I tried out for "Jeopardy!" for the third time today, and once again, I passed the test and now get to wait up to a year for them to call me. Actually, while I wait, I should probably study literature, which is what I had the most trouble with on the test. Like perhaps I should try to remember that Mark Twain didn't write "House of the Seven Gables." (No, my misses on the test weren't quite that bad, but I'm not posting actual test questions on the Internet.)

The previous two times I had taken a test, it was in a hotel, but this time, post-9/11 security concerns at Sony Pictures Studios seem to have eased enough for them to once again do the tryouts right there in the audience seating area of the actual "Jeopardy!" set. Which, by the way, was not all that impressive without the lights on and with plastic over everything. I'm enough of a veteran of TV studios that I didn't think it looked smaller in person than it does on TV, and, in fact, the distance from the back of the contestant podiums to the wall behind the contestants is greater than it looks on TV.

This time, 12 people passed the test, 11 men and one woman. I will be very surprised if one particular person doesn't get on the show...he's the director of sales for the Uncle Milton company, and had a very different personality from all the other engineers, computer programmers, and closed-captioners who were there (i.e., a lot more outgoing, like they like on game shows). Unfortunately, I don't remember his name, but if there's someone on the show in the next year who talks ant farms with Alex, I'll know.

One more note: while we potential contestants were waiting in a waiting area on the bottom floor of the parking garage, a man answered his cell phone with, "Whassup?" At that moment, I predicted he wouldn't pass the test (correctly); a true "Jeopardy!" contestant would answer "Ahoy," in a simultaneous tribute to Alexander Graham Bell and C. Montgomery Burns.