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To: cherry
Okay, I'm going to speak with a level of insight here. You see, in 1994, I was on "Jeopardy." And although I didn't win, I did lead through most of the game. Buy me a beer sometime and I'll tell you the whole sad story of how I went from first place to last in three questions.

Now, I rarely watch the show anymore. Somehow all the fun goes out of it once you've had your shot and lost. So I haven't seen this guy, but I will say this: there's a definite rhythm to the show and to working the buzzer, and the more practice you get, the better you are. Here's how the routine goes: the question is revealed and is clearly legible by the contestants. Alex reads the question out loud. The instant he is done reading a guy offscreen pushes a button that unlocks the buzzers. Buzz in before that, and you're locked out for something like 2 seconds. It took me a couple of minutes to get the rhythm and then I started to dominate. The other thing I realized is that all three contestants know the answers to probably 90% of the questions, so the whole show comes down to buzzer control.

Now, here's the shocking secret of "Jeopardy": Alex blows the question reading a couple of times per show. He mispronounces or fumbles or something. What they do then is have him re-record the questions during the commercial breaks (the shows are taped real-time). Notice that you never see Alex read the question.

20 posted on 07/14/2004 4:04:45 PM PDT by Heyworth
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To: Heyworth
You're spot-on about the buzzer. I've noticed that Ken usually dominates the first couple of categories completely until the newbies figure out the timing.

Occasionally too, you'll se him go on a roll when even he is better than usual at buzzing in. He will often buzz in at these times without a clear idea of what the answer is, he just thinks up an educated guess during his 5 seconds, whic is usually correct.

It's just a case of a really smart guy who has working the buzzer down to a science - just as you'd expect a trivia-expert computer geek to do, given multiple chances.

27 posted on 07/26/2004 8:00:11 AM PDT by Palmetto
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