Part of the reason for this is the way they come about. The contestant has to write down five interesting things about himself or herself on an index card. This happens while you’re being briefed on the rules and fed pastries and coffee, in the morning before taping starts. You’re stressed out, and you’re nervous, and you have to come up with FIVE interesting things. And you just signed seventeen releases that say that you won’t be on another game show for six months, that you don’t have a conflict of interest in being on the show, that you don’t have any relationship to the producers or the auditors, and so on.
And then the taping is incredibly streamlined, and it’s a blur, and your heart is pounding because you’re ahead, or you’re in third place, and here comes Alex to talk about something that you might not even remember putting on your index card. And he’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia, and he can converse on any subject, but face to face he’s completely unreadable—he’s always his TV persona, and that’s incredibly unnerving. And you have to talk intelligently about whatever it is, and you’re nervous as hell because you’re about to go back to playing against two formidable opponents, and it’s almost impossible to sound intelligent and erudite under those circumstances.