Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!

by Bob Harris

  Occasionally I’d get to drive back to New York or D.C. or Chicago or wherever my latest One-True-Eternal-Soulmate™ happened to share an apartment with my stuff. This would also be where a landlord and credit-card companies happily collected my money. After a few days of visiting my life, I’d climb back into Max and rumble out to another string of small Midwestern colleges.

  Still, every time I’d happen across Jeopardy!, the little finger-tapping habit never stopped.

  When Jeopardy! suddenly called, I had exactly two weeks to prepare. So instead of trying to cram a whole bunch of information into my head, I decided first to go online and read as much as possible about how memory worked.

  Since the Internet was still in its Bronze Age—I had a dial-up connection, browsed with Netscape, and wore a helmet made from the tusk of a wild boar—this took time. But when I first stumbled into a description of a phenomenon called “state-dependent retrieval”—basically, the power of things like sights and smells and even our body chemistry to trigger memories—it made instant sense. (Many experts split some of what follows into “context-dependent retrieval,” a separate category. Conceptually, it’s all pretty darn similar, though.)

  Have you ever returned to a city you haven’t visited in years, a place you couldn’t possibly still be able to navigate, only to find that once there, you instantly knew your way around again? Bingo.

  The scatteredness of my own life and the constant travel had taught me the power of individual places to bring back unique memories and powerful emotions. I had wondered how and why this always happened.

  The mind-altering effect of specific places is so powerful that we instinctively take it for granted. We even create special places where certain emotions, and only those, are to be felt. Cemeteries, for example, are places of death and sadness, despite the fact that they’re filled with living creatures and expressions of love. Almost nobody actually dies in a cemetery, although it would be pretty convenient.

  Carnival rides, on the other hand, reliably send thousands of giggling people across America straight to hospital emergency rooms, year after year. But these remain places of joy and excitement, filled with happy families, all zooming and giddy.

  So where do we cry, and where do we go Wheee?

  Again: human memory is built not on logic, but on intense experience. We have grieved in cemeteries, so they literally give us grief. We have squealed in carnival rides, so they give us new joy, no matter how many sudden experiments in human flight may occur.

  Since our neurons are so interconnected, just one stimulus can trigger a memory—a response, in Jeopardy! terms—which leads to another, and another, as synapses fire automatically, a long line of falling mental dominoes.

  In short: the context stimulates the neurons that create the memories and feelings that create the behavior.

  This is a fact of life in sports. Have you ever wondered why there’s a home-field advantage in every type of game, even the ones without crowds or referees? State-dependent retrieval. Players whose muscle memories are preconsciously invoked by the nearby sights, smells, and sounds are at an enormous advantage.

  State-dependent retrieval is strong stuff. Fortunately, it’s also simple to use.

  Feeling too blah to exercise? Put on the workout clothes anyway. Pretty soon you’ll probably feel like working out, as if the clothes created the feeling. Which they did.

  Want to ace that next test? Don’t study in your kitchen or dorm room; study in a room as much as possible like the place where the test will be given, at the same time of day. Wear the same clothes you’ll wear. Sit in the same seat. (Have you ever picked a random seat in a classroom, and before long discovered that it was inexplicably the place you were most comfortable? Ta-daa.) All else being equal, you’ll probably feel more comfortable, remember more, and perform better on the day.

  And this is our next step on the Eightfold Path to Enlightened Jeopardy:

  1. Obvious things may be worth noticing.

  2. Remember the basics: the basics are what you remember.

  3. Put your head where you can use it later.

  So how should you train a split-second muscle response for a nationally televised game show?

  While being flooded with the imagery of the game itself.

  Fortunately, that’s exactly what I’d already done with my index finger, thousands and thousands of times.

  As I did this research, my current One-True-Eternal-Soulmate™ was named Annika. She and my stuff lived peacefully in a small apartment they shared in West Hollywood. I usually got to visit for a couple of weeks each month.

  Annika was (and is, wherever she might be now) spectacularly well educated, good-hearted, and soft-spoken. We had been together for almost two years, during which nothing much happened.

  This was, I remember thinking, fantastic.

  My previous relationships had had a habit of exploding in interesting ways, including flights to Ecuador, undisclosed pre-existing boyfriends, sudden elopements with wealthy horse breeders, and other spontaneous romantic combustions.

  This was entirely my own fault, of course. Anyone can singe themselves by accident once or twice. Eight or ten good scorchings, you begin to realize they actually enjoy quality time around open flames. It’s one thing to ignore red flags; it’s quite another to write sappy love songs to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and then wonder why things never quite work out. But that’s all for another book. (Working title, top of my head: Kissing the Hindenburg.)

  I once visited a gorgeous blonde’s apartment and received a guided tour of her many framed self-portraits as Anne Boleyn. There were perhaps a dozen on the walls, and more in her closets. And I thought to myself: OK. This is manageable.

  Maybe I was just insecure enough that I needed to feel needed, and was willing to pay any price.

