I Lost On Jeopardy!

First off, obligatory Weird Al song.

When I was prepping for the show, I wanted to read as many contestant experiences as I could. And while I found a lot of blogs and writing from people who’d won, I couldn’t find many people who talked about how they went up, played one game, and lost¹ So. Hopefully this helps someone else who was in my position.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m going to talk about the prep, then I’m going to talk about the game, and I’m going to share some of my feelings but not all of them.

Getting on the Show

So for a lot of people, going on Jeopardy! is a lifelong dream. They grew up watching it with their family, it’s been something that’s been part of their life for a long time.

That’s not me. We were more of a Wheel of Fortune family, when I was growing up, but honestly we didn’t even watch that that much.

In 2019 I joined LearnedLeague because some friends were doing it and it seemed fun. Then the pandemic hit, and the city locked down, and I started doing some online pub quizzes and such. Eventually I joined OQL USA, as part of a scratch team, and had a lot of fun.

At some point when you’re hanging out with a lot of people in online trivia spaces, you find out that a good number of them have been on Jeopardy!. Just take the test, they say. It’s fun, they say.

So I take the test, I do pretty poorly. I keep studying, the next year I take it twice, once normally and once on Jeoparday!. It’s fun. The first time I’m pretty sure I failed, the next time I think I might have passed, but I don’t get called. People usually don’t get called; this part is widely understood to be random.

But there’s some trivia convention called Sporclecon going on in Washington DC, and people I know who went the previous year seemed to like it a lot. I’d really like to go, and my husband encourages me to go, so we buy our tickets to DC go on an adventure. That year Jeopardy! happened to be doing in-person auditions, so I put my name in, I get to do a proctored zoom test, and then they let me sign up for the audition.

I screw things up and somehow they don’t manage to get my paperwork, so I fill out some copies in person. The audition goes well enough, but a few months later I get an email - they lost my paperwork again, can I fill it out again? At this point I assume I’ve been annoying enough to handle that I’m probably not going on the show.

Several months later - end of September - I get a text. Can I be available for a phone call about Jeopardy! tomorrow morning? Yes, of course!

The prep

By the time I get the call, I have barely four weeks to prepare.

At this point in time I have four show-related priorities, in rough order of priority:

• Figure out all the logistical stuff (flight, hotel, clothes, time off, etc)
• Fix my sleep schedule
• Learn and practice wagering theory
• See what I can figure out about buzzer timing
• Maybe try to learn one or two pavlovs to shore up weak categories?

There’s not enough time to learn a lot more. That’s okay! Because for the past few years, in an attempt to get better at LL and OQL, and also with the occasional daydream for going on Jeopardy!, I’ve been studying!

Flash back a few years

That studying mostly took the form of flashcards. Lots and lots of flashcards.

https://ncase.me/remember/ https://apps.ankiweb.net/

I started with the “Ultimate Geography” shared Anki deck back a couple seasons into LL, because I was getting tired of being so easy to defend and geography was my worst category. Then I dug out some old APUSH flashcards because American History was my worst category. At this point I was hooked. Flashcards was fun! Remembering fun things was fun!

If I ran into something interesting that I wanted to remember, I stuck it into Anki.

At some point, every time I ran across a trivia question, I attempted to stick it into my deck, with the intention of, the first time I studied each card, to add supporting cards for each concept, or to delete it if I already knew it cold. There was Jeopardy!, LL, OQL, that week’s pub quiz from Dr. Andy… Yeah, that didn’t last long.

Look. I like studying. I like learning things. But this was just too much. Once I got over 1000 new cards, and was only introducing 10-20 new cards a day (on a good day!) and adding 5-10 cards on average for each new card… no, this wasn’t sustainable. But that was the general idea, even though I haven’t been adding any new cards from quizzes in a while, and only adding cards from learning about new cards as they come up or from interesting things I ran into in other situations. And it gave me an interesting variety of cards as a baseline.

Anyway. Flashcards. Yay?

I also played a bunch of fan-made Jeopardy!-style games with some internet (then-)strangers, which helped familiarize myself with the game and made the actual experience much less scary and overwhelming. Having played these games and also having to gauge my confidence in questions in OQL helped me get better at when to buzz.

Also, watching the show, recording when I’d have buzzed in, and when I’d get it correct/incorrect. I think my in-laws were watching the show better than me though - they’re not meticulously recording their response to every answer, they’re just enjoying the show.

Flashing forward again

Being put under pressure makes it a lot harder to remember things! A lot of my post-call prep was about trying to familiarize myself with everything so that 1. things were familiar so I wouldn’t feel as much pressure on stage and could have more fun, and 2. that even under pressure, things would be familiar so it would be easier to do and still have fun.

