Trivia World
Jeopardy is a trademark of Sony Pictures Studios and, obviously,
no attempt is made here to infringe on that trademark or to
make commercial gain from the use of that trademark.
Getting ready for
the tryout
It took me eight years to try again
for Jeopardy. The crew had returned to Toronto once in the
interim, but I wasn’t able to make it. And given how few
Canadians were getting on, it’d clearly be forever before
I’d get a chance again.
That left only one option: heading
down to Los Angeles for the monthly tryouts. In May 2003 I
called and booked myself on for the June tryout. And, what
the heck, Laura, too, since we were combining the tryout
with a long-overdue holiday in California. Hey … if she was
there anyway, what did it hurt?
When you call, they’re friendly, but
also keen to warn you not to come down solely for the
tryout, implying heavily that most people fail. I was cool
with that. If I flamed out, I could drown my disappointment
in California wines.
In the interim, we’d decided to sell
our house and buy a bigger one in a better neighbourhood.
So, instead of spending my time learning, I was packing
boxes and doing all sorts of minor but long-neglected
repairs to the house. My great plan to re-read and study all
the games I’d done since
1996, games that I’d started doing
in the first place to ready myself for Jeopardy … well, that
came to naught.
I did, of course, fine-tune some weak
spots. Those damn Romantic poets. Atomic theory. Old
Testament stuff. But for the most part, I watched the show
and began to worry.
The theory holds that the qualifying
test is drawn from the two highest-point-value rungs of the
game, the $1600 and $2000 question. To pass, I’d need 35 of
50 questions. That meant two thirds of the questions I was
seeing on the game. It was just barely happening.
Moreover, we’d actually bought a new
house and decided to put ours on the market while we were
away, so we wouldn’t be in the way. The days before the
flight to LA were a whirlwind of last-minute cleaning and
fixing … and panicking.
As we fly to LA, I read through a few
fact books. This, in fact, was cramming, and although it is
true that several hours on a plane won’t make up for a
lifetime of missed opportunities to acquire knowledge, it
did make me feel better.
By the time we’d reached the hotel,
there was a frantic call from the real estate agent. We’d
already had two offers. This was a good omen.
    
    
What the tryout is like
The next morning, instead of focussing
on the day’s Jeopardy audition, Laura and I were trading
faxes back and forth with our agent as the offers competed
with each other. In the end, we took an offer that was
$10,000 over our asking price. We were ecstatic.
It was now 10:30. My audition was at 2
pm, but there was an earlier audition at 11 am. For some
reason, I had a sudden premonition. “You have to go now.”
I’m not superstitious, but it did occur to me that the
longer I waited, the more nervous I’d get. So I headed
downstairs, just after things had gotten going, and asked if
I could move my appointment up.
I found a place to sit and started
filling out the forms. One of the things they want is a set
of anecdotes, which you discuss with Alex on the show. I was
ready for this and scribbled them all down as a video of the
Crew Crew answered some FAQs and gave us our marching
orders.
The questions themselves appear on a
giant TV screen and a tape of Johnny Gilbert’s voice reads
them.
The very first one asked for the name
of a Cabinet-level figure. I wrote down the answer quickly,
but realized later that the question was actually asking for
the first name. I did this at least twice in the test. At
one point, I wrote down the name of a speed skater, only to
be told later they wanted a figure skater.
Nevertheless, midway through I
realized I was acing it. Happily for me, there was lots of
literature on the test. There were a handful I was unsure
of, and in the end, there were only two I know I missed.
Assuming there were no others I misread, I had a score of
46.
As it happens, the Jeopardy folks are
quite coy now about what score passes. Rumour is that they
have different scores for affirmative action reasons and
that there was some legal trouble over this. Don't know ...
Either way, I passed, as did 22 people
in our group of about 100. This was an unusually high
number, apparently. Mostly, the people were good folks, and
I think I recognized a few of them on the show later. There
was something almost Canadian about how modest they all were
about passing.
Most of them were from California,
which was good news for me. Rumour holds that the least
likely contestant to get on is a white, male, middle-aged
writer from California. Only three of the people were passed
were women but at least I’m not Californian!
