I Get To Be A Two Time Jeopardy Loser

So I lost again.

But like. I’m okay with it? Before I got the call, I had truly accepted that my J! journey was over, even if I was sad about it. I’d bought a cake!¹

And then I got to go back. ²

I got to go back, and I got to play my heart out. I’d been prepping off and on for the past year, only as much as I could convince myself that I was actually practicing for something else. I did as much prepping as I practically could have, without sacrificing sleep or my day job or my relationship (all of which suffered a little bit for my first appearance).

The Game

One of the interview-story prompts they gave us was something along the lines of “How are you going to get redemption?” and I said - I’m not here for redemption, I have nothing to redeem myself from. I’m just so happy to play and have fun again.

And I had so much fun. I don’t remember all of it, but I’ll rewatch and post a clue-by-clue breakdown eventually.³

There are some things I remember though!

“Hot” Lines

Hot-Blooded by Foreigner actually showed up in my prep between getting the call and coming back and I would have not got it correct without that prep. Hot To Go and Hot Girl Summer also came as a result of prep, but that was from earlier, when I was still balancing preparing with the likelihood of not coming back.

Also, they edited out a pause in the response to the Hot Girl Summer clue. Pretty sure that one was a solo buzz.

Either way, I was very excited to get three pop music questions correct, since this is traditionally one of my weakest areas of trivia knowledge.

Updo

Look, it’s a perfectly cromulent crossword clue. But at least to me, the updo is the hair that’s kept off of your neck, not the thing that keeps the hair off of your neck.

Daily Doubles

Yes, I’d have won in a runaway if I’d wagered $5 each time. But that’s with the benefit of hindsight.

The first one was close enough to the beginning of DJ that there was plenty of time to catch up. I don’t feel bad about missing that one, I just didn’t know that part of history and pavloved off of “duchy”.

I really should have gotten the second one, I’d missed it when Sherry Cola missed it on Celebrity Jeopardy, but whatever. I felt good about the wager, trying to not have to force myself to get final correct in order to win, especially once I saw how brutal the previous week’s finals were.

And I felt especially good about it once I saw the box scores. I had the fewest attempts of anyone on that stage. Yes, I ended up dominating the buzzer, but I had no reason to think I’d figure out the buzzer better than Rachel and Guy in the last thirty clues. I had control, I had the chance to put the game away in a game where my two opponents knew more of the answers than I did, and I took it. I’m happy with that, even if it didn’t work out.

Final Jeopardy and the Pantheon

I’d somehow made it back to not just “difference between first and second” contention, I’d made it back to “greater than half of first’s score” contention.

I didn’t wager for a triple stumper because I’d assumed Rachel would have wagered under the assumption that Guy would wager to cover but also large enough to win on a double get if he’d wagered the difference between their scores and also to cover me if she got it right, by which I mean 1601 which would be a small enough wager that I would need to get it correct to win anyways, which was a lot less than she ended up wagering. So since I needed to get it right in order to have a chance at winning anyways, I figured I might as well wager everything. (Almost everything.) I assumed Guy was going to wager to cover, but on the off chance he only wagered 0, this meant I could still win on a double get.

I got it right. I took about 20 seconds to try to figure out whether it was the Pantheon or the Parthenon, and then picked the right one based off of a half-remembered accent aigu and also a vague memory of The Amazing Race stopping by there in an early season. I got past Guy. Surprisingly Rachel missed it.

And then I lost.

Look, I wasn’t expecting to win. It would have been nice, but I knew I wasn’t going to win Second Chance and all of CWC and make it all the way through ToC. So I was going to get out at some point, and since I was going to lose at some point, this is the way I wanted to lose.

Also, I can now add some anecdata, about the philosophy that you should always wager to cover because it feels worse to lose because you didn’t wager enough than because you wagered too much. In my case, yes, it absolutely felt better to lose because I wagered too much than because I didn’t wager enough.

So I lost! But I got so many things from this experience.

When I came home, my spouse had this tart waiting for me. A second consolation cake, really. I had cake. It was a good day.

A Not Comprehensive List Of Things I Won (or at least, came away with)

• FRIENDS. So many friends helped me out with preparing. Everyone at second chance was an absolute delight and I need to be better about staying in touch.
• Free trip to LA. The night before taping I went to LACMA and the La Brea Tar Pits. Both very cool.
• The $3000 consolation prize. Nothing to sneeze at!
• A newfound appreciation for a whole new genre of games. Rhythm games are fun! Can be fun. I still don’t like osu!, but ADOFAI is still hella fun, and despite me not expecting to like it the story and gameplay in Cytus II pulled me in.
• I’m better at the whole “serenity to accept the things I can’t change” thing now because of this experience. Between the casting process for Second Chance and the inherent variance in the game, it’s something I’ve had plenty of chances to practice.
• I got to show off on stage! I used to dance a lot, and I discovered I miss performing, and it’s even more fun when it’s something I’m good at.
• A renewed sense of adventure. J! was an amazing adventure, and I’ve figured out that I want to keep going out and trying to have adventures, and that I’m in a position in life where I can.

Here’s to new adventures, big and small. This month we’re going bowling!⁴

• Trivia
• Jeopardy