Some (very late) final thoughts

I promised to write some final reflections on the Battle of the Decades when it aired back in May, but the end of the semester intervened and I never got around to it.  Now on the occasion of the tournament being shown in reruns, I'll revisit what it meant to be a part of it.

When they first announced that they'd be doing a special tournament, I honestly wasn't even thinking much about it.  It was right around the time our baby was born, and work was really busy at the time, and I figured I wouldn't be that high on their list of potential invitees anyway.  But when they decided to invite all the previous ToC winners, it started to get real.

With the level of competition in this tournament, I didn't think I'd have much of a shot -- I was nowhere near "playing shape" and every person in the field was an all-time great.  I got pretty---ok, really---lucky to beat Larissa in my first round game.  That, of course, was fantastic, but the whole experience of spending a few days with the great champions of the 2000s --- every one of them friendly, interesting, wonderful people --- would have been more than enough for me to call this a fantastic experience.  I laughed so much with that group and made some new friends that I know I'll cross paths with again.

I didn't figure the tournament round would be as much fun...we had work to do, after all!  But again, everyone was an absolute pleasure.  That they had a film crew following us around and making a mini-documentary about the tournament was a fun taste of being a "celebrity" without the unseemly paparazzi and phone-hacking.  And the tournament itself lived up to its billing and more: what a treat just to be in the studio to watch it in person, let alone be playing in it!

Then, the wrap party was just icing on the cake.  They decked out the Wheel of Fortune studio in true Hollywood excess, with pink- and purple-hued neon lights and similarly colored drinks at the open bar.  Alex, Harry Friedman (the exec producer), and the rest of the show's staff seemed honestly thrilled at how the tournament went, and it was yet another surreal thing to have the opportunity to be part of.

At the wrap party on the Wheel of Fortune set.

Andrea and me with the incomparable Johnny Gilbert (age 89 at the time, now 90)

With Ken Jennings, along with nice photobombs by Ed Toutant and Sarah from the Clue Crew.

Speaking of the show's staff and crew: it was great to see that almost the entire group was still there from when I had last been at the studio 10 years prior, from the contestant coordinators to the camera crew to even some of the ushers.  I think this is the biggest testament to how well they must treat people, and how much of a "Jeopardy! family" there is.

Finally, the advent of social media provided a fun additional flavor to the whole process this time around.  It was much easier to let a lot of people know that the tournament was happening, of course -- we were able to organize some pretty great viewing parties here in Fort Collins -- but it's bigger than that.  Being able to keep in touch with the other contestants, and amicably talk trash when the shows aired, was a lot of fun.  Using twitter to dig up the nasty things people say about J! contestants was also, um, "fun."

But seriously, I think the coolest thing was that many of my friends from high school and college now have kids of their own who are old enough to watch the show and enjoy it, and seeing the messages and pictures and videos of their kids glued to a quiz show to cheer me on meant so much.  And now during reruns our son (now 13 months old) is at least recognizing the "Think!" music, and also getting a respectable $13K Coryat. ;)

So a huge thanks to the J! powers that be, all the other contestants that I met during the tournament, all of my friends and family, for a few months that I'll never forget.  See you all in the 35th or 40th anniversary tournament?

What a finals!

I'll post some final reflections on this tournament when I get things wrapped up for the semester, but for now, just a few notes.  I hope you all watched the whole finals of the Battle of the Decades...it was three really great, really smart players showing just how good they are (and having a lot of fun in the process).

However, if you missed it, you may watch me chew on a Sharpie while watching the abridged version embedded below.  Congrats to Brad Rutter, on a hard-earned victory; congrats to Ken Jennings and Roger Craig for equally impressive perfomances, and most of all, thanks to Jeopardy! for putting on this tournament and letting me be a part of it!

Because it's the Cup

The finals are now set.  After my defeat, I got to watch from the audience as Brad Rutter had a really impressive performance, mowing down Leszek and Tom.  And the third semifinal was a great match between Roger Craig, Colby Burnett, and Pam Mueller, with each of them getting a "True Daily Double" and Roger struggling at times but ending up in the lead going into the final.  This final was tough but gettable: Cartier explored eastern Canada and I started off with St. Lawrence but wasn't happy with it, and eventually got to PEI with a few seconds left (just maybe enough time to write it down if I had tried to do so.)

Not much time to write anything more now, but the finals do not disappoint.  Here's the preview from us semifinalists (I appear near the very end):

Enjoy!

Stuck in the middle

I guess if you're going to get run out of the gym on Jeopardy!, there's probably no shame in having Ken Jennings and Chuck Forrest be the people you're playing against.  (Seriously, I played in a game, in the semifinals, in a tournament, against Ken Jennings and Chuck Forrest.  That this happened is still kind of hard to believe.)

And what a game it was!  I was really only a passive participant, but it was fun to be standing up there watching these two masters plying their craft.  Ken's buzzer timing is truly incredible.  I know what it feels like to be able to ring in whenever you want to -- in my original run of shows, I had been really, really good on the buzzer, mainly from lots of practice beforehand.  I got in that zone during the ToC finals as well.  But I had no chance against Ken.  I'm not really sure whether I was a little early or a little late; probably a matter of picoseconds (cough, cough).  I now know what it must've felt like for the people I defeated in my original run of shows (or any of the 150+ people who had to play Ken previously)...it is really frustrating to know stuff and not be able to get in.

During this game, a whole lot of what Ken got, I knew, but couldn't get in (except for anagrams...I hate anagrams and he's so good at those kinds of categories).  Pretty much everything Chuck got was stuff I didn't know.

After the first round, Chuck and I were a bit in shock that Ken had run up such a big lead.  But, as Alex said, there's lots of money available in the DJ round, and I was very impressed when Chuck got that Daily Double and worked his way back in the game.  And then Ken finds the Daily Double, bets big, and misses...things are getting interesting!  (The "spy novel" category was not loved by any of us.)  Chuck even managed to take the lead briefly, though it didn't last long.  All I was able to do was purloin a letter and yet again forget the category on a video clue (I actually said something like "Russ, look at the category!" after that but I guess they edited it out).   At least I could commiserate with Ralph (but I didn't beat the smart kids this time):

Mostly I just wanted to quote Ralph Wiggum on #Jeopardy #missionaccomplished (more serious thoughts soon) pic.twitter.com/xJ8FUo1Vm3
— Russ Schumacher (@russ_schumacher) May 13, 2014

That final is one I very likely would've figured out while sitting on the couch at home -- I knew that poem came from Kipling in regards to the Philippines.  But it didn't come to me right away, and I saw Ken and Chuck both start writing before Alex was even finished reading the clue and I knew I was done and the brain turned off.  (Note to future contestants, if you're ever in a situation where it doesn't matter if you get the final right, like if you bet $0 or made a small bet from a close 2nd place, consider starting to write a response down immediately.  It has a major psychological effect, or at least it did for me.  Same thing happened in my "spam" game...Mike and Elana started writing it down immediately, it didn't come right to me, and I couldn't think straight after that.)

Major congrats to Chuck and Ken on an epic game!

It was an honor to be a bystander to the two legends! Congrats to Ken and retro good luck tomorrow Brad! @bradrutter @KenJennings @Jeopardy
— Russ Schumacher (@russ_schumacher) May 13, 2014

I'll post some more thoughts about the entire tournament and the experience when it's done.  I feel so lucky to have been a part of it, to have made it this far into a tournament with such incredible players (and really great people).  And to have had a chance to share the experience with so many friends and family and supporters.

Finally, in case you missed these:

Heads up @KenJennings I think he's talking about #Jeopardy but he's a baby so we can't be sure. pic.twitter.com/HeteSzUc2r
— Russ Schumacher (@russ_schumacher) May 12, 2014

(The backstory here is that they made all of the 2000s contestants say this when filming the promotional videos for the tournament. We all thought it a little bit silly but it was a great topic for our son's onesie to commemorate the day.)

