Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!

by Bob Harris

  Matt’s proudest moment on Jeopardy!? In the game before ours, he did extremely well in a category called SHEEPISH COUNTRIES:

  “So, of course, this was all about countries that have lots of sheep,” he explained. “You immediately think of New Zealand, maybe Scotland. But I’ve always been a geography buff. I didn’t quite run the category, but for $1,000, the clue asked for a country in the Commonwealth of Independent States which has twice the number of sheep as people…”

  Matt paused on the phone line, as if he half-expected me to blurt out the answer. This might have been a very long pause indeed.

  “…and I said, ‘What is Kazakhstan?’”

  Here’s a humbling thought: Matt was confidently blurting out “What is Kazakhstan?” just five minutes before I began my L’Oréal-induced conniption in the green room.

  Looking back at the buzzer-play in my first game, we find another key bit of Jeopardy! strategy, a bit of Zen that even the best players struggle to achieve: do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to ring in. Ever.

  Do not. Touch. The. Buzzer.

  Unless you are very sure of the correct response.

  Here’s why: if you and I and your best friend are playing each other on a $1000 clue, and you get it wrong, you’ve just given us both a $1000 advantage. This is already twice as bad as simply letting one of us respond correctly. Worse, there’s now an excellent chance that one of us will now do exactly that, especially since we have a few extra seconds to think, and you’ve eliminated one of the possible responses.

  In this case, guessing wrong will put you $1000 behind one opponent, and $2000 behind the other. Total loss: $3000.

  On the other hand, if your brain turns to grape jelly and oozes out of your skull entirely, bounces with a loud “plop!” off your podium, and finally makes a large purple stain on the studio floor, the worst possible loss is only $1000.

  No big deal. You just scoop your brain back up and play the next clue. And meanwhile, you get the extra few seconds to think, so if an opponent screws up, you can pick up the rebound.

  It’s easier said than done. Way easier. Players whack themselves with their own buzzers all the time. But you win Jeopardy! the same way you win a game of Russian roulette: keep your finger off the damn trigger unless you know exactly what’s in the chamber. There’s a reason Jane and I decided it’s properly called the Jeopardy Weapon.

  And this leads us to the next step in the Eightfold Path:

  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.

  4. Doing nothing is better than doing something really stupid.

  On a set of Jeopardy! boards, there are sixty potential clues to be revealed. Three will be Daily Doubles, so the maximum number of buzzer chances, ever, is fifty-seven. Because of time limits, however, players sometimes don’t complete the entire board. In my first game, there were two clues left on the board in each round. Therefore, there were fifty-three opportunities to ring in.

  I just checked the tape. Of those fifty-three chances, I only attempted to ring in thirty-five times. I allowed the other eighteen clues—more than one-third of the game, including most of the high-dollar clues, whose answers of course I did not know—to simply float on by.

  And I won in a runaway. Final Jeopardy didn’t even matter.

  I was not being modest when I told you that I didn’t know that much.

  You don’t win by knowing everything. Often, you won’t know squat. All you can do is admit it and make yourself comfortable with ignorance until you have a chance to change your situation.

  Jeopardy! is often not so much a test of knowledge as it is a test of self-knowledge.

  Thus, the next step on the Eightfold Path:

  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.

  4. Doing nothing is better than doing something really stupid.

  5. Admit you don’t know squat as often as possible.

  However, when I did attempt to answer, my light came on. Almost always, in fact: twenty-eight times, by my count.

  Eighty percent of the thirty-five times my finger moved, my light came on. The other 20 percent of those clues were split about evenly between the other two players. Another way to look at it: when my body decided to tell my index finger to move, I won on the buzzer eight times more often than either opponent, both of whom were often looking directly at a Go Light telling them exactly when to ring in.

  State-dependent retrieval, properly harnessed, can sometimes help you achieve unlikely goals.

  Carried too far, on the other hand, it can also drive people around you completely nuts.

  If practicing in an image-rich environment might help, what about filling the apartment with bright stage lights? What about moving the furniture to look more like the Jeopardy! set while studying? What about wearing the same clothes every single day? Einstein had a famously limited wardrobe, after all, and for exactly the same reason. Why not?

  I’m getting ahead of the story again. But not by much now.

  The Final Jeopardy category—p-TING!—was hardly a huge surprise:

  HALLOWEEN

  All righty, then. The mental note about broadcast dates is hereby underlined.

  We wrote down our wagers during the commercial. While other breaks are timed to the advertising segments, the break before Final Jeopardy is allowed to stretch out for a few extra minutes. The players have some calculations to do, and the producers don’t want anyone to lose because of a math error. Knowing this, I dawdled a bit over the arithmetic, buying time to let my neurons cool while considering an unusual option. I share this in a confessional tone.

  I had $500 more than twice the second-place player’s score. So all I had to do was bet less than $500, and the game was won. Instead, I bet $500 exactly. I was actually playing for a worst-case tie. In non-tournament tie games, both winners return, so in the worst case, my next game would include only one new opponent, in addition to one I could definitely beat on the buzzer.