This section isn’t particularly organized, but this is what I remember doing:

Once I got the call, I went ahead and bought myself a Delcom buzzer. It’s - not the greatest - but it is approximately the right size and shape, and I familiarized myself with how I could comfortably hold a buzzer. For example, I discovered that I couldn’t make it through a whole game’s worth buzzing with my thumb before it started to hurt, and that while buzzing with my index finger I needed to hold the buzzer with the other hand, otherwise I’d just push the buzzer through my grip instead of pushing the button.

I also started playing A Dance of Fire and Ice, which is a cute little rhythm game that is much less carpal-tunnel-inducing than osu!. No idea if it helped me with my timing, but it was fun, and it helped with getting my heart rate up while answering flashcards. Do not recommend playing it with the Delcom buzzer though.

I asked friends who had been on the show for study guides and advice.

On advice from one friend, I got some friends together to play some games in person the weekend before I left for LA.

On advice from another friend, I start going through the archive. For each round, I look at the category names, guess which one the daily double is in. Scroll down until I find it, write down the dollar value and what type of category I think it is before reading the clue, then try to answer and write down whether or not I got it correct. Scroll down to final, write down what type of category I think it is, then set a 30 second timer, read the clue, try to write down my answer in time, then write down whether or not I got it correct. I got through a little over 100 games from the most recent season that I had not yet seen.

This gave me a distribution of my get rates based on clue value and category². Helpful for DD wagering!

But honestly, the most important piece of advice I got was to try to get everyone’s contact info before leaving. The show doesn’t facilitate that - you have to make it happen yourself - and getting to stay in touch with some of my new tape day friends has been absolutely wonderful.

The Trip

We were all³ asked to go in on Tuesday and Wednesday - most of us would play on Tuesday, but one person and the winner (and the alternate) would be held over until Wednesday. We flew in on Sunday so that if the flight got delayed I wouldn’t be up too late on Monday night.

On Monday morning I go to the taping, so that I’m not caught off-guard by someone in the middle of a Ken-level streak, so that I have an idea of how long the travel time is, and so that I have some idea of how the physical space feels and what the buzzer timing is. I watch a few games. I’d need a lot of luck, and about a dozen things to break my way, but I feel like I could win a game against any of these contestants, which helps me be less nervous. I leave after lunch to explore the city and rest and make sure I have breakfast for the next day.

On Monday night, we opened up the hotel window a little bit. Then we couldn’t get it closed. Then, when we called maintenance, the whole sliding part of the window came off. So at 11 PM the night before taping we packed everything up and moved across the hall to a noisier room. Yay?

Also, while in LA I went ahead and did a bunch of new flashcards without the expectation of remembering any of them. Most people advised me not to do any studying at this point, but I think it was the right choice for me. None of it came up, and I don’t think I remembered any of it, but it helped with the anxiety that I was actually doing something.

The Game

I could have sworn that Ken said Baja Blast on stage, but I might be wrong - being up there does weird things to your brain.

There will probably be a future post going through clue by clue, but for now, the stuff that stuck in my head:

• I was buzzing on anything that was 2+ fingers worth of confidence in OQL for me, except if it was a 50/50 (until someone else negs, anyway).
• I got piddle/puddle about a second or two too late to buzz.
• I thought of ptolemaic, and then thought I was just thinking of Cleopatra’s brother being named Ptolemy, and then I was out of time.
• I was looking in either World History or Art for a DD, and then I’d figure out where to look after that if I needed to. Took the one on the left first. Guessed wrong. Didn’t get a chance to look again before they were both found. So it goes. I’d have gotten the art one correct but not the film one.
• I was pretty sure that it was the island part of Newfoundland and Labrador which I knew had the fun time zone. I didn’t remember which was which - but once Ashley buzzed, it became worth it to me to take a 50/50 shot for $800 at that point in the game. So, Labrador’s on the right side of the province name, the island is on the right of the map, might as well pick that one I guess? Bad news, I even had a flashcard on this. Good news, I’m never forgetting which one’s the island again? I should probably brush up on east coast geography stuff; the first pub quiz I went to after coming back from taping I was wrong about which of Vermont and New Hampshire was to the west.

I considered basically only two scenarios for Ashley wagering, based on what I would do in her position:

1. wager to cover me
2. wager the difference between our scores but a dollar, which also covers Jordan

Under scenario 1, my only hope of winning is if she’s incorrect in which case she drops below Jordan’s score, so all I need to do is cover Jordan. Under scenario 2, I need to be correct to win regardless of whether Ashley is correct or not, and if she is also correct, I need to wager more to win, but I would need to wager enough that I would drop below Jordan’s current score, which if I’m wrong and she picks scenario 1 opens it up to Jordan winning on a triple stumper.