Also this. My wife is the best. pic.twitter.com/htbQn3publ
— Russ Schumacher (@russ_schumacher) May 12, 2014

The semifinals are set

After a fantastic game to wrap up the quarterfinal round between three outstanding players (most impressive to me was the classical music category, which is probably one of my strongest J! categories, but I was struggling with those clues while the players swept them right up.), the semifinal field is set.  Chuck Forrest secured the last automatic spot in the semis with his win, and Colby Burnett grabbed the last wild-card spot with his conservative FJ wager.  My Tuesday opponent, Pam Mueller, saw her score hold up for one of the wild cards as well.

The semifinal matchups are:

So I find myself playing against two true legends of the game: Chuck Forrest, the first truly great champion in the show's history and originator of the "Forrest Bounce"; and Ken Jennings (maybe you've heard of him?)

(If you're wondering, nobody really knows how they select the semifinal matchups in these tournaments.  We can make educated guesses, but they often are somewhat puzzling.  In this case they surely wanted to keep Ken and Brad in different games so that they could potentially face off in the finals.)

How will I fare against these two greats?  Tune in on Monday!

Ken's good too

After Brad's impressive performance in quarterfinal game 3, we witnessed another dominant win in game 4 (unsurprisingly, I suppose) from Ken Jennings.  The speed with which he mowed through the Roman numerals category was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen on the show.  I would've come up with most of these with maybe 5 seconds to think about it, but Ken seemed to figure them out in about half a second.  (These wordplay kinds of categories are one of his many great strengths.)



That said, I still can't figure out how he knew the "Humpty Dance" but not "Sabotage" in the "90s rap songs" category (and at least he owned up to it):

Lots of people asking how I missed the Beasties & "Sabotage" on Jeopardy. I HAVE NO EXCUSE.
— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) May 9, 2014

Brad and I had to pile on a little bit:

http://t.co/VfOcPLb2uk @bradrutter @KenJennings @TLCoolJ
— Russ Schumacher (@russ_schumacher) May 9, 2014

Even with Ken's domination, Tom and Rachael were able to build up decent scores going into FJ, and a relatively easy final brought them up to good positions: Tom secured a wild-card spot (and Leszek now also has one locked up) and Rachael made her way into the 4th spot with one game to play...

Current wild-card standings:
Tom C $19,500
Leszek $15,000
Pam $14,798
Rachael $7,600

The last quarterfinal game features Chuck Forrest, probably the first truly famous and great player in the show's history; Mark Dawson, who had one of the most impressive performances in the preliminary round; and Colby Burnett, who's still never lost a game.  This game will set the field for the semifinals next week!

Ruttered

Well, this photo from Jeopardy!'s facebook feed pretty much sums up the 3rd quarterfinal:

Seems that Brad is pretty good at this game.  I felt bad for Dan...when he and I talked prior to the taping, we guessed that either he or I was going to have to play Brad, and he drew that straw.  (Not literally...I don't really know how they choose the matchups, but it doesn't involve drawing straws!  But we figured that they wouldn't put Ken or Roger or Colby against him in the first round, so that left us.)  Dan gave a valiant effort, and if just one of those Daily Doubles had gone a different way, the outcome could've been quite different.  [Dan's the person I spent the most time hanging out with at these tapings, and he's just a great guy all-around, funny and sharp.] But there's also a reason that Brad's never lost (to a human).

Dan is still technically in the running for a wild-card spot, though, and stranger things have happened before! 

Current wild-card standings:
Leszek $15,000
Pam $14,798
Tom N $2,400
Dan $399


The fourth quarterfinal features the other player that everybody knows: 74-time champion and twitter gadfly Ken Jennings.  He faces off against Tom Cubbage, the only player ever to win both the College Championship and the Tournament of Champions (and, as I found out at the taping, we're fraternity brothers), and Rachael Schwartz, winner of the 1994 ToC.  Will Ken dominate as he always seems to, or will one of the others pull off the upset?

WEATHER

I guess I'm establishing a tradition of starting off very slowly and coming back at the end.  Sorry for any heart attacks that were induced during this game. :)

Having Alex call Pam, Tom and I "impressive" at the end of the game was a great compliment.  And it makes watching a tournament like this so much fun: you know that all the contestants are excellent and so they aren't going to leave too many dollars on the board, even with difficult material. 

I think Pam and I felt like we were going to be primarily battling each other on the buzzer in this game, but Tom jumped out to a really quick start and was consistently getting in first.  He mowed through those "on the map" clues, got the DD on the Apollo 11 astronauts, and found himself with a big lead at the end of the first round.  (What is it with video clues where they show a map and point out one country in GIANT LETTERS and your brain just wants to make an association with those GIANT LETTERS?  Clearly the star was located at Caracas, but COLOMBIA was all I could focus on.)

Fortunately I know some TV and was able to build a little bit of cash at the end of the first round.  "Major Dad" was a favorite show of mine as a kid and I recalled that Gerald McRaney had also been in "Simon & Simon."  I hadn't seen this prior to the show, but my sensai Bill Schantz alerted me to it and it's amazing:



Just like in my preliminary round game, I was keeping in mind that there's a lot more money available on the board in the DJ round, and hoping for some good categories there.  And there it comes: "WEATHER."  (Flags and music are pretty good for me too.)  I actually wasn't all that thrilled to see the weather category pop up: I can only imagine the consequences if I crashed and burned on some clues there!  Plus, I'm very prone to overthinking in categories that I have deep knowledge in (see also: CALCULUS in my ToC finals.)

I didn't want to start right in on the weather category, so we went through some music and flags first (hopefully Big Audio Dynamite makes up for missing Devo last time).  Pam got the big DD in French Poets (translation: French novelists and philosophers who wrote a poem or two), which is a strong category for her, and she jumped into the lead.  Pam held a narrow lead through most of the round despite missing a really tough DD, and then we eventually came to WEATHER.  The clues ended up being pretty straightforward, including one on radiosondes/weather balloons!  (I spend a fair bit of my time working with data from radiosondes, and was involved in a field experiment last summer where we launched a lot of them.) Fortunately I got in first on the buzzer on that one, or I wouldn't have ever lived it down. I grabbed the lead very briefly but Pam quickly took it back, and went into the final with a $2000 lead.

With three 5-digit scores and the wild-card spots in play, the wagering strategy here wasn't that clear. (Even Keith seemed puzzled as to what to do.)  Pam and Tom clearly had the idea that the wild-card cutoff might be in the $20K range, but I didn't anticipate that it would be that high.  My $1300 wager was essentially a balance between staying above $14K if I missed (which I thought was a good target) and getting at least a little bit of a boost if I got it.  (I was tempted to bet $2001 to go ahead of Pam if she wagered zero and I was correct, but I decided it wasn't worth risking going below $14K.)

It's probably some kind of cliche to say that I listen to quite a bit of NPR, and they've been running all kinds of stories about the rise in the North Dakota economy due to oil and gas exploration and the problems associated with the boom.  So that came to mind very quickly...I also considered other smallish oil/gas states like Wyoming but figured North Dakota was the most likely to fit the clue.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was the only one to get it, and even more pleasantly surprised that I won the game as result.  I figured that with our scores, if Pam or I didn't win we'd have a good shot at a wild card, but it was certainly nice to be able to relax and watch the rest of the quarterfinal games knowing that I'd advanced.  I sat next to Pam for most of the rest of the day, and she was rather nervous about whether her score would hold up.  Will it?  You'll have to watch the rest of the week to see!

Current wild-card standings:
Leszek $15,000
Pam $14,798
Tom N $2,400
Robin $0  [yes, people have advanced with $0 in the past! It's very unusual though.]

Our little man's special quarterfinals onesie (even though I didn't actually find any DDs)

Panoramic of my students launching a weather balloon in May 2013

The third quarterfinal game is another powerhouse matchup.  There's Brad Rutter, the all-time winningest player in the show's history.  And Mark Lowenthal, who wrote the book "Secrets of the Jeopardy! Champions" (along with Chuck Forrest, who will appear Friday).  And my 2000s group pal Dan Pawson, 2009 ToC winner, who nicely summarizes the thoughts of the entire field going into today's match:

Today's the day: up against Mark Lowenthal, who literally wrote the book on Jeopardy, and @bradrutter. Can I keep up? pic.twitter.com/MBteKY7LY7
— Dan Pawson (@Daniel_Pawson) May 7, 2014

Enjoy!

