Making it to the "Jeopardy!" stage even for the elite among trivia buffs isn't easy. Each year, hordes of self-proclaimed quiz whizzes head to LA to sit in an auditorium as Alex Trebek's face looms over them on a video screen and they prepare to take the infamous "Jeopardy!" weeding exam—just to get a shot at appearing on the actual program. Many try; few make it to the next step. I've known people to get 47 out of 50 questions right and still not make it on air.
But at least they didn't have to face IBM's Watson, the computing system that took all the fun out of Audio Daily Doubles—and all things answered in the form of a question—by notching one more win for machine over man a few years back. It beat every human to the clicker with a machine-generated question when responding to Alex's answers.
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