Then comes the mock game. I’d heard
that they not really “testing” your ability to play here, so
much as they’re testing your grace under fire and your
ability to follow the rules. Buzz in. Be called on. Answer
in the form of a question. Wait for a response. Pick a new
question. They like smiling. They like enthusiasm. They like
loud, clear voices. I’ve also heard that you should dress as
you would dress for the show.
I had fun with my mock game and with
the interview they do with you afterward. I was in a great
mood. As I explained, “This is the luckiest day of my
life—this morning I sold my house for $10,000 more than the
asking price and now I’ve qualified for Jeopardy!”
They like to ask what you’d do with
the money. I said I’d go to Australia and visit some the
people who played our game online
every week.
I realized later that this was a
mistake. I mentioned the trivia business in at least two of
my anecdotes, too. Later that summer, I met some NTN
employees at Game Show Congress 2003, plus some Jeopardy
contestants. It turns out that, after five-time-champ
Michael Dupree wrote a book about how to get on the show,
Jeopardy starting to frown on anyone profiting from a
Jeopardy connection.
So, heavily advertising my business
probably led to my being scratched off the list. (But if any
Sony types are reading along, if I ever do get on the show,
I’ll not breathe a word of it without your say-so. Promise!)
As I left, I asked if I needed to be
sequestered, since Laura was taking the afternoon test. It
turns out that they have at least two tests, which they
change annually. This is why you can only audition again
after 12 months have gone by.
So I shared the good news with Laura.
I was literally jumping up and down. Then she went in. And
she passed, too! We figure Laura got a score somewhere in
the mid-30s. The two of us had a huge, expensive supper and
celebrated. We even ordered room service and raided the
mini-bar.
Waiting for the call
We went to Hollywood, Santa Monica and
San Diego, then headed home to wait. Our new home, that is.
We moved in and waited. And waited. You are only in the
Jeopardy queue for 12 months from your audition date, but
they only tape from September to March, so a lot of people
audition in the late spring or early summer so that they are
there for the full summer.
I was under the impression that if
either of us got the call, it’d be in the autumn. As the
snow fell and Christmas came and went, I began to get
pessimistic. A couple places on this site teased Alex Trebek
a bit. Had they found that and counted it against me? Was I
too enthusiastic in the audition? Why aren’t they calling
Laura, either? Do they even have Canadians on anymore? I
began to dwell on the stupidity of trumpeting my trivia
business in the anecdote form.
I began to think about statistics. In
1996, about three times as many people passed the test as
they needed. With an increased number of goofy tournaments
(high school kids, little kids, Power Players, ad frigging
infinitum), that meant even fewer places for prospective
contestants like me.
I visited the Jeopardy message boards.
Some people tried out a half dozen times before getting on.
Some had tried a dozen times and never got on. I was 38
years old. My brain cells were been killed by old age and
alcohol. Things didn't look good!
On January 12, Jeopardy finally
called. Laura was desperate to meet a deadline for a FedEx
package to go out that evening. I was screening her calls.
The conversation went like this.
“Is Laura Brine Pakwet there?”
Mispronouncing two of Laura’s names
meant this was probably a telemarketing call. I put on my
“Don’t bother us, pond scum” voice. “She’s very busy at the
moment. Is there something I can help you with?”
“This is Jeopardy calling. We’d like
to have her on. Can she call us back?”
Stunned silence. “Oh! That’s different
then. Just a moment please.”
I fetched Laura and watched her jaw
drop as she answered the phone. They asked a dizzying number
of questions. After she hung up, we had a micro-celebration
as she got the crucial FedEx package ready. Even so, when
the deliveryperson arrived, it wasn’t ready. She was the
first person we told. She understood.
After this came the fun of telling
everyone. It took a few tries to get people to understand
that Laura wasn’t “in jeopardy,” she will be “on Jeopardy,”
and yes, we do mean the actual TV show.
