For anyone wishing to write their answers down as the voice says them, don't. Most of us are keyboard literate and I find it's a lot easier to simply open a Word file and type five 1-2-3-4 skeletons. At least for me, I'm able to type out more of the answer in the milliseconds between choices than I can write it out. It makes it a lot easier to distinguish which choice is what.

This has been exactly my pattern -- my question 5 was "when were these products first introduced in the U.S.?", and a check of Wikpedia later showed that two of the products were introduced only one year apart. That's a bit brutal.

When the question involves putting a title in order, I have enough time to get the key words down. For non-titles, I write down an approximation of whatever's being asked, like the year a book was published. Last night, I had a question about putting Kennedy family members in order. I jotted down (19)17 for JFK, "oldest" for Rose, etc.

As long as I go 5 for 5, I don't care what strategy I use. ;-)

I nailed all 5 tonight! Selected tape date of July 29! Wish me luck!

On a side note, I'm a little unclear on the rules. Can you continue to play the phone game and select additional tape dates if you pass through a 2nd time? The rules on the phone were a little vague on that.

Nope, you're done. But congrats! :)

So for the fifth night in a row, I tried to do the phone game, even though I'm no good at it.

Question 2 asked me to arrange the titles of four magazines in the order in which they were first published, starting with the earliest.

The choices were: Wired; TV Guide; O (Oprah); and Good Housekeeping.

So I dutifully entered 4, then 2 ... and then I got the voice saying "I'm sorry ..."

Say WHAT? Did something go wrong? Or did the ten seconds go by a lot faster than I thought they did?

(Anyone have time run out on them? Does the voice tell you so?)

Is it possible you were already wrong? I have no idea what the answer is.

Good Housekeeping was first published in 1885. TV Guide made its debut in 1953.

I guess I just ran out of time.

Yep. You'll get an "I'm sorry" as soon as ten seconds expires, even if you're midway through button punching.

Thanks to Chad's advice (THANK YOU!) and some quick thinking on my part, I made it through ALL five questions tonight!

Picked a tape date and everything. I'm on a cloud right now...this is the closest I've come to being on the show in 2 years and 3 auditions. Wish me luck!

Wheee! Congratulations!

(Just an aside to anyone who makes it - I'm a pretty good Googler as long as you can boil down the question to its bare specs and I'd be more than happy to serve on anyone's PAF list.)

7th time's a charm; finally got all 5 right tonight too. Ironically, one question involved the Olduvai Gorge, which i had no idea where it was when it came up in the Jeopardy! qualifying quiz back in 1996. I knew where it was this time (one of those 'place from west to east').

Considering I got randomly picked last time I got all five right some 9+ years ago for the 'final 40' quiz which I promptly failed, I figure I spent my good luck already. But like passing the Jeopardy! qualifier, at least I did all that I can do to qualify-the rest is out of my control.

Matt

gfkgjldkfgjdlkjgld short circuit error error error not irony coincidence not irony error error abort abort myheadgoBOOOOOM!

Sorry, one of my pet peeves. At any rate, congratulations on passing!

Thanks for reminding me -- if I get on the show (if I can ever qualify...), I have to have my PAFs promise to use Yahoo! instead of Google.

Why?

Because they give me a paycheck every couple of weeks.

Actually, I take it back: I wouldn't mind if my PAFs use Google, as long as they don't say they're using Google, which would be somewhat embarrassing for me.

(Oh, yeah, by the way, I just qualified successfully. It pays to have a vague sense of how old certain celebrities are!)

Don't you want to win? ;)

Aaaand with only a bit of help from his son, my dad just qualified. Lucky night, huh?

Congrats!! What were the times they told you they'd be calling if you were randomly selected? I thought it was between 9A-5P EDT, but I wrote down 9-6P EDT.
How many of us here qualified so far? 4? 5? 6?

Josh

However many it was, add another one. :)

Congrats to everyone who is in the pool for consideration to play on Regis WWTBAM!

It took dozens of calls for me just to get to the second round back in the day -- I'm just glad I didn't blow that :)

JD

Well, after having come as close as one inverted pair on question five back on Thursday, I haven't gotten past question two since.

Congrats to those of you who've passed.

I've been stymied on question 4 the last three nights. Tonight it was one with the name of 4 botanical gardens all over the world. The last one was just simply "Royal Botanical Garden" and a search shows there about 763,918 of them all over the world so even if I had gotten the other 3 down pat I had no point of reference to place it.

3 more chances to go.

- joshg
- mmb5
- dscungio
- tidefan12
- DoorNumberFour
- mcsittel
- trainman
- chad1m's dad
- rigsby

So, 8... 9 counting Daddy Wade.

Out of curiosity, how many among us have been contestants on Millionaire? I know there's Peter Sarrett, Steve McClellan, James Dinan and Tom O'Brien, and I'm pretty sure that Ed Toutant has been here before.

Oh, I forgot to chime in here. I finally qualified on Friday with a seemingly easy stack of questions. Question 4 was a basic arithmetic question (which, I guess, is "tough" for most Muhrkins), and question 5 was ordering political parties by when they were founded.

My callback (yeah, right) is next Friday.

Jay Lewis's page lists a few different names.

Ogi's been around, too.

Finally. Now the wait...again after 10 years.

I know there's a number of poor souls on the board who were FF contestants but never played the Hot Seat. (I am part of this group, was on the show way back in April 2000.)

This pool of eligible folks, I'm sure, are playing the phone game as frantically as I am each night.

I dunno how I did it, despite "mushmouth" trying to throw me off...but I did it tonight as well!!! I picked Aug 3rd as my chosen tape date.

