Jeopardy

Took the online Jeopardy test last night. My son will probably take it tonight.

It was actually sort of fun. The questions seemed harder than on the regular show, but I think I got over half of them right. It makes sense that the test would be harder, since they have to make allowance for a certain "freeze factor" in front of the television cameras.

I couldn't afford the luxury of keeping score because they only allow you 15 seconds to answer each question, so my time was best spent thinking about the answer and typing it in.

The last time I'd taken the test, around 20 years ago in the pre-internet era, we'd been told we had to get 33 out of the 50 questions right to pass the test. I counted 31 that I knew I'd answered correctly, but evidently none of my guesses were right.

The biggest mistake I made last night was to forget to note the category for some of the questions. The category itself is an important part of the clue.

But I also got lucky on one of the questions, something about an institution in Copenhagen named after a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. I wasn't sure whether it would be Niels Bohr or Max Planck, but put down Bohr. I checked later and found that Planck was German. (Phew.)

You can take the test yourself this evening (Wednesday the 15th) at 8PM Central time or tomorrow at 8PM Pacific time. It's pretty simple to register, just go to Jeopardy.com, then make sure you're signed in before the test.

If you do well enough you could earn back some of the money you have to pay the government today.