Then it began to sink in. Laura, being
Laura, was immediately swept with guilt that she was going
on instead of me, since it'd been my dream for at least
eight years and she'd auditioned simply because she was
there anyway. But the way I saw her, being female (and cute)
her odds of going on were better than mine, and if I’d
scotched it anyway, at least one of us would be on.
Studying for the show
From that point on, I started coaching
her. Strictly speaking, Jeopardy can cover any fact in the
known universe. Practically speaking, there is a Jeopardy
range of knowledge that accounts for most of the content on
the show. Watching the show gives you a sense of where they
might be likely to go.
From watching the show, I knew that
Season 20 was emphasizing sports and the Bible. Most of the
gimmicky “Bob Goes to the Bakery” type categories had been
dumped. There were also more female-friendly questions
involving food and arts & crafts.
The changing category landscape was
good news for us. Sports would be a lost cause, but I did
give her my old games on the Bible. Being Canadian, her
other weakness was American geography, politics and history,
so Laura found a set of US-states flashcards, which had a
map of each state and its various data points (capitals,
nicknames and so on). I also gave her games on the US
cabinet departments (which I wrote especially so that she
could use it), as well as on US presidents, vice-presidents,
first ladies and, of course, all of America’s many wars.
Even so, raw memorization is no
substitute for a lifetime of learning things in proper
context. But it does help. Check out this essay on
memory and learning for more tips.
Another study aid is that Jeopardy
often doubles up the question.
In other words, it’ll wrap an interesting fact in an easy
clue. A hypothetical example might be, “What comet
discoverer urged Isaac Newton to publish Principia
Mathematica?” In this case, “comet explorer” is a dead
giveaway to Edmond Halley.
In some cases, the doubling up
overwhelmingly points to just one likely person: “Norwegian
playwright” is Ibsen; “Danish astronomer” is Brahe; “Czech
tennis player” is Navratolova; “Welsh poet” is Dylan Thomas
and so on. Getting a handle on these can be a huge head
start, as this doubling clue often appears at the beginning.
Finally, although Season 20 was better
written than Season 19, sometimes the interesting fact is
too well buried in overly cute writing, so much so that it’s
hard to tell what they’re looking for. Look for the noun
that follows the word “this.” That’ll usually be it.
Most days, she spent an hour or two
picking at things, either in the areas in which she was weak
or in areas where she could make quick gains with a little
work. She found general books on cultural literacy
especially helpful. We saw results pretty quickly. Normally,
when Laura and I played along to the show, I would beat her
most nights. In the two weeks before the taping, the balance
of brainpower had shifted.
As it turned out, hers was one of the
year’s few shows without any religious questions. But the
history studying helped and she showed surprisingly strongly
in the Colonial America category, where she got three of the
five questions. One nobody got and the other was Laura’s
Daily Double, which asked about Peyton Randolph, first
president of the Continental Congress. When it came up,
Laura floundered, trying to remember the House of Burgess’s
name.
“I could tell you which president died
31 days after being inaugurated,” joked Laura. “Why couldn’t
they ask that?” (It’s William Henry Harrison, by the way.)
It was weeks later that I let her know
that Randolph was mentioned in passing in one of the files
I’d given her. She was angry with herself at first, but then
again, given the huge binder of study material she had,
nobody could memorize it all. You have to prioritize.
Still, for a Canadian girl to dominate
a Colonial America category is pretty impressive.
Ironically, her “hometown howdy” mentioned that she would be
bluffing her way through American history. These are
recorded beforehand and made available to the local stations
to promote that local people are on. Oddly, few stations run
them (Ottawa’s didn’t) and there was no media interest in
her appearance.
Strategizing for the show
We also watched the shows and analyzed
them. It is amazing how poorly people bet on Final Jeopardy.
Elementary game theory (a form of
math)suggests
how the leading player at Final Jeopardy must bet if she
wants to guarantee a win, which dictates how the second
place and third place players should bet, since they can’t
win unless other people got in wrong. We went through
different scenarios and the math behind them.