In answer to a previous post, the time window for callbacks are between 9AM and 6PM Eastern, 7AM-4PM in the Mountain Zone.

What a great way to get woken up on the Left Coast on Friday -- by "The Call".

Good Luck to all of you...There's room in The Hot Seat for all of us!!!

Jeez, I hope they don't call West Coasters during the early portion of the window.

I actually am awake by 6:00, but I'm not in the habit of taking my cell phone (the number I gave them) into the shower with me.

Holy smokes! One and done... first try, and I qualified! Picking 7/31 for my date. I'll keep the phone nearby.

Last night, my wife had 5 fairly easy questions. We had an entry error on the fifth question. But it was things like easy U.S. geography, Best Picture winners spread out over decades, and the like.

Then I tried on my own, and I had two extraordinarily hard questions right off the bat, one on ordering First Ladies who were all within a 50-year time period (knew the correct order but it was hard to reason it out in 10 seconds), and the second question was about ordering inventions, which I bombed.

I did research afterwards on said inventions, and from what I can determine, all of them were created within a 25-year period, from 1890-1915. Two of the inventions were invented within 2 years of each other.

<GOB>COME ON!</GOB>

Two tries to go...

It was mentioned on a WWTBAM-centric message board last week that one "Fifth Question" heard by a wanna-be contestant asked players to put four "reality" shows in order of their premiere.

The shows in question (Top Model, Top Chef, Biggest Loser, can't remember the fourth) premiered in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006.

And you thought a 25-year period was difficult...

JD

Wait...spreading out Best Picture winners (of which there is one every year) over a period of decades is easy, but First Ladies (of which there are only 2-3 per decade) over a similar timeframe is difficult?

I know that one is probably slightly easier than the other, but I doubt they're quite as different as you think they are.

That's a good point. For a lot of people, the order of the presidents is much easier than the order of Best Pictures. A lot of this phone game is about getting the right set of questions that fit your particular strengths. I had no problem with a challenging Q4 about the debuts of various TV characters (all within a six-year span) but failed on a relatively easy Q5 geography question about islands.

I would agree with that Matt. The difficulty does shift... like for me, the 2nd question was a lil harder then then 3rd. Here was the breakdown on my questions (with spoiler bar, obviously):

1- Put phrase in order. Of, Phillips, Milk, Magnesia
2- Put 20th Century events in chronological order. Earliest. Henry Ford assembly line, Microsoft starts up, Bell Corp. invents transistor, USSR launches Sputnik
3- Put post 1960s films in order of release. Earliest. When Harry Met Sally, Carrie, Something About Mary, Mary Poppins
4- Place music events in chronological order. Earliest. Born to Run released, Greatful Dead formed, Ginger leaves Spice Girls, Eye of the Tiger released
5- Put literary characters in order of debut. Earliest. Bridget Jones, Becky Thatcher, Daisy Buchanan, Lolita

I'll be honest... I got lucky on a couple... but I'll take it :P lol Hopefully I get the call... ummm, I do have a poser though... once I qualify, may I try to qualify for another taping? Or am i done and have to wait for the call (which, IIRC, is on Friday, correct?)?

No, yes, and it depends on the tape date you selected.

I picked the 31st for the tape date... so it should be soon, I believe.

** Celebrity Fit Club was the last one. I got that question-I'd never heard of it!

So for the first time ever I get to question 5, and it's put reality shows in order, only these were Survivor, Amazing Race, Bachelorette, and Hell's Kitchen. I knew the order, and I wrote them down in the right order, but I somehow must have typed them in wrong as I got the "I'm sorry" message. I'm going to be sick, tonight was only the second time I've gotten past question 2.

So based on those who got far enough to pick a tape date, when is the date range of "The Calls"? It sounds like they won't be doing them all on Friday.

A 8/3 Tape Date = Friday 7/17 Call. Others??

Would probably make sense if they did do them all in a Friday... think about it... 12 tapings, 120 players, 120 calls... each call should only last about maybe 3 minutes if they need to get information... 3x120=360... so about 6 hours to do all the finalists... add a lunch break, a buffer time... they can easilly do it within the 9 hour window.

If you selected your tape date as July 29 or July 30, you'll get a call this Thursday. For July 31 and August 3, this Friday. August 4 and August 5 will be called on Monday. Remember, all call times are 9 AM - 6 PM ET.

That seems unlikely.

Fixed. =P

I have a feeling the calls will last longer than 3 minutes, since they will need to give information, rather than just get it.

However, I also have a feeling they will have more than one person making the calls.

Tonight, I did two things at the same time. One, passed the phone quiz. Two, scare my friend from Germany into thinking I was having a seizure. I must admit I thought my set of questions were easy. This is how my set came out.

1. Put these words together to form the name of an Asian body of water.
2. Put these authors in chronological order of their birth (names were 200 years apart)
3. Put these letters as they are found on a standard American keyboard
4. Put these broadway musicals in order of when they first debuted (all debuted within the last 10 years)
5. Put these comics in order of first printing (50 year span)

My theory is I got lucky. I picked August 4th as my tape date, so fingers crossed. Also, If I get on the show, you may get to meet my mom. She is the one who supplied a "line of the day" when after I said I passed the Millionaire quiz but not the contestant interview said, "You got too many questions correct."

I got burned on Q4 tonight. They wanted roadways by length, and one of them, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, I'd not heard of. But I heard "tunnel" and decided "How long could it be?". Turns out it's a 23 miles long system of bridges (plural) and tunnels (plural), much longer than either of the more famous bridges (Brooklyn and Golden Gate) mentioned in the question.