As I mentioned on Seattlest, I passed the in-person Jeopardy! audition in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. Now I officially have about a 1 in 6 chance of appearing on the show in the next couple of years. I’m coming out ahead regardless — I won a Jeopardy! home game when bwouns from the Ken Jennings Message Board misremembered what year the show came back on the air.
One thing the Jeopardy! people said that stuck with me: The people on the show want you to win money. They’re not there as your adversary — your fellow contestants are your adversaries.
When I started writing quizzes, I had to learn that. In my first few quizzes, I deliberately included questions that I knew would be difficult, possibly even stumpers. At least one per round, sometimes two.
Why? I had in the back of my head that I was competing with the players. Somehow it was points for me if I stumped them.
It took reading some other people’s advice on writing questions — particularly Jennings in Brainiac, and the guys at the Trivia Hall of Fame.
Turns out it’s a lot more fun to host when you try to write questions that a lot of people can answer. I definitely still try to challenge players — a great question rewards lateral thinking. But stumping them isn’t that hard to do, and it’s not much fun when you’re on a team with a half-empty answer sheet.
I’m not there to beat the players. I’m there to give teams a good playing field where they can compete with each other.