(There is currently an odd trend
toward players in the lead betting so that there can be a
tie. The mathematics here are labyrinthine and, in my mind,
unsound, particularly since you are bringing back a good
challenger the next day, who is practiced with the buzzer,
rather than two complete rookies.)
One of the hardest things to do is
“know you’ll know it.” A couple of times on her show, Laura
buzzed without the actual answer in her head. She used the
extra time to reread the question and then spit out the
answer.
To that end, we had spent a lot of
time testing her instincts. That’s the advantage of the
pause button on the remote. We’d record shows and Laura
would play with the VCR remote in place of the buzzer.
Whenever she hit pause, she had to answer. She learned a lot
from doing that.
We also looked at the mental game.
From my time coaching Reach for the Top, a high school quiz
bowl, I knew that state of mind and calm were as important
as knowledge, memory and recall.
I told the Reach kids that the key to
winning is to forget the score and
treat every question as the beginning of a brand-new game.
That’s easier said than done in Reach, but somewhat easier
in Jeopardy. Because the game moves so quickly, and because
all the clues are worth different amounts, you easily lose
track of the score when actually playing.
We noticed how players who fell
behind, or missed a question they should have gotten,
started to panic and miss the next few questions. At a live
trivia event we went to, I simply could not remember the
name “Louis Pasteur.” I was sputtering “French chemist …
milk guy … germs and stuff.” After that, a
brain cramp became known as a
Pasteur question: it was only deadly if it killed your
confidence.
The nice thing about Jeopardy is that,
although it races by at lightning speed when you’re actually
playing, two thirds of the raw points are in the second
round. Plus, thanks to Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy
there is almost always room to catch up. I have seen players
with insurmountable leads get caught with only a dozen
questions still on the board.
If you’re ever on, never give up.
Sometimes, the top two players are so close in score that
they must bet everything to guard against one another; if
they both flub the question, that distant third-place can
turn into a win.
If you do find yourself absolutely
panicked, stop and take a deep breath, even if it means
zoning out for a question. A poor emotional frame of mind
only worsens your play, which worsens your stress. It’s also
a good idea to breathe and relax as much as you can before
the tape starts rolling.
Conversely, getting on a roll in the
game can put you “in the zone.” With your confidence high
and your rhythm working, you can rack up a large number of
consecutive hits and devastate your opponents. (See below!).
I see this all the time in Reach. You are so sure of
yourself in a category that you manage a Jedi-like
relationship with the buzzer, whereas players anxious about
a category will allow a microsecond of doubt to get in their
thumb’s way.
Even so, memory recall is a fragile
thing, and it easily gets stomped by emotional stress.
Winners stay cool under pressure. Laura has significant
public speaking experience, but even she was shaking a
little when she was playing in front of 15 million people.
In her game, the returning champ
started the game with something like 10 in a row right,
which would have freaked me out completely, but to my great
pride, Laura held on and got a second wind. She stayed above
zero and got to play Final Jeopardy, unlike freaked-out
contestants who sink far in the negatives and have to leave
early.
Beating the buzzers
Even so, she ended up in a distant
third. So, what happened?
Even though Laura knew almost all the
answers (and most contestants do), she was killed on the
buzzers in the actual game. Once Alex finishes reading the
clue, someone backstage “arms” the board. The players (but
not the home audience) see a flash of light around the
board. Whomever rings in first at this point gets asks to
answer.
However, if you ring in too soon, you
are penalized with a 0.20 second “lock out.” That’s long
enough to kill you, because someone else will usually buzz
in the meantime.
There is a picture of the podium at
http://www.pisspoor.com/buzzer.html. Basically, the
buzzer is a 4.5" long cylinder with a cross-sectional
diameter of 1.5" thick. The buzzer is connected to
electronic equipment by a cord long enough that you can hold
the buzzer behind your back, if you’re so inclined. The
button mechanism on the buzzer is rather springy and spongy,
which means you can rest your thumb on it without triggering
it accidentally.
However, any substantial pressure at
all will set it off. That means you don’t have to press the
button all the way the down. Laura had trouble ringing in
(and couldn’t get in at all until after the first break).
