After years of watching “Jeopardy!” with his family, Michael B. Firestone ’05 waited in a pack of friends who had also come out to try their hand at trivia.

“How many times a week does my family watch ‘Jeopardy!’? Don’t make me answer that question,” Firestone said an hour and a half before the pretest.

Speak said more than 25,000 candidates are tested for the “Jeopardy!” television show each year, with around 400 of those interviewed appearing as contestants.

“Jeopardy! College Championship” episodes are the highest rated, she said.

And the nerdiest of the college nerds will be rewarded for his or her knack for facts—the winner of “Jeopardy! College Championship” will drive away in a brand-new Volvo with at least $50,000.

Mai Mai Lin ’04, 18th in line for the pretest, said she had not watched “Jeopardy!” in five years, but the opportunity to pay for a year of tuition with a few slams of the buzzer was too tempting.

“I’m not going to be disappointed if I don’t get in,” she said. “And if I do, I’ll be scared as hell.”

In addition to the pretest and the mock competition, the Jeopardy! Clue Crew—a band of crew members who travel around in a quest for obscure facts—created a circus-like atmosphere, handing out key chains, t-shirts, a special “Simpsons” edition of the Jeopardy! board game and tickets to the New Haven show.

Students who were not likely to work their way up to the final round got a chance to demonstrate their trivia prowess in mock versions of the game staged in the lounge.

Competing against Chopra and one other contestant, Andy D. Litinsky ’04 got 200 points for correctly naming the movie Unforgiven as Clint Eastwood’s most recent Oscar win.

Prizes also went to those who did not possess random knowledge, but simply random objects—like a moist towelette or a barbie doll.

Some students freely admitted that they did not have what it takes to be the trivia champion of undergraduates.

In response to a Clue Crew challenge to improvise lyrics to the Jeopardy! theme song, Tatyana C, Bartch ’06 sang, “My name is Tasha, and I didn’t pass the test. I feel really dumb ’cause I go to Harvard,” leaving the audience in laughter.