  In a full five-game run, I would normally have eight future opponents. But any one of them could be an Ivy League Serial Killer, an inhuman knowledge machine with a degree from Harvard, someone my Jedi buzzer tricks couldn’t possibly overwhelm. Why not cut that number down to seven, while I could? For all I knew, the monster was lurking in the very next green room.

  I mention this strategy for two reasons. First, it is a move I have never heard anyone else suggest, much less try. Perhaps it was brilliant. More likely, it was both cocky and somehow stunningly stupid. I don’t know which. You decide. Second, notice that the first game wasn’t even over, and I was already becoming focused, quite clearly, on going undefeated.

  Kind of a leap, isn’t it? You may begin to wonder if the gentle narrator you have come to trust may, intoxicated with his good fortune, start to show occasional flashes of a man becoming slightly unhinged.

  Do not discount this possibility.

  The Final clue was fairly simple, even in the unlikely event you’ve never seen the show to which it referred:

  MYTHICAL HALLOWEEN BEING IN THE TITLE OF THE OFT-REPEATED ANIMATED TV SPECIAL THAT DEBUTED OCTOBER 27, 1966

  I knew the correct response because when I was a child, watching television, I was a child watching television.

  If you knew it instantly, great. But if not, I’d bet money that you’d still get it in thirty seconds.

  Obvious things may be worth noticing.

  There are actually three hints here. Two involve scanning fairly large databases: mythical Halloween beings (goblins, ghouls, ghosts—and that’s just under G) and 1960s-era cartoons (Alvin and the Chipmunks, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Mighty Mouse—and those are just the ones starring rodents). Wander too far down either blind alley, though, and you’re not coming out.
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  But the third hint is huge and simple: how many Halloween TV specials get repeated every year? I can only think of one: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. And sure enough, the title names a mythical Halloween character.

  The writers almost always structure Final Jeopardy clues in this you-can-get-there fashion. The worst mistake you can make is not having the patience to read closely, trapping yourself in a dead end as a result. If you ever get on the show: take your time. The thirty seconds won’t start until Alex has read the clue out loud, so you have an extra seven or eight seconds on top. The whole clue is only fifteen or twenty words. Go slowly, and you may find the vital hint before the Think Music even starts.

  Electronic pen hits glass. Clackity-click-whap-clackity. Done.

  Once my response was written down, I had about twenty-five seconds to stand in silence, listening to the rest of the familiar thirty-second musical countdown. I wanted to dance, if you must know.

  I thought of my mom back in the small white house in Ohio, and how happy she would be when she saw the game. I thought of my dad, who is still alive in my head, and what he would say if the timeline ever collapsed and we all got to sit together in that living room and watch this very show.

  I hoped my sister Connie would be proud. Over the years, despite mystifying health problems, she had married happily, raised two kids, and made the best of discomfort whenever possible. She had given me more reason to be proud of her than I could ever provide in return.

  Annika never crossed my mind.

  Since I responded correctly, my tie-game second-choice gambit went unnoticed by the universe. Alex came over to shake my hand, and we stood at center stage while random products that some contestants also receive! zipped across TV screens thousands of miles away and several weeks in the future.

  Sue Bee brand honey! and Scalpicin hair treatment! and the Jeopardy! electronic game! later, finally, it was over. While Alex disappeared back into the mists of celebrity, I wobbled off the stage, back into the darkness, and tried to readjust my eyes, ears, and self-esteem.

  Susanne Thurber patted me on the back and gently guided me toward a series of forms I needed to fill out. I was walking gingerly, trying to convince myself of what had just happened. Patients leaving surgery are often more sure of their footing.

  There was a slip of paper with a large number on it and a place for me to sign. The number was simply impossible to believe. It was enough money to pay rent for an entire year. It was twice what I had paid for rumbling old Max, larger even than the college debt I had worked for eight years to pay off.

  I stuffed my copy of the slip into my thrift-store sports jacket, grabbed a free Goodie Bag including a Jeopardy! home game—which I still own, almost ten years later, somewhere in a dusty pile in an apartment I don’t quite live in—and wobbled out into the Sony lot.

  I was proud. I was relieved. I was tired.

  I wanted more.

  CHAPTER

  7

  HOW EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED

  Also, Twenty-One Interesting Uses for Rubber

  Unfortunately, I still didn’t have much in the way of actual memory skills.

  I often wonder, even now, if I have much of a memory at all. Example: I finished the chapter about taking the Jeopardy! test about a week ago. And I still don’t remember what year it was the first time I failed.

  I’ve been thinking of going through a large stack of old notebooks and tax receipts, trying to pin down the year. This is no inconvenience. Sometime between six months and six years ago, I again moved in with a delightful and talented woman—for the fifth (or fourth, or possibly sixth) time—and, as you know, all of my stuff is still in boxes and garbage bags, as it has been since you picked up this book.

  I’ve mentioned this woman several times now, of course. Jane, who named Squeema, wink-wink.