The quarterfinals - it's time!

The Battle of the Decades got off to a swift start last night with a great game between Roger Craig, Robin Carroll, and Leszek Pawlowicz.  Leszek jumped out to a big lead, but Roger worked his way back in typical Roger fashion with a couple big Daily Double bets.  He earned the first semifinal spot, but Leszek's $15K is also a strong total for a potential wild card.  Robin played very well also, but she was just getting outbuzzed by the other two.  It was fun to see three greats play the game at such a high level!

When the contestant coordinator (the wonderful Robert James) comes back into the green room to announce the players in the next game, it's a feeling of both eager anticipation and dread -- you both want him and really don't want him to call your name for that name.  He asks everyone to play a drum roll on the couches and tables and shouts out the players, and this time it was: Tom Nosek, Pam Mueller, and Russ Schumacher!  So, into the makeup chair for a touch-up, get some caffeine in the system, and off we go...

The 2nd day of #BattleoftheDecades quarter-finals pits 3 great #Jeopardy! minds against each other. Who will move on? pic.twitter.com/vQICOJkzQp
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) May 6, 2014

You already know that Pam and Tom are incredible Jeopardy! players, so I'll share a couple non-J! tidbits about them.  Tom has spent a long career in the aerospace industry, and it turns out that he worked on some weather/climate satellite missions.  Specifically, he had a role in the Aqua satellite, which I don't use directly in my research but I work with many people who do. 

Pam has been involved a little bit of everything: law, choreography, political campaigns, and now she's getting her PhD in psychology.  Just recently, she received some attention for a really interesting article showing that people tend to retain more information from a lecture or presentation when they take notes with pen/paper than when they take notes on an iPad or laptop. (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/take-notes-by-hand-for-better-long-term-comprehension.html)  Something important for me to consider in the classroom!  Really, the best part of the whole Jeopardy! experience has been meeting such friendly, interesting, and smart people, and Tom and Pam are no exception.

The show's on at 6 pm on channel 7 here in Colorado; check your local listings elsewhere, and enjoy the show. And since I know you've been anxiously wondering what I look like whilst carrying a suit through a hotel lobby...(hi Dan and Colby!):

Russ, Dan & Colby make their way to the #Jeopardy! set. They might look relaxed, but in a few hours, it's game on. pic.twitter.com/PQcEc0abuB
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) May 5, 2014

Battle of the Decades tournament: preview

This post is primarily going to point you to a few items that will get you into a good, informed mood for watching the Battle of the Decades the next two weeks.

First, if for some reason you weren't able to see my first-round game, the SportsCenter highlights version is included in this video, along with an interview they did after I won:


I'm glad Keith Williams started his site "The Final Wager," as it saves me some explaining.  He has a nice summary of how Jeopardy!'s tournament structure works, so if you haven't followed one of the tournaments before, check it out: http://thefinalwager.co/2013/11/07/jeopardy-tournaments-structure-and-wild-cards/
The most important thing to keep in mind for this quarterfinal round is that you don't have to win to move on: there are also 4 wild card spots.

Also, as Keith notes, the contestants aren't allowed to watch the games prior to the one they play in, so are sequestered in the green room.  During my ToC, I was in there until the Thursday game, and it wasn't all that much fun just sitting back there being nervous.  This time I was fortunate to get called for the Tuesday game, so I only had to watch the first 45 minutes or so of "Sixteen Candles."  (They give a small selection of DVDs to watch, and I don't recall why we chose this movie...I think I voted for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" but this won.)

I had conducted a similar analysis of the wild-card cutoffs prior to this tournament, but I was only considering ToCs (since the final clues seem to often be much easier in the college and teen tournaments, and especially the teen tournament) and I only considered the post-doubled dollar value era.  The median cutoff in these tournaments was $9900 and the max was $13000.  In contrast, the Million Dollar Masters tournament in 2002 (probably the closest analog to this one) had a cutoff of $17,400.  These are numbers I certainly had in mind going into the tournament, but there's a lot of variation in where the cut falls that can be affected by a single really hard (or really easy) FJ.

You can check out the matchups for the quarterfinal round here: http://www.jeopardy.com/minisites/battleofthedecades/finals/.  Going along with the "Battle of the Decades" theme, each game has one representative from each of the three decades.

Keith has some predictions for the quarterfinal round on his site as well: http://thefinalwager.co/2014/05/04/jeopardy-battle-of-the-decades-quarterfinal-match-ups/  We'll see soon enough how good they were!  As you can see, my opponents are Tom Nosek and Pam Mueller -- more about them on Tuesday.  And as you can also see, there are no easy matchups in this tournament: what an incredible collection of the best J! players in the show's history.

During the taping of the tournament, there were other camera-people following us around almost all the time: in the hotel lobby, on the bus ride to the studio, in the green room, and so forth.  We all wondered what the result of all that filming might be, and it turned out to be this documentary-style YouTube video, which is really, really cool.  I feel very lucky and honored to have been a part of this!


(A little even-farther-behind-the-scenes tidbit: I lost badly in that poker game in the green room. Fortunately we weren't playing for real money.)

The first game in the quarterfinals features Leszek Pawlowicz (80s), Robin Carroll (90s), and Roger Craig (00s).  Three ToC winners.  Leszek was once referred to as the "Michael Jordan of game shows".  Robin won the International Championship in addition to the ToC.  And Roger holds the one-day winnings record and the record for highest average winnings per game.  I haven't seen this game (I was watching "Sixteen Candles," you'll recall) and am really looking forward to watching it!



 

The quarterfinals!

More details forthcoming, but my game in the quarterfinals of the Battle of the Decades will appear on Tuesday, May 6.  The tournament resumes on Monday the 5th!

Battle of the Decades: 2000s, Friday

Thursday's game was just Ken Jennings being Ken Jennings: he clearly dominated the buzzer, hit a couple of big Daily Doubles, and ended up with an insurmountable lead going into the final.  Michael had a chance to get back in the game with a true Daily Double, but a tough chemistry clue did him in.

To finish out the week, Friday's competitors are Dan Pawson, Maria Wenglinsky, and Keith Whitener.  I didn't have any connections to any of them prior to the taping, and only Dan was in our subgroup on the day of the promo taping, so I didn't get as much chance to interact with Keith or Maria.  I wrote a little bit about them below, but then I saw Stephanie Jass's preview which is much more compelling (especially if you're a Hunger Games fan), so you probably just want to check that out here: https://www.facebook.com/StephanieJassJeopardyChampion/posts/636352503102244

Dan was a big champ in 2008 (9 games) and won the Tournament of Champions in 2009 over Larissa Kelly.  He's just an all-around strong player and nice guy, lives in New York, and does interesting and important work consulting for health-related global nonprofits.  He's another one with a smart family...his wife Andrea also was a J! champion a few years ago.

Maria is a teacher who also lives in New York, she won 5 games in 2005 and was narrowly defeated by Michael Falk in the semifinals of the 2006 ToC.  She has a great, very dry sense of humor that will come through during Friday's game. 

Keith Whitener was one of the very recent players in the group, having won 7 games in 2012 (honestly, a time when I wasn't watching the show very regularly).  He's a chemist who now lives in DC.  He finished second to Colby in the 2013 ToC.  Right after the day of taping, he and his wife headed straight to the airport for their honeymoon!

The games have been exciting all week, and I promise that this one won't disappoint either.

Battle of the Decades: 2000s, Thursday

Thursday's show marks the return of the most famous (infamous?) champ in the show's history, Ken Jennings.  He plays against Michael Falk and Vinita Kailasanath.

Michael and I made some small contribution to meteorological history, as he won the 2006 Tournament of Champions, the next one after mine.  At the time, he was working as a research meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, after getting degrees from Iowa State and UWM.  So to have two consecutive ToC winners be from such a small field as ours was quite the coincidence and achievement!  He's now a math teacher and quiz bowl coach in Milwaukee.  We first met at a trivia competition in the mid-2000s, and it was great to see him again (and to have a fellow weather nerd to commiserate with at the taping).

