In the day before telly ( anyone remember that ? ) and TikTok , being a tuner announcer was one of the most search - after jobs in the parallel world . But landing the office was n’t well-heeled . applier had to prove they had the articulation , clarity , and command of language to carry a broadcast . One of the way Stations of the Cross tested them was with something called an Announcer ’s psychometric test , a misleadingly knavish passage project to trip up even the most confident English speaker system .

They were crafted to campaign an announcer ’s skills to the limit , packed with difficult orthoepy , tongue - twisting phrases , and rare vocabulary that take perfect diction and control .

According toPhillips Carlin , an American pioneer radio set broadcaster known for announcing the World Series in the 1920s , one such Announcer ’s Test go like this :

“ Penelope Cholmondely raised her azure eye from the crabbed scenario . She meandered among the aggregate of her memoir . There was the Kinetic Algernon , a hotheaded artificer of icons and triptychs , who want to write a trilogy . For old age , she had stifled her risibility with dour moods . His asthma attack caused him to sough like the zephyrs among the tamarack . ”

This example is reported in the bookI Looked and I Listened : Informal Recollections of Radio and TVby Ben Gross , although there were many other instance in circulation at the time .

You might notice that the passage contains a various range of letter of the alphabet and sounds , although it ’s not a pangram – a prison term that contains all the letters of the first principle – because it does n’t boast a J , Q , V , or X.

It also contains several unusual words that are n’t wide uttered and could well give masses off . The name Cholmondely , for illustration , is pronounced like “ Chum - lee , ” while Dour can be pronounced “ door ” ( if you ’re British ) or “ dow - er ” ( in an American dialect ) .

Try give the passage a read for yourself : how was it ? Remember , these mental test were n’t just for fun , they could make or conk out an audition for a very coveted caper . A flubbed syllable or misread Son could cost a candidate the line , peculiarly in an era when alive broadcasting left no room for wrongdoing .

Today ’s TikTokkers do n’t know how easy they ’ve receive it .