The crew came over and suggested she only partially depress
the button, but that she do so repeatedly. (Repeated
pressing is important, to overcome possible lockouts.
So the received wisdom is this. Read
the question quickly. Get the answer. Look at the question’s
last word. When you hear Alex finish that last word, ring in
then. Never wait for the lights and never let Alex “read the
question to you.” Read it yourself and use the time it takes
him to think of the answer and, if you can, reread the
question again. Never wait for the lights.
After all, Eddie Timanus became a
five-time champ and he was blind. He couldn’t even see the
lights.
You want your thumb hammering the
buzzer microseconds after the armer’s thumb lands on his
device. This way, you’re not waiting for your nervous system
to react on seeing the lights.
Here is what Michael Dupree says about
the lights: “The contestant coordinators will tell you all
about those lights and about how you should wait for them to
come on before ringing. If you do that you will not win. I
have never heard of a TOC competitor who relied on those
lights (and I have talked to 20 of them). You must time it
off Alex's voice alone.”
Knowing all this, we bought the
PlayStation version of Jeopardy and we started playing, both
to get her used to the buzzers and to get her used to the
pressure of waiting for the lights while competing with
somebody. Since I was a stronger player on paper than Laura,
we took enormous comfort from the fact that she was beating
me regularly to the buzzer.
When Laura went on, though, that
buzzer advice backfired. There is, in fact, a slight beat of
a delay, about three-tenths to one-half second, by some
estimates, between Alex finishing the question and the
lights flashing. Maybe the arming guy is getting older and
his reflexes are slowing. Whatever the reason, Laura was
killed in the gully between Alex’s last word and the lights.
After the first break, the contestant
coordinator told her that she was buzzing in too soon, not
too late, and she was being locked out every time. Thinking
that she wasn’t buzzing in fast enough, she’d even started
buzzing in before Alex was finished reading the question.
Before the show, you have a chance to
practice with the buzzers. You’re lined up three at a time,
and once you ring in three times, you’re replaced. This is
less helpful than it sounds, because a contestant
coordinator, not Alex, reads the questions.
But the biggest difference was that,
in the rehearsal, Laura wasn’t standing on a box. Jeopardy
likes the three contestants to look as if they are more or
less the same height. It helps the camera pan. Since Laura
was playing with two very tall men, she was given a box to
stand on. But that extra elevation meant that she couldn’t
easily rest her hand on the podium.
At the risk of mashing sour grapes,
this is more important than it sounds. Right now, lift your
fist in the air and press your thumb against your index
finger knuckle. Your fist lowers, not just because of your
thumbs momentum, but also because you’re unconsciously
moving your hand downward as well. It’s a natural reflex and
the lost swing reduces your buzzer speed just enough to make
a difference.
Our plan had been for Laura to
experiment with timing in the first round. But by the time
she had built a rhythm, it was too late. In her game, she
was blown out of the water in the first round, but was
competitive in the second.
Picking categories
Ultimately, however, the lights and
the box probably didn’t matter that much. Laura was up
against a player who was both very smart and extremely fast.
An eventual three-time winner, Al Davis of Washington had a
habit of demolishing the opposition with runaway scores. (A
runaway score is more than double any opponent’s going into
Final Jeopardy, which makes the final question academic,
since you cannot be caught.)
With a slower, dumber champ, she might
have been able to dope out exactly how long that beat of a
delay was and anticipate it. Then again, if there’d been
nobody else on the podium at all, it’d have been a
landslide. You play the cards you’re dealt.
It’s also to Laura’s credit that she
didn’t take one piece of advice I gave her. Most people pick
a category, start at the top and work down. The show’s
producers strongly encourage you to do that. I suggested,
however, that she go hunting for the Daily Doubles by
jumping around the lower rungs of the boards. Not only would
this keep the DD’s out of other players’ hands, but it would
also keep them off balance.
Some people go further.