I've also known Vinita for a while: she was the only other representative from our 2004 ToC, and I beat her in a close game in the semifinals of that tournament.  She was the college tournament champion in 2001 (as a student at Stanford), but she couldn't rearrange her final exams to play in the next ToC, so the show was nice enough to let her defer and play in the 2004 ToC.  It was also great catching up with her -- she's a smart, fun, and friendly person.    

And then there's Ken, who doesn't really need much introduction.  74-time champ, 2nd most total winnings in the history of the show, and now writes books and for venues like Slate and Parade magazine.  This was the first time I met Ken in person.  I got the sense that he wasn't really an extrovert, in the sense that he didn't seem to be having as much fun in our big group of contestants as everyone else was.  But I had the chance to talk with him one-on-one a couple times, and he was really nice and interesting to talk to.

Me with Ken and Vinita at the "after-party."  Ken is not a crook.

 

Did that happen?

In real-time, I knew that there were a whole lot of circumstances that came together in the right way to make it possible for me to win that game.  And after getting the chance to actually watch it last night, I realize that it was even more implausible than it seemed during the taping!

Let's step through it.  The first round was basically Larissa being dominant -- she was consistently beating Tom and me in on the buzzer (unhappy to miss out on the loon, the state bird of Minnesota and my FB cover photo!), and she, unsurprisingly, knows her stuff.  (Pyloric sphincter?)  I had one of my two horrendously bad responses (totally misread the clue about the whippoorwill), and if not for "Drunk History" and faux-hawks I would've been in really bad shape.  And, of course, in the middle was Tom's interview, which they surprisingly left in the show in its entirety.  

The second round was a little more evenly matched, as Tom and I were able to pick up some clues but Larissa continued to be the front-runner.  Her Daily Double in Literary Titles was incredible -- one of my favorite things that happens on this show is when somebody doesn't know it right away, but is clearly working hard to pick apart the clue (what's an ailanthus?) and then it just clicks.  I was so impressed by her getting that one.

Then we moved on to my other epically bad miss: yeah, I know Arthur Ashe is not a woman.  I had totally forgotten what category we were in at that point (so much so that when I was talking to one of the other contestants that evening (I think Stephanie), they were like, "you know that category was 'Women on stamps', right?" and I was surprised to hear that.  Ouch.

So after that and a couple more big-dollar clues for Larissa, she had a big lead, and I knew my only chance was to get the one remaining Daily Double on the board.  And I know that Larissa knew that she could put the game away by getting the DD.  So we were both trying to find it, and then what turned out to be the key moment in the game (even though I didn't realize it at the time) was when Tom gets "eraser", and there are three clues left on the board: two $400s and an $800.  The DD is nearly guaranteed to be in the $800 box (they very rarely put them in the top row.)  And he picked one of the $400s.  This was actually a good move, because if he gets the DD the game is over (neither he nor I could've had more than half of Larissa's score even if he doubled up).  But I don't know whether he realized that, and nobody would've blamed him for taking it.  But he goes to $400, I get Zen and get to pick the DD.

My first thought was that I need to get within 2/3 of Larissa (more on why in a minute).  I do a little math in my head and pick $5000 to get there.  In hindsight, this was a pretty dumb wager -- there was no downside to betting all but a few dollars ($10K would've been a nice round number), since if I miss it the game's over no matter what.  And my $5000 got me to 2/3, but if Larissa had picked up the last $400 clue I wouldn't have been within 2/3 anymore!  In any case, that's the bet I made, I got it, and Tom grabbed the last $400 clue to go into the final at:

Larissa: 22,800
Russ: 15,400
Tom: 5,600

Now in a regular game, the wagering strategy is pretty straightforward here: 1st place will very frequently bet to double the 2nd place score, plus a dollar, so that if they get it right they win no matter what (leading, getting the Final right, and still losing would really suck).  So, if the 2nd place player is within 2/3 of the leader's score, he/she can assume that that's how the leader will bet, and bet small to win if the leader misses it.  (Far too many regular contestants don't grasp these very basic concepts.)  But in a tournament like this, everybody knows this stuff, and there's a potential for trying to outsmart each other by anticipating that they might behave in this way.  (aka: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line). This has happened a couple times in this tournament already, including between Colby and Celeste on Monday.

The final clue, in the category of "Monarchs": In 2005 the Kul Sharif mosque of Tatarstan was reopened 453 years after it was destroyed by this man.

Recall that this was taped in January before all the recent news about Crimea and the Tatars; that would've made it more gettable for sure by pointing to Russia.  For some reason Tatarstan led me to think of Turkey, and knowing there were a bunch of Constantines who were Christians in Turkey, I picked that name without much confidence.  (Constantine the Great was, oh, a few hundred years off, though there were others as well.)  When I saw Larissa's response of Suleiman, I was pretty sure she missed it -- what would a Muslim leader be doing destroying mosques?   

As it turned out, Larissa and I both went for the "standard" wager in this scenario: she bet to win and a tough final got her; I was playing for the eventuality that she missed it and it worked out.  For a nice summary of the wagering on both the DD and the final, check out my friend Keith's analysis: http://thefinalwager.co/2014/04/02/final-jeopardy-april-2-2014/

You could probably see on my face how shocked I was to win this game.  Larissa is a ridiculously good player, and she played an outstanding game: she certainly played well enough to win.  I imagine if I played her a hundred times, I'd win like 3-5 of those games, and then only when getting a few lucky breaks like I did in this one.  Larissa is also just a really nice, sweet person and was very gracious considering how things turned out. 

But, for me, it's on to the tournament part of the Battle of the Decades!  This will now be in their standard tournament format, with 15 players in 5 quarterfinal games.  The 5 winners plus 4 wild-cards will go on to the semis, and the winners of the semifinals go to a 2-day final.  Those shows will be on the weeks of May 5 and May 12, and I'll let everyone know when I know which day I'm on (none of this has been taped yet!)

The superb onesie that my wife, Andrea, designed for our 8-month old son.

Best picture of the day, from my friend Dan, who was watching in Oklahoma.  Me talking to Alex with a tornado watch coming out of my head.

[The correct FJ response: who was Ivan the Terrible?]

Battle of the Decades: 2000s, Wednesday

OK, the day has finally arrived!  Before getting into today's matchup, a little bit about last night's game.  It was one of those games where great players and great people are playing and you want all three of them to win!  Of course, that isn't possible in a tournament.  Stephanie (Go Valpo!) jumped out ahead early and was dominating the buzzer, with Vijay also playing well, but we saw how Roger rolls and he worked his way back into a big lead.  The final clue was relatively easy compared to most of the others in the Battle of the Decades thus far, though I wasn't really sure how we were supposed to know for sure whether it was Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  (It turns out that Stanton died a few years earlier.)  Another very well-played and exciting game by all!

So my fellow competitors are Tom Kavanaugh and Larissa Kelly.  Tom was one of several "super-champs" in the era just after Ken Jennings' run, winning 8 games in 2006.  He is also hilarious...he was keeping the whole group cracked up during the taping of the promos and the shows.  Listen carefully for his "chit-chat" story with Alex.  It's very likely that they'll edit out the key part of it, but if not, it'll be, shall we say, memorable.  He also took what is almost certainly the best contestant photo with Alex ever.

Larissa was a buzz-saw in her original run, winning over $222K in six wins (that's an average of over $37K per game!) She finished second in the ToC in 2009.  She and her husband run a company that writes questions for quiz competitions -- there can't be many other vocations that prepare you so well for being a great Jeopardy! player!  Not that there's anyone you really "want" to play against in a tournament with such great players across the board, but I didn't really want to have to play against Larissa.

The local paper did a fun article and video on my appearance, which can be found here: http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20140401/ENTERTAINMENT/304010072/CSU-professor-Jeopardy-third-time

For the chit-chat at the commercial break, they give Alex a card with a few different possible topics.  The contestants get to choose which one they prefer and they highlight it for him, but he's Alex and he can do whatever he wants.  I offered them a couple stories that I thought were pretty good, which they put on the card along with the "spam" story, and Alex said right before the interview "Russ, I'm going to go with the Monty Python one".  There wasn't any time to protest.  So it's basically exactly the same story I told in one of my ToC games.  So, despite that, enjoy the show!  (And the grammar-challenged tweet below.)

