CONTINUING MY TOUR of local appearances by national game-show producers, I stood in line for nearly three hours on Wednesday to attend the Seattle auditions for the new syndicated version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It all took place in the unfinished second phase of KOMO-TV’s new building, under the scary 30-foot-high grins of new Millionaire host Meredith Viera and new Pyramid host Donny Osmond. (The long “blemish” on Viera’s face in the above picture is the Space Needle’s reflection.)

Once we finally got inside, the 250 applicants in our group (one of four groups that day) were herded into a big unfinished room on the main floor. Among too-few folding chairs, big flat-screen monitors blared promos for the station’s new fall shows for an hour.

Finally we were herded into unfinished elevator cars up to another big unfinished room on the fourth floor. We were handed No. 2 pencils, small sheets of cardboard, and fill-in-the-tiny-squares data-processing slips familiar to anyone who’s voted in certain jurisdictions or taken certain public-school standardized tests.

We had 30 multiple-choice trivia questions to answer in 12 minutes. Only those who scored above an unmentioned threshhold were to be kept around for in-person interviews (where the production staff would presumably weed out candidates lacking in hot looks, perky personalities, or the correct demographics.)

Your former professional trivia writer failed to make the first cut. Perhaps if I’d previously boned up on Henry VIII’s wives or Argentinian geography, but oh well… Back to worrying about the daily bills like most of the rest of you.