Anyway, I got to New Orleans and we had a pretty fancy hotel (idk how my mom found it, Jeopardy didn't provide us a hotel and she found it for cheap) that literally every aspect of the hotel, from checking out to selecting music for the restaurant, was done on an iPad. You could actually add a song to the playlist for the restaurant via your iPhone/Android/whatevercangetheapp, which was pretty cool. The TV in our hotel room was way too fancy, it felt like it was a tablet in TV form. However, everything but the TV cost money, so we just watched TV. But I mean it was a hassle to change channels, the remote had a mouse ball on it, and you had to basically click on the show you wanted. It was pretty annoying, but luckily we were able to watch some olympic sports.
The audition was on Sunday at 3 pm, and our checkout was at noon. The audition was at a Sheraton near the French Quarter, so we got there at about 1 pm, and just sat and waited for an hour and a half. The audition was on the 4th floor, and we saw that there were 2 times before us to have an audition, at 9:30 am and 11:30 am. The info sheet said that the audition would take about 2-2 1/2 hours, so at about 2:30 we say a bunch of well dresses teens all leave the place (we waited on the 2nd floor) so I decided to get dressed in my snazzy clothes (however did not take a picture of myself :/ ). We walked up to the 4th floor and filled out more info sheets about myself, with info including my age, high school I went to, summer jobs, and if I have ever been on any other shows. When I received my audition email in June, attached to it was space to fill in 5 "interesting" stories about myself. We were there early, and went into the waiting room where some of the other teens were there already. I counted 21 other people there, with apparently one person missing. I felt sort of antisocial, since I wasn't participating in conversation with anyone else there, but most people weren't.
At 3 pm, 2 people that worked for Jeopardy (I guess the contest finder people) gave some speeches and took pictures of all of us. We all had a file, with our info sheets and picture in it. The first part of the audition was about to begin. We all went into a different room, with about 10 tables divided into 2 different sides of the room to have a sort-of aisle in the middle of the room. We watched an introductory video about the whole audition process, read by Trebek himself and members from the clue crew. The first part of the audition was another 50 question test, this one written. The questions would be shown one at a time on the projector in the front of the room, and would be read out by a member of the clue crew. We had only 8 seconds to write down the answers, so it was pretty intense, but unlike the online test, we could go back and fix an old answer.
I can't tell you anything about the test, because it is the same test given to everyone, and another audition hasn't happened yet, so I'd rather help my chances by not talking about specific questions. I felt pretty confident about the test. I think I missed at the most 15 questions and at the least 5 questions. Once we finished the test, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and the people would go grade our tests while we just sat and talked to each other. During this time, a man from the local news came in and filmed some of us and gave an interview to the only Louisiana native person there, so I keep checking the local news website to see if I can find myself there lol. Once the J! workers were finished with grading the tests, it was time for the mock game. This was a shorter version of the game, as it had all 6 categories, but only 3 questions would be given. If a category ran out, a new category with 3 new questions would automatically be filled in, so we didn't play a "full" game of the mock game per se. We didn't have lecterns like in the show, in fact we just stood in front of the whole group and played, I guess to give us the feeling of being with a studio audience. We had signaling devices (not buzzers since it didn't make a noise) and played it much like the real game, where we could only ring in after the question was read (which I think was read by Johnny Gilbert) and we had to answer in the form of a question. After the mock game was finished, the 3 people would stand up there and give their personality interview part. Basically, you would have to tell the basic info about yourself, then she would ask about 2 questions from your info sheet that you printed and the info sheet at the site. After all that, she would ask "What would you do with the $75,000 dollars if you win?" She told us not to say college, since we all will obviously say college.
I was in the last group, hopefully not because I did the worst, but by random chance. Since there was an amount of people in there that wasn't divisible by 3, I actually had 2 shots at the mock game, along with the other guy in my "group." In the mock game, I thought I did really well. I definitely answered the most of the people I played against, and never got one wrong. We only had about 11-12 questions, and I answered about 5 or 6. I was also never told to speak up, or to answer in the form of a question, so I think I did great there. Once it got to my turn with the interview, I gave my basic info, then she (her name is Maggie btw, in case you guys ever get on Jeopardy) asked me about my "mowing lawns as a summer job" (which I put there mostly to have something there) and I told her that I mostly mowed my grandmother's lawn. She then asked how much I got paid, and I said "Way too much" We kind of joked about grandma's having to pamper us and such. Then she asked about my funny story of how I had to leave my hotel in Italy. Basically, my brother's soccer team went to Italy to play in a tourney, and on the last night there, we were going to check out real early (like 3am) and no one was in the lobby, and the door was locked from the outside. My dad was trying to break the door down, my mom tried all the keys, and I eventually suggested "why don't we just climb out the window?" The window was unlocked, and we managed to open it, put all our stuff outside, then climb out and catch the team bus. IDK if anyone was laughing, I was so zoned in on answering the question (I was extremely nervous and a terrible speaker) so I don't remember. Then she asked about the money, which I said I was going to buy computer parts and build a super computer, then travel to Germany and visit my cousin, who is in the Army.
Overall, I think I did very well. I won't know if I'm going to be on the show until the end of September, but only 200 of the 15k people taking the test were invited to an audition, and 15 people out of the 200 people auditioned are invited to the show, so I guess I got really lucky! That is my story.