It seems these champ just left #Jeopardy!, but they're back to prove the '00s can win it all. #BattleoftheDecades pic.twitter.com/e1Pb8DjEa5
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) April 2, 2014

Battle of the Decades: 2000s, Tuesday

Monday night's game was a great way to start the 2000s tournament: three great players playing very well!  Colby was strong throughout, with Celeste making a great comeback in the second round and Tom hanging around by getting a lot of the tougher material but struggling with the buzzer.  An interesting FJ wager by Colby paid off when neither he nor Celeste got a tough opera/Shakespeare clue.  So Colby's winning streak continues! 

Tuesday's players are, again, a remarkable bunch: Vijay Balse, Roger Craig, and Stephanie Jass.  Vijay won the Tournament of Champions in 2010.  I feel like I've known Vijay forever, but only first met him in person at the taping.  He and I "met" on the old J! message board (where he used a pseudonym) when I was on the show originally, and then he sent me one of his creative invitations to watch him on the show (see yesterday's post to see the one he sent for this tournament!)

Roger was scary good -- he set the single-day record ($77K) and then went on to win the ToC in 2011 with the help of back-to-back true Daily Doubles.  He became well known for using data mining techniques to optimize his preparation for the show. (He also apparently knows even more about Prince than I do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TUNcQO4v8A)

And Stephanie was a 7-time winner in 2012; the most games ever won by a woman on the show.  She's also a professor, and a Valpo grad!  We had a great time sharing Valpo memories, and she's one of the most delightful people you'll ever meet.  She used her winnings to fulfill a dream of putting on a cabaret show a few weeks ago!

Russ and Stephanie say, "Go Valpo!"

Battle of the Decades: 2000s, Monday

Everyone in this tournament has a ridiculously impressive list of accomplishments on the show.  And even better, everyone in this group was just a great pleasure to get to know and spend time with at the taping.  I'll try to pass along a bit of a preview of the players in each game. 

Monday's contestants are Colby Burnett, Celeste DiNucci, and Tom Nissley.  Colby has the distinction of never losing on the show -- he first appeared in (and won) the Teachers Tournament in 2012, and then won the Tournament of Champions in 2013.  He teaches at the high school that he graduated from in Chicago and coaches the academic teams there. Celeste, from Philadelphia, won five games in 2006 and went on to win the ToC in 2007.  Her semifinal game was memorable for having a rare tiebreaker question to decide the game.  And Tom Nissley was selected as the "fan favorite" to compete in this tournament; his video was great, though I can't seem to get it to play anymore.  He won 8 games (losing in the ToC to Roger Craig and all of his true Daily Doubles), and used his winnings to quit his job and write a really cool book, "A Reader's Book of Days," which I picked up at the bookstore last weekend. 

Some memorabilia related to the contestants in this tournament.  (left) Vijay's outstanding invite; (right) Tom Nissley's book.  I guess I can say now that, in a way, both of these men have been in my kitchen.

What I wrote about the 2004 Tournament of Champions

[NOTE: this was all written during the Tournament of Champions in 2004. Some of the links are now broken, sorry. For archived answers and questions from the ToC and many, many other games, visit j-archive.com. It's a great resource for any fan or potential contestant.  Thanks to everyone who was/is involved in creating and maintaining it.]

Monday, 4 October


Wow.   I still can't believe that I won the thing.  I'm a little late in updating this, so nobody's probably reading it anymore anyway, but there are a couple things to add for right now. After the tournament is done being taped, they traditionally have a little celebration on stage with snacks and drinks for the contestants and their families.  You can even see Alex in street clothes, though he left pretty abruptly.  This is the one chance when the contestants can actually mingle with the producers and writers as well, since we're kept sequestered from them the rest of the time.  As you can see, we all had a good time poking around on the set.  The group of contestants was outstanding, and I'm really happy I got to meet and spend time with all of them.

They always talk about sports being "games of inches."  If so, I think Jeopardy! is a game of microseconds.  I'm not sure what adjustment I made for the second game of the finals, but I finally re-entered "the zone" on the buzzer that I'd experienced a few times during my original run of shows.  It may have even been an unconscious change that was enough to let me get in before Tom and Arthur.  I also couldn't complain about the categories on the second day..."Calculus", "Geography", "Blogs", even "Anagrammed West Wing Characters".  During the course of my studying for the ToC, I came across the origin of the term "Tin Pan Alley," which obviously paid off pretty big.  I don't really remember how I came across that particular fact, but I think it was something like this:  In a book I was reading through that contained famous American quotes, poems, essays, speeches, etc., I came across the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".  The book noted that the writers of the song were two of the big names of Tin Pan Alley, which led me to figure out why they called it that.  So, the moment the clue came up, I knew I had won the tournament.  Would I have figured that clue out without having come across this fact?  Possibly.  I can't really know. 

Once again, I want to thank Tom and Arthur for a couple of great games, and to thank everyone else that played in the tournament for being such great people and for making it such a fun experience, win or lose.  Thanks also to my fiancee, Andrea, and my family that were there to support me at the tapings (and they even got on TV!)

Now, if the Twins could just win the World Series, it'd be pretty hard to top this year... 

Thursday, 30 September

The finals are set.  Coming into the tournament, Arthur was the one person I was most frightened of playing.  His buzzer skills are excellent, he knows a lot of stuff, and he plays the game very well.  And, clearly, Tom is no slouch either.  He pretty regularly came up with answers to obscure questions when I was clueless, and winning 7 games is no small feat (though recent events may make you think otherwise).  So, it was time to see if I could keep up with the big dogs. 

One interesting aspect about the two-day final format in J! tournaments is Final Jeopardy wagering on the first day.  What a lot of people don't realize during regular shows is that there is a pretty well-developed system, refined by contestants over the years, for wagering from each position.  [I'll link to the basics again here.]  Not everyone follows it, but there is very rarely a case where someone looks at the category and just thinks of a number that looks good.  (They do give you a pencil and paper and as much time as you need to calculate your wager after revealing the category and before the clue.)  On day 1 of a tournament final, on the other hand, it pretty much just comes down to picking a number that looks good based on the scores and the category, since you have no idea what the others are going to do either. 

Wednesday, 29 September

Wow.  Semifinal Game #2 was even better than I had remembered.  (Probably because I was still on cloud nine from winning my game and had a hard time paying attention.)  All three of them (Chris, Tom Walsh, Anne) were powerhouse contestants, and they showed it in their play.  Nobody really deserved to lose that one.

Chris showed how much of a force he can be on the buzzer, just like he was in his regular run of shows.  (Interesting how Chris and I both played very well in the second round after getting completely dismantled by Tom Baker in our quarterfinal.)  Anne wasn't far behind on the buzzer, and Tom came through with a big comeback near the end to be in close third going into the final. 

Then, what happened to Anne is probably the Jeopardy player's worst nightmare--getting the FJ right with a chance to win, and losing because the wager wasn't large enough.  The FJ clue here was very closely related to one that Tom had during one of his regular games, which asked for the name of a famous San Francisco bookstore that's named for a Charlie Chaplin movie.  I didn't know it at the time, but Laurence Ferlinghetti is the owner of "City Lights."  (Incidentally, I got to visit the store this summer while in SF.)  This game showed what ToC competition is all about--solid playing, not a lot of wrong answers, and the winner nailing a tough FJ to win it.  While watching Ken do what he does is exciting to watch in its own way, it seems like Jeopardy! doesn't get much more compelling than this.   

Tuesday, 28 September

Sorry I'm so slow with these updates.  It's still hard for me to believe I won that game.  I know how Vinita must feel, because I had pretty much the same experience with my "spam" downfall during my original run--not knowing something that the rest of the world seems to think is obvious. 

The material in this game was a pretty sharp contrast to that in the first week.  There were still some tough clues, but not the consistently obscure stuff we all saw in the first week.  Something I forgot to add before--Tom mentioned in his blog that Alex was "very critical" of the first-week material..."very critical" is putting it mildly.  He had some choice words when we were chatting during the credits after my first game, and then he was telling everyone the same during the group photo after the Friday show.  So, yep, even Alex thought it was tough.

