in the mock games at the auds. I could get into this. I might not be so bad at it after all. Even if they were picking late-buzzing people at the auds so "everyone got to play". They wouldn't have called on me 4 or 5 times just to give me a chance to play at all.

I used my TiVo control to try to practice. My goal was to pause the screen after they returned to the contestants but before any of the podia began to light up.

I also played a fair amount of video pinball in an effort to improve my timing. --Bob

[SpacemanSpiff]

Oh yeah, I wanted to mention the warning lights. I've read about these somewhere, probably in other J! aud writeups. There are a series of grey squares on either side of the board for the mock-J! game. You are not supposed to buzz in until those squares light up yellow. I've have read interviews with Actual Players that say you buzz when Alex T stops talking, but leaders of the mock game were very clear that you wait for the squares to light up, not when they stopped talking. I have a feeling that on the real show, the lighting of those squares is more closely coordinated with the end of Alex T tallking than it was with whomever was reading the clues, probably Maggie, during the mock game last Sat. In all honestly, I can't even remember if she was reading the clues aloud, but she probably was. Just as on BAM, though we know Regis read the clues aloud for the FF round, I don't remember ever hearing his voice read them when I was on the show.

My personal experience: On the set, I quickly gave up using the lights, and went to the "timing to Alex's voice" approach.

The biggest reason: The lights were a series of small lights (probably about the same size as miniature Christmas tree bulbs) on either side of the board. The problem I had was that when I focused on reading the clues, I couldn't easily get when the lights came on -- or maybe I was just being beaten out by the (younger and quicker) competition. Once I went to the other format, I did much better. (BTW -- that method is a royal pain with video clues read by the Clue Crew, Oprah, or others.)

[goongas]

My personal experience: On the set, I quickly gave up using the lights, and went to the "timing to Alex's voice" approach.

Successful contestants I have talked to have told me they didn't use the lights either, they based it on Alex's voice as well.

[goongas]

My personal experience: On the set, I quickly gave up using the lights, and went to the "timing to Alex's voice" approach.

Successful contestants I have talked to have told me they didn't use the lights either, they based it on Alex's voice as well, but like I said in my initial post to ghost, when you are auditioning, you should follow their instructions.

[Bob78164]

My personal experience: On the set, I quickly gave up using the lights, and went to the "timing to Alex's voice" approach.

Successful contestants I have talked to have told me they didn't use the lights either, they based it on Alex's voice as well.

I can't tell for sure, but I'm starting to think that when the clue ends with a sibilant, the lights go on slightly before Alex finishes enunciating it. --Bob

[basketball_junkie]

I hope you get the big call.

When I auditioned for J! in 12/12, I was thrilled just to be there. I had played the on-line game about five years, but never got the e-mail to audition. Maybe my low expectations made me more relaxed. I did quite well on the written test and was in the first group of mock game players. The categories were right up my alley. Since I was competing against two young adults, I went for "Classic TV" and other categories suited for my age group. My interview went fairly well. I left the audition hopeful of a call, but simply happy that I did my best. Lo and behold, six weeks later Glenn Kagan called me. You're right about Maggie -- she is a barrel of laughs and makes the experience a lot of fun.

Once again, best of luck to you.

[ghostjmf]

I was thrilled to get the call (after only 3 years of taking the on-line test, only passing it this year & last, & flunking a real-test follow-up to a passed 10-Q test at a fair), but I'm under a lot of trauma these days & it's only gotten categorically worse since the day of the aud. I knew I had to go, & I'm glad I did, but I screwed up my "5 things to talk about" so badly they didn't even pick one of them, & I know how to fill out those things by now; I was just drawing a complete blank while writing the app & forgot all those inane but catchy things I've developed to say precisely just for such an occasion. Also, the thing with the new-prescription lens falling out of my glasses ate into the time I should have used to type those 5 things out instead of writing them, & I didn't go the extra mile to try to get printer access to do that.


Then I brain-froze on the test, worked to not let it get to me, & believe I did pass it. Still, there are at least 3 Qs I could still kick myself in the frozen-brain for not having them bubble up when I needed them to.


Your saying you were in the 1st group to be interviewed confirms my suspicions that they do have a hierarchy there. Still, an under-30 guy, who as such is in a demographic we know they want, & who had a great story about his Dad's dream job was also in my next-to-last group, so who knows.

In the mock-game, I got the last clue left in one category I knew well & 2 clues in one cat I had hopes for. That didn't hurt my mock game play!


Something interesting people who haven't auditioned don't know about the mock game is that they start the board with 5 categories, but only 3 Qs in each instead of 5. Then, as a category gets used up, they replace it with some other category, 3 Qs for that. A little unsettling, as this is not, of course, how the categories in real J! are used. The interviewers cut the game for each group off when they think they've had enough responses from each person playing, I'd say, not when the categories are used up.

So that's why when my group got up there, there was only one clue left under my fav category.


I have redacted some stuff here, in this individual post from a very short time ago, I hope in time; the J! crew told us not to breathe a word of the the actual questions on the 50-Q test, because they are going to reuse it. So I haven't. They didn't tell us not to breathe a word of the mock-game categories, but I'd bet they're reusing them too on this round of auds. So that's what I've redacted here. I hope in time not to earn their ire. If I did, so be it. That's how things have been going for me these days. Just 2 of the mock-game categories was all I trespassed with, not the actual Qs, J! crew, but even so I've redacted them. If telling some of your fellow-audtioners stories that were more-winning than yours were, I've broken that rule so long ago, when I 1st wrote this up, that there isn't any point to me redacting them too. At least I know the J! crew is not going to recycle auditioners' stories!


Still, I will continue to hope until my 18 months (they said "from the day of the aud"; I've read elsewhere its supposed to be from the day of the on-line test; I'll go by what they told us at the aud) is up, if it does get to that point. Hope, hope, hope for call before then, of course.


Thanks everyone for all the kind hopes.

[Kazoo65]

J! is still using Polaroids???!!

They need to get with the 21st century and go digital-although you can't watch a digital photo develop right before your eyes. That's half the fun of Polaroids.

I'm waiting for my invite to Detroit.

[SpacemanSpiff]

J! is still using Polaroids???!!

They need to get with the 21st century and go digital-although you can't watch a digital photo develop right before your eyes. That's half the fun of Polaroids.

I'm waiting for my invite to Detroit.

When Robert took my picture with the Polaroid camera back in 2010, I said "Polaroid film? How quaint!" And we chatted for about 30 seconds about how difficult it was becoming to get film for it.

Then again, maybe that chatup helped get me on the show.