  Of course, I wasn’t such a great catch myself, with my own moments as magnesium flash powder. And my habit of overthinking during stress, seeking solutions not by listening but by retreating into my head, didn’t exactly help. This had worked exceptionally well on math tests when I was younger, but proved ineffective during intimate arguments. Too many discussions went like this:

  “Bob, I really need you to listen more closely.”

  Listen closely? I am listening closely. I bet you’re just upset because I hid all your guns, won’t give you my PIN number, and can’t see the resemblance to Anne Boleyn. Besides which, Anne Boleyn had six fingers on one hand, but it keeps going back and forth between left and right in the paintings. I’d think you’d know where to stick the extra pinky. Say…with six digits, where do you put a wedding ring? And is it still possible to extend the middle finger? Or would you use the middle two?

  But with Annika, at last, there was a placidity I adored. Her intelligence and education were attractive, yes, but it was more her sedate reserve that I found attractive. It was soothing to be her boyfriend. We didn’t fight. We didn’t debate. Looking back, I’m not certain we even spoke. Plus, she had a calming physical presence, the sort of stillness one usually finds in someone trying to break the world record for being covered in the most bees.

  This was, at last, a kind of serenity. I certainly wasn’t worried about Annika cheating on me. That would involve moving at least a half-dozen major muscle groups. We spent most weekends when I was home sitting in the living room, catching up on our reading, and quite noticeably not burning in a hydrogen fireball down to our bare metal superstructure in just over thirty-seven seconds.

  It was on just such a day, shortly after Jeopardy! called, that I stumbled across the notion of intentionally not using the Go Lights, instead simply trusting my instincts like a wannabe Jedi, letting my finger react on its own.

  Delighted with the sheer lunacy of the idea, I immediately told Annika. But the more I tried to explain the plan, the less rational it must have sounded. I think this was the very first time she thought I was gradually losing my mind.

  It would not be the last.
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  Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe…

  There are two small white lights on the contestant’s side of the podium that illuminate when you’ve won on the buzzer. The one closest to my right hand is in my peripheral vision. Sometimes the entire game is only about making this one hidden light come on.

  My finger moves slowly amid hard plastic chaos. I only hope that it knows what it’s doing.

  Cliklikikkitylikkityclikit.

  CHAPTER

  6

  THINKING AHEAD WHILE NOT THINKING AT ALL

  Also, Safety Instructions for Your Jeopardy Weapon

  About a thirtieth of a second after the buzzer-frenzy began—exactly one frame on the videotape—my finger moved of its own accord.

  I glanced down at my podium, afraid even to hope.

  And my light came on.

  Lucky shot? Maybe. I would know for sure in about twelve more seconds. The second clue, under FICTIONAL GHOSTS for $200:

  HE WROTE THE GHOST TALE “THE TURN OF THE SCREW” WHILE HIS BROTHER WILLIAM STUDIED SPIRITUALISM

  I’d never read this book, either. Luckily, however, as a teenager I’d once briefly worked in a bookstore, where I restocked a paperback edition of The Turn of the Screw combined with Daisy Miller in one volume. The unfortunate placement of the large word Screw on the cover, looming over the innocent-sounding “Daisy Miller,” made me wonder if the publisher even liked Henry James. The author’s name had stuck in my head ever since.

  My finger moved of its own free will.

  My light came on again.

  What’s the eye?

  What is, um, water?

  What’s the patella?

  What are cells?

  Who is Henry VIII?

  Who is Houdini?

  The light on my podium kept coming on. I just tried to stay calm and let myself believe it was happening.

  Three minutes later, one quarter of the game was gone. I had almost twice as much money as the other two players combined.

  The returning champion, Matt, had beaten me on the buzzer exactly once.

  These weren’t particularly difficult clues yet, mind you. Consider this, the third clue I ever responded to on Jeopardy!:

  CAVITIES IN THE SKULL CALLED ORBITS HOUSE THESE ORGANS

  This doesn’t take a neurologist to figure out. Let’s assume you have a head, and that your skull has the standard number of holes in it. We’re looking for “organs,” plural, so you need at least two of them. And the word “orbits” implies a round shape. So: they were asking for a pair of round organs in holes in your skull. If you can find your own eyeballs, you’re as strong a player as I was.

  Many seemingly difficult clues are actually that simple, once you learn to decode them. Sometimes the only real task is figuring out what they’re asking.

  The last clue before the commercial was this:

  A VIOLENT GHOST CALLED THE BELL WITCH ALLEGEDLY MURDERED JOHN BELL IN THIS “VOLUNTEER STATE” IN 1820

  Almost 90 percent of the clue is irrelevant. What they were asking was simple, found simply by scanning for whatever comes after the word “this”:

  BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH THIS “VOLUNTEER STATE” BLAH

  To this day, I know nothing about John Bell, the Bell Witch, how crime scene investigations were pursued in 1820, or what happened to the neato ghost-finding technology they must have had. But most of us probably know Tennessee’s nickname.

  All three of us playing the actual game certainly did.

  But my light just kept coming on.

  The first commercial break arrived.

