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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Back in Jeopardy!

When I was originally on Jeopardy! back in 2003-2005, "blogs" were a new phenomenon and the Facebook was only available to people named Zuckerberg and Winklevoss.  But I kept an ugly journal of some "behind the scenes" thoughts about my experience on the show.  Now that I'll be appearing on the show again in the Battle of the Decades (Wednesday, April 2), I re-read some of those old posts, found them to be kind of fun, and thought I'd revive a few of them.  (They've posted a flashback to my second game, "only on Crackle."  It's nice that they chose my best game overall!)  I also wanted to create a place to offer some commentary on the Decades tournament, and I don't have the time or patience to live-tweet all the games or anything like that.   Enjoy!