I've made a few phone calls to qualify as a contestant, but I've run smack into the show's built-in bias. There have been many complaints that contestants on the show are overwhelmingly young, white, male and prone to nerdiness. O ne thing all the contestants have in common is an ability to succeed with the speed-listing test. The qualifying questions, like the one that gets a contestant up to center-stage on the show, ask contestants to list four items in some kind of logical order in the quickest time. The answer must be recorded in less than 10 seconds.
Contestants punch in the proper order of the answer on their touch-tone phone pad.
Questions, of course, become increasingly more difficult. I haven't checked recently, but I recall from my undergraduate psychology days that studies of reaction time suggest the best performers in such speed tests are teenaged males. One is allowed only one call per day, so I had to wait 24 hours before trying to redeem my bad digital aim. Most are in the vicinity of 5 seconds. I estimate my own RT to be about 9.9 and a couple of hundredths.