Not knowing at the time what the scores were from the quarterfinals, I was pretty surprised to find out that I would get to stand behind the champ's podium, since I hadn't won my game.  As it turns out, though, they put you there ranked by money, rather than who won or was a wild card.  I think that helped put me at ease, and after the "ia countries" category, Vinita and I both started rolling with some more gettable clues.

The return of spam was pretty funny.  I'm glad it didn't have any bearing on the result, or I probably wouldn't have been laughing.  As it was, though, it made for a great inside joke, and there was a big laugh from the audience.  And for all you Cubs fans...at least Bartman turned out to be good for something!

While I went 3-for-5 on FJs in the first week, I was still pretty scared by the overall tougher material, and by the two FJs that I thought were really hard. So, I think subconsciously my strategy for this game (once it became clear that Vinita and I were going to have a pretty close go of it) was either to get a big lead going into the Final, or to be in the two-thirds position. [See here for what I mean by this, and why my FJ wager was pretty clear-cut in this situation.]  I didn't want to lose from the lead on a really-tough FJ that I assumed the writers would pull out for week 2. Hence my big Daily Double wager...if I got it, I'd be up pretty big, but missing it would put me behind, which I didn't mind either. This plan almost backfired, of course, when Seth made his run near the end of the game.

I think I actually hoped that "Gone with the Wind" was wrong, because I figured if it was right, all three of us would get it and I'd lose, but if it was wrong, and the correct answer was something more obscure, I'd probably win.  I thought for sure that Vinita was going to get it, and I wasn't going to be upset about being knocked out.  Vinita's a great player, a really nice person, and she played a great game. 
But, it's on to the finals for me.  After I won the game, they let me (or made me, I guess) sit just offstage to watch the next one in a director's chair, which I thought was pretty cool.  It was also nice to know where I stood at that point, and I could be relatively relaxed as I watched to see who I would be facing in the finals.
Jeopardy! tournament finals are two-day events, with the three semifinal winners duking it out for two whole games.  (The J! website is sort of confusing--it makes it look like there are two different finals, but really it's just two days with the same three people.)  So, I'll be on both Thursday and Friday.   It's the first time I've been able to tell people in advance that I'm going to be on two consecutive days!

Monday, 27 September

Quarterfinal Game 5:
Anne Boyd $7599
Sean Ryan $2600
Jim Stalley $0

So, the field is set for this week's semifinals.  The matchups:

Monday: Russ, Seth, Vinita
Tuesday: Tom W., Anne, Chris
Wednesday: Tom B., Arthur, Steve

Friday's game featured some more tough material, and a Final equal in its brutality to Monday's.  I would've gladly traded the Jazz category from my game for the football category in this one; Sean was talking about jazz backstage much of the day, and I would have had no problem running the football questions they struggled with.  He even mentioned Paul Desmond's name at one point, which I was then unable to think of when it came up during my game.  (It was interesting how some of the contestants had no problem dropping names and facts backstage, while others seemed a bit less inclined to do so, for fear that it might come up on the show and bite them!)

So, the wild card spots came from the two games where the finals were probably slightly easier than in the others.  Though I'm pretty sure I would have gotten Chechnya in addition to those two.  I can't say for sure, because rather than seeing it "live", someone tried to repeat the clue to me at the end of the day, and I got it from that.  However, as we all know, it's a lot easier to get things right sitting at home on your couch (or even in the audience) than when the bright lights are on you on the stage. 

I think everyone in the ToC will admit that the FJs for the first week weren't exactly "equitable," in terms of giving everyone an equal chance to get the wild card spots.  I guess that emphasizes the importance of winning your game in the first round, even though it's not necessary to advance.  I also don't know how to fix the problem--the writers can't know for certain how easy or hard their questions will be for a group such as ours.  And having the same material for each game would be more fair, but wouldn't keep the audience interested.

So, on to the semis.
FAQ #3:  How do they choose the pairings for the semifinals?  I honestly have no idea.  The one thing that I'm sure of is that they won't put people who played each other in the first round against each other in the second.  In this case, they also wanted to keep the "two Toms" out of the same game to avoid confusion.  [Aside: It's too bad for anybody  else named Ken who's qualified to be on the show in recent months--they definitely won't put two people with the same name against each other in regular games.  I suppose they could go by "Kenneth," though.]  Other than that, I don't know.  It does seem weird to put the two top winners from the first week (Tom B. and Arthur) against each other in the second round.  Then again, I suppose that makes for a more intriguing matchup as well.  They may just pull names out of a hat, with the stipulations above in mind.  

I'm going to re-plug Tom Walsh's blog, which can be found here.   He's got great insights, and his post from yesterday about the Jennings phenomenon is excellent. 

Friday, 24 September

Quarterfinal Game 4:
Tom Baker $20,100
Russ Schumacher $12,400
Chris Miller $4000

This was a tough game.  After being pretty proficient on the buzzer during my regular run of shows, Chris and (especially) Tom were beating me in consistently in this game.  But it was all made better when Alex mentioned at the end of the game that my score looked pretty good, and then even better when I walked offstage and Susanne (the head contestant coordinator) told me that I was in for one of the wild card spots.  (As you can see, my $12400 is the highest non-winning score up to this point, so even if the 2 players in the last game topped it, I'd still be in.)  On the other hand, Chris sneaked into the 4th wild card position and had to hope that his $4000 held up in the 5th quarterfinal match.  We were sitting next to each other in the audience for the 5th game, and he was understandably quite a bit more nervous than I was. 

A bit about my opponents:  Chris Miller was a 5-time champion, and his games aired maybe a month before the tournament was taped.  He was extremely impressive during his run, and ranks as the 6th highest money winner of all time.  Tom Baker was also impressive during his run, though he only won 3 games.  In those 3 games, though, he won over $100,000.   [Incidentally, only a few times in the past have 3-time champions qualified for the ToC.  As I said before, Ken Jennings made sure that there weren't any more 4- or 5-time champs this season.]   Both of them are extremely nice guys, and my fiancee was very excited to find out that Tom would be there.  She referred to him as "smiley Tom" when we watched his shows, because he seemed so happy all of the time.  

FAQ #1:  Do you get to keep that money?  No, and actually neither does Tom.  In the first round of a tournament, it's not really money that you're playing for, more like "points."  You're just playing to get to the next round.  However, everyone in the tournament gets $5000 just for showing up.  Players eliminated in the second round get $10,000, 3rd place gets $25K, 2nd place $50K, and the winner $250K.  In the finals, you do get to keep the money you earn if it's greater than the standard amount for your finishing spot.

FAQ #2:  When you tie for 2nd and 3rd at the end of the first round, what decides who chooses first in Double Jeopardy!?  You know, I didn't even notice that this happened when we were playing the game, and I don't know the answer.  I'm guessing Chris got to choose first because he was in the first podium, but I don't know for sure.

Early on in the Double Jeopardy round, it was pretty clear that Tom was going to win, and that I needed to play for a wild card spot.  Going in, I had set a target score of $12000 to get one of the wild card spots.  This is why I was so upset when I rang in and thought that "moisture" was wrong on the final question of the round--I knew that getting it would give me a chance at $12K with a correct Final, but missing it would drop me down to $2400 and finish me off.    (As it turned out, it wouldn't have finished me off, but I didn't know that at the time.)  You couldn't see it on TV, but I (very gently) tossed my buzzer down as I spit out the response that turned out to be correct.  My mom got a big kick out of Alex saying "Oh, Russ."  I think all three of us were confused by that "letters in sequence" category. In the studio, they don't show us those little highlighted letters, which would have made things a lot easier. At first, I assumed that the three letters in sequence would form the first three letters of the word. Obviously, this wasn't the case.

I have to thank my friend Zac (and his girlfriend Laura) for taking me into a Scandinavian store at the Mall of America last Christmastime, where they sold special glasses for glogg. (Not sure how to make that cool slash through the o, or the umlaut, I've seen it both ways.) After I got this one, Alex made a motion over to the writers. After the game, he told me that he didn't think anyone would get that question, which made me pretty happy.
I was pretty fortunate not to get any of the Daily Doubles, because I didn't know any of them.  In fact, despite having heard the answer during the taping, I still missed the Doctorow one that Chris got while watching it on TV yesterday!