Two-game-winner
Karl Koryat advises: “When
contestants are selecting a category, they're allowed to
abbreviate the category name to speed up play. … Now, with
some categories, you can use this rule to confuse your
opponents. I had a category called ‘Crossword Clues M,’ in
which every correct response began with the letter ‘M,’ but
when I chose the category I would say only, ‘Crossword Clues
for (dollar amount).’ Unless they looked at the top of the
category and read the full name of the category, my
opponents were at a crippling disadvantage, and I smoked
them.”
I thought the combination of leaping
around the board and abbreviating the category names would
be a devastating one-two punch, but Laura was told this
makes bad TV for the home viewer, so she played along. Good
for her.
What the actual taping is like
We flew down to Los Angeles on
February 9 for her taping the next day. Jeopardy tapes a
week’s worth of shows on Tuesday and another week’s worth on
Wednesday. It came be quite gruelling, and you may notice
that champs tend to fall late in the week. They are simply
exhausted.
There is lots of info from her
perspective elsewhere on the site. For me, I bid her goodbye
after breakfast, hung around the hotel, then cabbed in at 11
am.
We were herded through the set to
prevent us from bringing in cameras or from accidentally
finding out the answers. Some of us were friends and family
of that day’s contestants, while others were fans of the
show who’d always wanted to watch a taping. The fan sit
stage right and the friends sit stage left, with the
contestants who haven’t played yet. They are out of sight of
the players and you are told most sternly not to communicate
with the players, even if they’re sitting across from you in
the stands.
As it happens, I was sitting next to
the wife of Al Davis.
Johnny Gilbert warms up the audience
and plays a video of the Crew Clue talking about the show. I
missed most of it, as I was looking around the studio and
startled to see Laura up first.
Part of me didn’t like her going up
first, without a chance to watch the game being taped and
glean extra information about, for example, the pace of
Alex’s reading and the armer’s arming. Then again, had she
seen Al Davis demolish his way through a game or two, it
might have hurt her confidence.
Also, there is always the chance that
you can fly down to LA and not even get on. Each day, they
need 10 new contestants for five shows, but they call in
about a dozen in case some get stage fright or don’t show.
Typically, if you don’t go on Tuesday, you go on Wednesday.
I also found out that if you don’t get on Wednesday, they
fly you back on their dime for the next taping, which is the
only time they pay any expenses. It also explains why some
weeks you see a lot of people from the West Coast and the
Southwest … they’re taping on Wednesday and people from
those areas are cheaper to fly back.
Laura’s only contact with Alex was
what you see on the show. Before the show, the contestants
practice their stories for Alex, and the contestant
coordinators coach you and help you find the best ones. They
also walk you through the voluminous wads of contracts and
releases you have to sign.
Laura’s story was about her birth
announcement being printed accidentally in the “Livestock
for Sale” section of the local paper. He also commented on
the pronunciation of our last name, which is somewhat
unorthodox, in that many French Canadians pronounce it Pa-kay,
and we use Pa-ket. The show makes sure Johnny Gilbert
pronounces your name right and Alex is a stickler for how
things are pronounced. (We’ve been great amused by
his--entirely correct--take on “Peru” and “Nicaragua.”)
He also takes questions from the
audience during the commercials. For some reason, they shoot
blank tape in the time local stations use to run ads. So he
goes out and takes the same questions about his clothes and
routine. You are, however, warned quite sternly not to ask
about his salary.
This being said, he was in a good mood
and was even able to joke about the car accident he’d had a
few weeks earlier, in which he fell asleep at the wheel. He
also joked around in those rare occasions when they stop
tape, either for technical difficulties or to double check
that somebody’s wrong answer is in fact wrong. The judges
have lots of books and, one assumes, super-high-speed access
to Google.
During the stop-tapes and in the short
intervals before shows, for some reason Alex will
occasionally affect a German accent. He did that when Laura
was on and, apparently, it means he’s in a good mood. I
think it would have been because his daughter was on set
that day, doing a class project on the show. The whole Clue
Crew were there, too. Some people have caught Alex on days
when his mood is sour, and apparently, he can be quite
distant and cold.
Interestingly, the questions he reads
are not computerized. He has a huge sheet of paper on which
the entire round of questions is written as a grid. Alex
scratches off the boxes as he reads the questions then tears
off the page when the round is done.