  During any stoppage in play, contestant wranglers and makeup people swarm out and slather the contestants with water, encouragement, and (in my case) a fresh layer of chrome de-polisher. But the first break always has an extra degree of breath-catching and realizing where the heck you actually are. The adrenaline can run so high that if Jeopardy! were one day to replace the buzzers with switchblades, I doubt many players would notice until this first break.

  So I inhaled and exhaled and mumbled shy pleasantries, but mostly I tried to stay focused and think ahead, free-associating from the categories and this day’s Halloween theme, getting my mental flash cards prepared for the next burst of play:

  Halloween. Monsters. Ghosts. Specters. Hauntings. Séances. Goblins. Jack-o’-lanterns. Pumpkins. Candy corn. Costumes. Frankenstein. Mary—Wait, who wrote that? Right—Mary Shelley. Bram Stoker. Boris Karloff. Lon Chaney Jr. Vincent Price…

  And so on.

  This paid off almost immediately. One of the clues after the break required exactly the response I had just spent an extra second bringing to mind. It was a video clue in which a guy dressed as Frankenstein came out and grunted while these words appeared on the screen:

  IN A 1935 FILM, ELSA LANCHESTER PLAYED MY BRIDE, AND IN THE PROLOGUE, THIS AUTHOR

  Who is Mary Shelley?

  I made a mental note never to waste a spare second during a Jeopardy! game again. Instead, I would think ahead like this during the first commercial, any technical stoppages, and even during other players’ Daily Doubles.

  As a result, I probably owe the contestant-herders an apology.

  The main Jep-shepherds that day were two bright, easygoing guys named Glenn Kagan and Grant Loud, who could easily have allowed their feather-smoothing-of-strangers gig to devolve into pat box-store-greeter jawboning. Instead, they cultivated playful, even thoughtful conversations with every contestant.

  This was odd. A gentle workplace is rare anywhere, much less in show business, where the enormity of wealth can magnify every human flaw. (On a functional level, some offices that entertain America less resemble a dream factory than a Hollywood Kremlin.) But the folks at Jeopardy! seemed to honestly like their jobs, each other, and the contestants.

  This could mean only one of two things.

  Either (a) the bosses at Jeopardy! are actually cool, creating an environment where nice people function authentically; or (b) they have blackmail Polaroids of every employee in compromising positions with citrus fruit, a Ukrainian stewardess, and what looks like aluminum ductwork, with orders to never stop smiling.

  I believe it is the former.

  So, an apology, Glenn, Grant, Susanne, Maggie, and every other commercial-break chaperon over the years. I’ve usually been giving you my full attention, too. Except with a giant wall of TV screens promising tens of thousands of dollars looming over my entire field of view.

  This can be distracting.

  So while you were engaging me in sincere conversation, I was often just trying to grunt and mumble enough to camouflage the fact that I was still playing the game. I didn’t want the other players to pick up on it and do the same.

  I hope you’ll forgive me, since this habit has led to thousands of extra dollars, the margins of several Final Jeopardy leads, and eventually a gigantic mistake that arguably even led to the circumstances of a good friend’s marriage.

  Alex himself even signed the wedding certificate.

  We’ll loop through that part of the timeline soon enough.

  My good fortune continued through the whole first Jeopardy! round.

  The category BOBBING was entirely about people named Bob. My own first name. Another clue was practically written for a guy from Ohio who had spent much of his adult life doing comedy:

  IN HIS BOOK WITHOUT FEATHERS, A GHOST REPORTS THAT THE NEXT WORLD RESEMBLES CLEVELAND

  In my hometown, this is one of Woody Allen’s better-known remarks.

  Pure coincidence, of course, and my luck couldn’t last. After all, boardfuls of clues are created long in advance and chosen at random with no knowledge of players. There was no way good fortune like this could hold out. But all you need to know about the Double Jeopardy round is that it included this entire category:

  SMALL MIDWESTERN COLLEGES

  Suddenly all those years of cheap motels and gas-station food were paying off. This hardly seemed
fair. My finger kept moving—I was barely even paying attention to it anymore—and my light just kept coming on.

  At the end of Double Jeopardy, I had more than twice as much money than either of the other players. Thus, I had a “lock game,” in which Final Jeopardy is rendered entirely moot. I had won in a runaway.

  This lacked suspense, of course, and was less-than-perfect TV. It’s a situation I’m sure the producers do everything they can to avoid. However, after a long day of intense concentration, undulating blood pressure, and things going in and out of my nose, it was also an enormous relief.

  I found myself wondering how good this Matt fellow, this Clark Kent look-alike of a returning champion, had been in the previous game. For all I knew at the time, maybe luck with categories was a large part of the game. Maybe Matt’s first game had included categories like

  It was possible. So I’d have to work harder before the next taping. It was the only way I could imagine controlling the outcome.

  Years later—tonight, actually, shortly before writing this very sentence—I tracked down Matt by phone. I’ve always wondered about the guy who spooked me so much.

  We chatted for over an hour. Great guy. Manages a winery up near Santa Barbara. The movie Sideways was filmed in his neighborhood. Happy, good marriage, enjoying life. Proud of his Pinot Noirs. Next time I’m up his way, I hope to crack a bottle with him.