On Jeopardy, a player cannot ring in until Alex has finished reading the question. The way Jeopardy accomplishes this is by stationing a production assistant off stage and arming him with a device with a button on it. When the assistant feels that Alex is done reading the question, he presses his button and two things happen simultaneously. Small pin lights in the middle of panels surrounding the playing board go on, and an electrical impulse is sent to the buzzers, activating them. If you press your button before the assistant presses his, you really do get locked out for 1/5 of a second. If you keep ringing in before the lock out is over, you keep getting locked out, I think, but the total lock out time seems like it cannot exceed about a second. (Note that I am guessing about that from experience, I have not talked to any Jeopardy techies about this.)
The trick, therefore, is to time the buzzer so that you ring in as soon after the assistant presses his button as possible without coming in too early. Thus, even though Alex constantly calls players "fast" when they're good on the buzzer, the key is not speed but timing. And there are three keys to good Jeopardy timing: Accuracy, preparation, and adjustments.
Thanks for posting this. I tried out for Jeopardy two years ago and made it to the final list of show candidates - but I never got a call. My guess is that I didn't put enough "interesting tidbits" about my life on the Contestant Information Card.
The "How to win on the buzzer" information is 100% correct - it's all in the timing. If you buzz in just as the question is finished being read, you'll be too early and get locked out for a bit... you need to wait just a little bit until the assistant producer pushes the button after the question is read.
The process for picking contestants is facinating... if you make it on the show, you MUST know your stuff. The first thing you do is take a test of about 50 questions (read by Don Pardo on a videotape) and write down the answers (and no, they don't have to be in the form of a question). This was the MOST difficult test I've ever taken in my life - the questions are MUCH harder than the ones you see on the show - and you must know a lot about History, Literature, Pop Culture, Science, and Geography to pass. You get about 5 seconds to write your answer before you hear the next question. You need to get 35 out of 50 to advance - which weeds out about 80% of the potential contestants.
Then the divide the remaining contestants into groups of 3 and you play a mock game... this is where I figured out the buzzer technique. The winners of each of the mock games goes into the contestant pool - and I believe this is where the Contestent Information Card comes into play (they also take a photo of you, so this may have counted against me too!).