Thursday, 23 September

Quarterfinal Game 3:
Vinita Kailasanath $10,200
Scott "Renzo" Renzoni $2000
John Beck $599

Well, the big day has finally arrived.  Really good game last night...Renzo made a big (risky) bet and it hurt him.  Not much time to write right now, but enjoy the show!

Wednesday, 22 September

Quarterfinal Game 1:
Arthur Gandolfi   $16,200
Keith Williams  $3500
Sam Ott $0

Quarterfinal Game 2:
Tom Walsh  $12,401
Steve Reynolds $10,900
Seth Alcorn $10,600

As I mentioned below, I was locked up with the others in the green room for these games, so this was the first time I saw either of them.  The writers definitely pulled out some tough material for this Tournament.  Rarely is there an 0-for-the-category, but we saw one Monday in the "TV Title Pairs" category (I got "Simon & Simon", but that was it), and then there was "Named for a French King's Mistress," in which every answer was either Louis XIV or Louis XV, though the contestants didn't know that ahead of time.   Not to mention Monday's final, on which I had no clue.  I wouldn't say Tuesday's was easy, but how many presidents could have died in 1908?  But it would take a pretty deep knowledge of art (or of the Hundred Years' War) to know about "The Burghers of Calais." 

The difficulty of the Final Jeopardy! clues is often the deciding factor between who gets the wild-card spots and who doesn't in the first round.  In the last Tournament (in 2003), two players that finished with $0 in their first-round games advanced to the second round, because so many people bet it all on their Finals and they were so tough.  (In that situation, the tiebreaker is the amount of money entering Final J!.)  So, there's really not much way of knowing what will be good enough for a wild card spot until the end of the week.   Keith, Sam, Steve, and Seth now get to watch the rest of the week's shows in the studio, hoping their scores hold up, while the rest of us are getting nervous and anxious backstage and have no clue who's won the games or what their scores were.  I don't think either situation is good for one's sanity!

Monday, 20 September
I made the cut for this year's ToC, thanks in part to some guy winning 48 games and wiping out any potential 4-, 5-, or 10-game winners that could have bumped me out of the field.  In addition, since Ken is still winning, he will be held over to the next Tournament, whenever that might be.  My game will air this Thursday, September 23rd.

The first round matchups can be found at jeopardy.com, along with interviews of all the contestants.  The interview format was sort of odd, so mine isn't real interesting, but it's there if you want to check it out.  For those of you who haven't seen one of Jeopardy's tournaments before, here's a brief rundown of the format:  The tournament lasts two weeks, with 15 contestants.  In this case, the participants are the top thirteen winners on the regular show since the last ToC, excluding Ken, of course, since he's still going.  The other two competitors are the College Champions from 2001 and 2003.  In the first round, everyone plays once, which takes up the first week of games.  The 5 winners of these games, as well as the 4 "high scorers among the non-winners," as Alex puts it, move on to the semifinals.  The semifinal games will be played on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week, and the winners of those 3 games advance to a two-day final for $250,000.

To keep the wild-card scores secret from the contestants that haven't played yet, they kept us sequestered in the "green room" up until the time of our games, so the first three first-round games will be as new to me as they are to you.  (We were watching Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can backstage while they were being taped.)  I'll try to comment here about each game as the tournament goes on.   Tom Walsh, another contestant in the Tournament (and the all-time record holder before Ken Jennings came along), also has a blog going at criticalcondition.org.   His page actually looks like a real blog, and he's very funny, so it should keep you entertained.  You can also visit TVgameshows.net for coverage of the Tournament.  I'll let you know if I find any other sources of insight or information.

What I wrote about my original run of shows

Below are some brief recaps that I posted after each of my 5 games (which aired in mid-October, 2003), as well as links to all of the answers and questions from each of those games.  One of the things that really helped me prepare for the audition and the show itself was reading others' accounts of their Jeopardy! experiences, so I'll try to add some more valuable information in hopes that it might help future contestants.

Here's my picture with Alex:

Friday, 24 October

Well, it had to end sometime, right?  I once again gained the lead going into the final, and I thought the category, "the Internet", was favorable.  If you missed it, the clue was: It is named in honor of a Monty Python sketch that used the word more than 100 times in 2 1/2 minutes.  Unfortunately, I had never seen the infamous "spam" sketch, though I know all about it now.  (Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!)  I probably should have known it otherwise, but I started thinking of websites that might fit the description, and Yahoo was all I could come up with, even though I was pretty sure it wasn't right.  (And I didn't think there was a knightswhosayni.com, or at least it wasn't famous enough for them to ask about it.)  But, it was a great run, and winning 4 games was far beyond my expectations going in.

If you want to see the answers and questions from any of the shows, I've included links here (and below) to a recap of each of the games.  Thanks to Ronnie O'Rourke (a former Jeopardy! champion herself) for archiving each of the games.  The 10/23 show is archived here

When I get some time, I'll post some more stuff here about the experience, some "behind-the-scenes" information, and so forth.  I also hope some of you will consider trying out for the show...they post information about contestant searches on jeopardy.com, and you can also get an audition if you're ever in LA for any reason.  Just taking the test and being at the tryout was a lot of fun!

Thanks to everyone for the e-mails, calls, etc...I'm glad you enjoyed the shows!

Thursday, 23 October   (The Wednesday, 10/22 game is archived here.)

Well, I get my chance to be a 5-time champion tonight, even though that's no longer the limit on contestants.  I was fortunate to get a big lead early in the game yesterday (on Tom Cruise movies and Opera), because there was some pretty tough material in the second round.  There was a nice baseball category, though Dick beat me to the buzzer on a couple of them and I almost blew one by not reading the clue correctly (Name 2 of the 5 cities...).

Final Jeopardy category: 20th Century Notables.  The clue: Einstein said of him, "Generations to come will scarcely believe" one such as he "walked the Earth in flesh & blood".  I knew I had heard the quote before, but couldn't remember if it was about a good person (i.e., Gandhi) or a bad person (i.e., Hitler).  I was pretty confident that I had figured it out, but this obviously wasn't the case.  Again, fortunately I had a big enough lead that it didn't make a difference.

Wednesday 22 October   (The Tuesday, 10/21 game is archived here).

Hopefully nobody had a heart attack while watching Tuesday's game...it was quite a nail-biter!  I failed miserably at "Science Puns" and went way in the hole early in the first round, while David jumped out to a big early lead.  He made a big wager on a Daily Double in "Next to Brazil", and wasn't able to come up with the right response.  After this, Parker went on a run and took a big lead of her own.  I fought my way back, as did David as he hit a big Daily Double near the end of the game.  Going into the very last clue on the board, worth $2000, Parker had $9000, I had $8600, and David had $8300.  Whoever got this clue would have the ever-important lead going into Final Jeopardy!  I was able to beat David to the buzzer on that one and get the lead.  Final Jeopardy category: In the Medicine Cabinet.  The clue:  This product's website features chemistry experiments like "the effect of temperature on rate of reaction".  I was the only one to come up with "What is Alka-Seltzer?" and took away the win once again!

Tuesday, 21 October  (The Monday, 10/20 game is archived here.)

I was the big winner again on Monday, though I'm now 0-for-2 on Final Jeopardy.  So, I'll be back at it on Tuesday's show.