When I did the math, I was really hoping for a little more wiggle room, a scenario like Friday where from second place I could have picked a number that satisfied both scenarios without dropping below Jordan’s current score, but that wasn’t what I got, and I’m happy in a way that I didn’t get that - it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun a game leading up to final if I’d ended up with that wiggle room!

Most people go with scenario 1. And this is a vague category. According to my prep, I’m below 50% on film/tv DDs/FJs, and below 55% on literature DDs/FJs, and from the two games I’ve seen her play it seems like Ashley is very strong on both these categories. So that combined with the fact that most of the time people wager to cover? I decide it’s more likely that Ashley will do the more common thing; besides since Jordan is a very strong player I don’t want to open things up to him passing me on a triple stumper. I choose this over the hope that Ashley will do something less common AND that I’ll get it right. If this is a stronger category for me, then maybe I would have gone for the larger bet, but expecting barely above 50% here makes me actually have to consider what getting it wrong does to my paths to winning.⁴

So I picked which scenario I thought was more likely, and bet accordingly, and I took the round number, to reduce the chances of an arithmetic or off-by-one-in-the-wrong-direction error, because under both the scenarios I’m considering, 5000 and 5399 are functionally the same. I had my plan for wagering going into the studio and it would have taken some very interesting information for me to consider changing my plan. I did not get that information. I executed my plan perfectly, and at that point that’s really all I had control over.

Ashley picked neither option. Which worked out well for her! It’s a bit like poker, which I’m really bad at. I read her wrong. I’m happy with my wager, which was textbook. The textbook just happened to be wrong in this case. That’s all.

Ashley beats me on Coryat, and I wouldn’t have gotten the Sunset Boulevard daily double correct, but if you look solely at the final dollar values we earned and lost from clues we all had the opportunity to buzz on, I somehow managed to outbuzz her slightly, which I’m pretty pleased with. I played the best game I practically could have, and I had so much fun onstage, and I was happy with that.

Feelings

I stuck around the rest of the tape day - I got to eat lunch with the other contestants, which was nice (but also if you bring guests tell them to pack a quick lunch with them - there’s not enough time to leave the studio and buy food and come back between morning and afternoon tapings). Watching Wednesday’s game, I was still so happy and proud of how I played - sad that I couldn’t play again (seriously I wish Ashley Jordan and I could have gone ten rounds - we were well matched and it was such a fun game) but happy to watch all my new tape day friends play. Thursday’s game I started feeling sorry for myself- I really wished I could have won. By the time Friday’s game was taping, I was mostly happy again, and was excited. It had been a really great day!

I went out for drinks and dinner with some of the other contestants, and I had a great time. It wasn’t until I got back to the hotel room that I started feeling sad. I really wanted to win a game! But I was pretty much straight up outplayed by Ashley (and at that point in time, my memory was already a little fuzzy, I thought it wasn’t as close as it was). I could be proud of playing the best game I could. I knew going in I needed about a dozen things to break my way. I got 8 or 9 of them, which is pretty good!

But I was still really sad the next day. I wanted to play more!

I’d planned to go to O’Briens for Wednesday trivia, but almost didn’t go because I was feeling sad. But a friend of mine who’d been on the show before peer pressured me into it and had already put me in touch with a friend of his who helped find me a team, so I couldn’t back out easily. It was exactly what I needed after losing. I had an absolutely amazing time - everyone was so kind and welcoming - the trivia was great and made the show I’d just taped feel like less of a big deal. Getting to play there made me understand at an emotional level that it’s okay that I don’t get to play more - I’m not even sure Jeopardy! is my favorite format - I know where to find similar games online and there’s always other trivia.

But on the airplane back home I started getting sad again.

It wasn’t about not winning - I was okay with that. It wasn’t about the money - I get, practically, a paid-for vacation. It wasn’t about not getting to play again - I don’t get to play on stage again, but I can play other things.

It took me a while to figure it out, and it was that I’m mourning my daydream. Practically, the only thing that had changed for the worse because of this experience was that I no longer get to daydream about going on Jeopardy! and winning and playing a bunch of games.

It’s kind of silly being this sad about it. The daydream’s only a couple years old. I dunno. I found other people who went through the same thing and that helps a lot. I’m still sad sometimes, but after my watch party which was a lot of fun, and getting to hear from so many people I know that they took their time out of their day to watch me lose on Jeopardy!, I’m feeling pretty happy and supported, even though I still do get caught up in the grieving occasionally. That’s where I’m at right now. Life is good.

I’m looking for a new daydream. To that end, any local business owners in my area who have bothered to read this far, if you’re looking for some independently-written trivia nights from a local who recently lost on Jeopardy!, hit me up.

And to any future contestant who’s bothered to read this far: yes, you’re probably going to lose your first game. It’s still worth it. Obligatory reminder to go take the anytime test if you’re eligible.