  The bags and boxes were supposed to be unpacked long ago. But they’re still all sort of shoved into the corner of the guest bedroom, which was supposed to have become an office. Instead, it’s just storage.

  It wouldn’t take more than a few days to unpack. I don’t have much. I don’t like to own stuff. There’s a whole explanation for that. The one I usually tell myself involves frugality and charity and even a self-flattering touch of asceticism. But of course that’s complete baloney, and you deserve better.

  The main reason I don’t own many things is that I hate packing up. I’ve had to do it too many times.

  I’m forty-two years old and I’ve never been married. Came close a few times, but one of us always screwed it up or exploded over Lakehurst, New Jersey, or something. My series of exes is now long enough that the names have started to repeat like the books of the Old Testament: Ruth, then First and Second Sara, First and Second Kelly, and so on. Eventually you get to Goliath—that was just a phase—and then finally the Ephesians, who seemed nice at the party but didn’t even call the next day.

  Some of it was youth. I knew everything, you should know, at least for a while anyway. Some of it was bad luck or the odd tragic calamity here and there. And some of it was living in Hollywood, where too many people upgrade relationships the way they do cell phones.

  Still, I sleep OK. I’ve never cheated on anyone, my lies have usually been the kind that kept nice little surprises hidden, and I’ve never once said the words “I love you” without meaning them. I’m still friends with about half of my former One-True-Eternal-Soulmates™, and quite close to a few, if that means anything.

  But I still can’t quite unpack all the boxes. This late in the game, sometimes I’m afraid I never will.

  Jane—the latest book in my personal testament—was probably terrific and smart and funny and kind before she was even born. So maybe this time, I said to myself, carrying each heavy box and bag.

  Maybe this time. Probably, even, if I had to write down my wager with an electronic pen. Let’s just hope nothing truly horrible happens to one of us.

  But I just said too much. I keep getting ahead of the story.

  There are now three large Hefty Cinch Saks sitting empty on the floor, covered in a large pile of notebooks and small slips of paper. I am tired, my throat is dry, and my clothes are covered in dust. Still, there is no record of my first attempt at the Jeopardy! test.

  However, I have managed to locate my copy of Speed Reading Made Easy. So if I can just find a box of nails and some wood, I can make a wine rack as a present for Matt.

  I’ve also stumbled across a large undated receipt from the J. H. Gilbert Company of Willoughby, Ohio. This piece of paper is particularly puzzling. I have no idea what this receipt is for. The letterhead offers some intriguing, even lurid, hints:

  INDUSTRIAL GLOVES FOR EVERY NEED SAFETY EQUIPMENT, RUBBER CLOTHING, FOOTWEAR

  For some reason, my eye keeps fixing on the words “rubber clothing.” And apparently I once spent almost a hundred dollars there.

  I find myself curious.

  You’re probably scanning through the same set of delicious possibilities that I am right now. But here’s the thing: I really don’t know, and it’s me that we’re talking about. I was on the road for a long time, and it’s gently surprising that I never woke up with inexplicable tattoos promising the secrets of my identity.

  What the hell was I doing? How many people were involved? Did we scrub thoroughly afterward?

  In the proposal that led to the book you’re now reading—facilitated by a fellow Jeopardy! contestant named Arthur Phillips, whom you’ll soon meet in the green room as an intense young fellow able to send heat rays through his forehead—this chapter wasn’t originally about THINGS TO DO IN A CATSUIT. It was outlined as a creativity and lateral-thinking exercise, fleshing out the fun memory techniques we’ll need so I can go all Jimmy Neutron in another thirty pages or so.

  Looking at the outline, though, a whole separate chapter was supposed to delve into my own life history, so you’ll care more about what happens later. But we need a focus and examples for our memory exer
cise anyway, and so—if only because I’m extremely curious now about this receipt, and giggling childishly at the idea of seeing my whole life through the lens of the word rubber—let’s have a little fun here, open up a tin of madeleines, and play with everything all at once.

  This way, we’ll not only encounter exotic maladies, third-world dictatorships, and lovers who flee to South America, but with any real luck, maybe we’ll even track down some embarrassing rubber knickers with frilly bits of lace on the side and a thank-you note from the Turkish navy.

  I wonder if I’ve had a more interesting life than I realized.

  Close the book, get out a piece of paper, and see how many free associations you can come up with which directly involve the word rubber. To keep this brief, let’s insist that the word itself has to be in a short phrase: “rubber this” or “this-that-and-the-other rubber.”

  Don’t stop the first time you run out of ideas. Poke around. If you get stuck, change the sense you’re thinking with. If you’re thinking visually, start thinking with your nose, and then your ears. If you’re thinking with your sense of touch, start working with taste and sight.

  Take your time. I’ll make my own list while you’re gone. That will be preferable to cleaning up the mess I just made.

  Welcome back. Here’s the list I came up with.

  Rubber bands, which I also heard once as slang for the fan belt on a car.

  Rubber stamps, which are also a metaphor for automatic approval.