You may have noticed Alex's comment about technical difficulties at the beginning of the show...it was a somewhat frustrating day (before the taping started). Having won the last game of the previous day, I was excited to get back to the studio the next morning. After meeting the other contestants, filling out paperwork, etc., they tell us that one of their hard drives is broken and the game board won't work. So, all the contestants come out to the audience and they show us a video of the 4000th episode spectacular (or whatever number episode it was). Computer problems still not fixed. Then Johnny fields questions from the audience for a while. Another video. Then, they send us to lunch and boot out the first session audience, because it's already about 12:30 pm by this point.  (Taping usually starts around 11 AM.) We come back from lunch, and the problems still weren't fixed. Harry Friedman (the producer) fields questions from the audience. Then, they bring ALEX out, in jeans, to talk to the audience. Then some computer guy comes in to talk to Harry, and they let us know that they might not be able to fix it at all that day. Contestants back to the green room, and the contestant coordinators try to calm us down....we'll fly everyone back for another taping, etc., etc.  People are (justifiably) mad because their friends and relatives flew out to LA from all across the country. Then, around 2:30, Glenn finally knocks on the door..."rehearsal in 10 minutes". What's worse is that Kevin and Lynne were the two contestants left over who didn't play the previous day. So, they had to sit through all 5 tapings the previous day, and then through all of this, and then play the first game...I don't know that the Jeopardy! experience was quite so great for them.

Monday, 20 October  (The Friday, 10/17 game is archived here.)

If you missed the show on Friday, I was the proud winner of $7,199.  It was a close game the whole way through between Katie and I, and unfortunately the third contestant, Arlen, had a tough time on the buzzer and ended up in the red.  I had the lead going into the Final, which neither of us got correct, but Katie bet it all and I ended up with the victory!

This means I will be on the show again today (Monday) as the returning champ, so hopefully you get a chance to watch.  More info to come later.

Friday, 17 October
Well, the day has finally arrived...actually, some of my relatives in Michigan saw it last night, though I don't know why.

The show made some rules changes at the start of this season, most notably the removal of the 5-time limit on returning champions.  If you've been watching this week, you saw that Sean Ryan (from State College, PA) became the first 6-time champion in Jeopardy! history.  However, he was taken down last night (Thursday), by Katie Durham, who is the returning champion that I will be playing against.  Katie actually went to St. Olaf College, in Northfield, MN, the town where I was born.  Small world, eh?

Enjoy the show tonight! 

Some stuff I wrote about auditioning for the show

NOTE: This was written in 2004, and the process has changed considerably since then. Most importantly, the test is offered online and only those passing the test get to go to the audition. (Instead of the random selection I went through.) However, I think the advice for the in-person audition still holds!

Probably the most difficult part of getting on Jeopardy! (if you don't live in or aren't traveling to LA) is just getting an audition.  Of course, they travel all over the country looking for contestants for the show, but thousands and thousands of people put their names in on the website and they just randomly choose people from those.  If you live in LA or are willing to go there, you can set up an appointment and get an audition without this major luck factor.  (They don't recommend flying to LA just for a tryout -- the test is pretty tough, so it's probably only a good option if you feel REALLY prepared and you've tried and failed to get an audition near where you live.)  I had submitted my name on the website one time and didn't get picked, and then the next time they came to Denver I put my name in again and got invited to the tryout.  Entering my name was kind of an afterthought--I just visited the J! website one day, saw they were coming to Denver, and put my name in.  So, when I got a call from Bob from Jeopardy! a couple months later I was at first a little befuddled and then pretty excited.  Fortunately, the call came in about mid-December and I would be going back to my parents' house in Minnesota for about a week and a half for Christmas, which would give me a good deal of free time to prepare for the test.

My preparation strategy and my suggestions to any future test-takers is outlined below in excerpts from an e-mail that I sent a friend before he took the test.  I believe he took the test in the summer of 2004, which was between the taping and airing of my ToC.  Note the reference to Ken at the end!


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It's nice that they described the test format for you, I think I had to figure it out myself.  Anyway, that's indeed how it works, 50 questions, they put them up on a big projection screen, and they're read by the recorded voice of either Alex or Johnny Gilbert, I don't remember which.  You need 35 right to pass.  You get a piece of paper and clipboard with 50 lines on it, and you don't have to write "what is" or anything like that.  You get the amount of time it takes for the voice to read the question, plus about 8 seconds for each question, so it goes by pretty quick.  The whole thing takes about 20-30 minutes, I would guess. (They'll go over all of this when you get there.)  When I took the test, it was in a big room at a hotel, and there were 75 or so people in the session with me. 

A good place to start is to take a practice test and get a feel for what the questions are like.  There'll typically be 50 different categories, and there will always be geography, mythology, Shakespeare, presidents, British royalty, and some of the other "classic" categories, as well as a few "rhyme time" type of things.  There are a few places to get practice tests.  Probably the best is the Jeopardy CD-ROM game, because the format on that is pretty close to the real test, and the difficulty seems right on.  I have both the "2nd edition" (from when Alex still had a mustache) and the "2003" CDs, which each have a test on them.  There's also a practice test in the new "This is Jeopardy!" book, which I think for right now may only be available at Barnes and Noble.  That book is probably a good investment too, since it has a whole slew of Final Jeopardy questions in it from the past 20 years.  Finally, there's a test put together by some contestants at: http://hometown.aol.com/tdciago/jeopardytest.html
The consensus is that this test is a bit harder than the real thing, so you should probably consider 31-32 to be passing for this one.

My process was to take one of the practice tests right away to see how I did.  I think I got 32 right or something like that, so I at least knew I was in range of passing if I brushed up on a few categories.  I then studied for a week or two and took the second test that I had and did a little better.  Also, if you don't already, start watching the show every day, for two reasons.  First, it gets you comfortable with the way the writers write the clues, and second, you can pick up a lot of material that way.

A lot of people think you can't cram a lot of information in your head in just a few weeks, but I found that it worked pretty well for me.
Here are some of the references I used.

• World Almanac, of course.  Presidents, geography, Oscar winners, etc.
• An Incomplete Education, by Wilson and Jones.  This is a fun read that goes through all of the things you "should have learned" in school - good for lit, art, history
• Dictionary of Cultural Literacy - available online at http://www.bartleby.com/59/, or you can buy the book
• British monarchs:  http://www.britannia.com/history/h6f.html
  

I'm sure those quiz bowl lists will be good too.  If you have a good list of books/plays/poetry and authors, that helps a lot, because those come up pretty regularly.  They're also emphasizing pop culture more these days, so brushing up on who's in recent movies and TV shows is helpful.  (I remember having a question about Kiefer Sutherland/"24" on my test.)  And weirdly, this was on both practice tests I took, as well as the real test: the founder of the Christian Science church was Mary Baker Eddy.  Who knows if it will come up again though...

Assuming you pass the test, then, you will get to play a mock game.  The key here (from what I experienced and from what others have said) is that they're not really interested in whether you get them right or wrong, but it's how you play the game.  Relax, speak up, be enthusiastic, always phrase in the form of a question, and pick the next clue immediately after you get one right.  They're looking for people, obviously, who will project well on TV and not hold up the game or be especially boring.  At some point, they will also have a little "chit-chat" session for everyone, similar to what they do on the show.  So, come prepared with a couple of quips about yourself that reflect your personality and might make them laugh.  (The story I used in the interview and subsequently on my first show was about storm chasing, how it's not really like Twister and how I've never seen a flying cow.)  Finally, they'll ask you what you would do if you won the big bucks on
Jeopardy.  Also come prepared with a clever answer for this.  Looking back, I think 75% of the people said "travel" or "pay bills" or something generic like that.  I said I'd buy an engagement ring for my girlfriend (which I actually did since then), and this of course elicited an "awww" from the other contestants and the coordinators and couldn't have hurt when they were deciding who to pick for the show. So, something interesting here is a good idea. 

Another thing I found fun is reading the experiences of past contestants on the web.  Go to my jeopardy page:
http://derecho.atmos.colostate.edu/~rschumac/jeopardy.html and then to "links", I've included some of them there, and from those links are even more links, so you can keep yourself busy reading about what other people have done.  This made me more comfortable since I had some idea going in what the tryout (and later the actual show) would be like. Also, if you go to jeopardy.com, and then to "communicate" and "message boards", you will find the Jeopardy message board, where Jeopardy nerds like me analyze the games and so forth.  There are lots of past champs that post to the boards.

Well, this is kind of long, but I had been meaning to write some of this down for my website anyway, so you gave me a good excuse :)   The Tournament will air in September, and I'll be on the 23rd to be exact.  While they don't give a bazillion dollars out for winning the tournament, I think the current champ (if you've been watching) might win that much.  Actually, I know how much he wins, and it's a lot.

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