The other interesting thing is that
the screen on which the questions are displayed to the
players is quite small. On TV, you see a grid of what looks
like five tiny TV screens under each category. The questions
actually appear on those little screens, so make sure you
bring your glasses. (Happily, you’re somewhat closer to the
game board than it looks on TV, and the video clues are
played on a larger screen off to the side.)
From Laura’s perspective, playing on
the set was a lot like playing at home. She didn’t find the
lights that hot or distracting, and she quickly forgot the
audience was watching in the wings. Moreover, the game seems
to be over in a blink when you’re actually up there. Buzzer
frustration aside, Laura actually had a fair bit of fun.
Especially when she managed to buzz in and get one right,
and it was a real rush to get several right in a row!
Sitting in the audience, I think Laura
did better than I would have. I found her questions either
rather difficult or just outside the realm of things I know.
I definitely would not have known the Final Jeopardy.
When the taping is done, you’re
thanked, given more forms to sign, consoled, and shooed off
the set. Laura and I stayed to watch Al Davis win again,
then left.
The aftermath
At first, Laura was devastated. Oddly,
it was mostly about the money rather than her performance.
Jeopardy does not pay any of your costs to come down. Aside
from a special rate at the Radisson Culver City, and some
swag afterward, you get nothing whatsoever from the show
except prize money and either $2000 for second place or
$1000 for third (minus taxes). She hoped to win enough for
some house repairs and a holiday, and instead, we were at a
net loss.
Still, it was $1000 toward a
California vacation, so we hung out in the sun, went to
Venice and prowled around LA a little. We also ran into
other contestants in the hotel lobby. There was a
quick-bonding community and Laura’s wished she hadn’t been
knocked out so early in the day, so that she could go to the
commissary and spend more time with them.
Jeopardy also warns you not to reveal
the results and not to profit from the show. Not telling
anyone about the results was very strange, but doable.
However, she’d had a contract in place to write an article
for Ottawa City, which we reprint. And we’d seen plenty of
other people getting writing gigs based on their experience.
So we ran the legal gauntlet and they were quite
accommodating. Helped defray the expenses a bit, too.
When the show finally aired, on May
17, we drove down to Toronto to watch the show with Laura’s
family. Added bonus: they own a truly
massive high-definition TV.
Even though I’d literally watched the
show as it was taped, it was a huge thrill to watch it on TV
and to see Laura actually there on the screen, just like the
thousands of other contestants I’d seen over the years.
And when the show finally aired, all
the things that Laura was embarrassed about never occurred
to anybody. Nobody thought it was terrible that she couldn’t
master the buzzers or that she couldn’t remember who Peyton
Randolph is. Instead, she got congratulatory calls and
e-mails. Everybody is impressed and amazed that a Canadian,
an Ottawa girl yet, had the gumption to go down to LA, try
out and get on, something that lots of people want to do,
but which few actually manage.
In other words, when you go on, you
have nothing to fear but the fear of making a fool of
yourself.
Shortly after we got home from the
taping, somebody won seven games in a row, setting new
Jeopardy records in the process. He blogged the experience,
and I took some comfort from the fact that he beat up
himself over the question he missed. In today’s Jeopardy,
everybody loses eventually, and nobody is ever happy about
it.
To help assure her some more, at a pub
game I run, the week before the show I surprised Laura by
including five of the questions from her show in the game:
one that she got, one that she knew but couldn’t ring in
fast enough for, one that nobody got, the Daily Double she
missed and the Final Jeopardy she got. I showed her
afterward that she knew three of the five, and of the teams
that were playing, only one team managed to get as many. It
was morale-boosting, and also very funny, as far as
practical jokes go, since nobody knew what I was up to until
they saw the show themselves.
With the passage of time, she looks
back on it fondly now. It was, after all, a
once-in-a-lifetime experience. As for me, I’m due in LA
later this summer. And I’m trying out again. Now that Laura
has run the minefield ahead of me, I plan on grabbing the
flag myself and seeing how far I can take it.
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