Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!

by Bob Harris

The Sony parking garage feels like a block party. There’s Eric Newhouse and India Cooper, whom I haven’t seen since the Masters. There’s Fred Ramen, and Mike Rooney, and Jerome Vered, and even our old friend Dan Melia.

  Dan and I haven’t been able to hang out in months. We start to catch up, meeting the other insatiably curious folks in our midst: Tom Walsh, the first seven-time winner. Shane Whitlock and Kyle Hale and Scott Gillispie, three college tournament champs. Steve Chernicoff and Steve Berman and Rick Knutsen and Bruce Borchardt, great champions all.

  And—oh my—there’s Michael Daunt, the reigning International Tournament champion on the day I made several lucky guesses and finally squeaked through the exam. I am long past awe. This is just really cool.

  Michael’s first-round game, taped several weeks ago, is scheduled to air that same night. A bunch of us decide we’ll find a place to watch it together.

  Those of us who win today will not be able to talk to other winners, of course. We all know this, and plan for it. There really is that kind of honor. Not to mention the bloodstained goatskin in fifth-century Latin, and the possibility of being subpoenaed by Sony lawyers across hypothetical space-time dimensions.

  We settle into the bleachers, wondering who will play whom, and where we’ll watch Michael that night.

  “Dan Melia! Rick Knutsen! Kyle Hale!” for the first game.

  Just before they begin, Rick turns to me backstage. He’s a tall Nordic fellow with art in his haircut, part New York musician, part Viking marauder. Rick’s an excellent player, with five runaway games to his name. But facing Dan, he’s looking for help. He gestures at Dan (aka the Ameliarator, the Encyclomelia) and asks, half jokingly—but only half—“Any suggestions?”

  I advise waiting for just the right moment, like a key Daily Double, and kicking Dan in the back of his right knee. It might disrupt his balance, and would probably be hidden from view by the podiums.

  Rick nods and plays along with my deadpan expression. I almost expect him to kick Dan right now.

  I sense, just as you do, that Rick has been beaten before the game even starts. Games really are lost in the green room.

  Dan proceeds to dish out a near-historic nightmare, one of the most frightening displays I have seen. When Rick attempts a comeback, Dan picks up a city bus with one hand and crushes him with it.

  Perhaps Ken will soon fight Dan, in the mountains above Tokyo.

  I sit with Fred Ramen and Mike Rooney for a while in the bleachers. Fred still carries himself like he’s Luxembourgian royalty. Then he opens his mouth and you have milk in your nose and you’re catching your breath and you’re trying to borrow a napkin. Mike’s much the same, if more professorial. He takes eight extra words before your drink goes down funny or comes back again funnier. But at the end, you’ve learned something about Wittgenstein.

  The day’s second game is a close three-way fight. Steve Chernicoff overcomes Scott Gillispie and India Cooper. But all three have a great time. It is that kind of day.

  We are all lucky, all of us, to have come this far, and we know it.

  Game three is between my friends Mike Rooney and Fred Ramen and the seven-time champ, Tom Walsh. Tom is the first of the Nifties to play.

  We debate in the bleachers: most of us think a bye is a real disadvantage. Everyone else has more recent experience. Tenths of seconds, after all, will determine the outcome. Sure enough, Tom doesn’t survive.

  “Michael Daunt! Bob Harris! Bruce Borchardt!”

  On my right, Bruce is a five-timer, a doctor from Washington. In eight career games (including his ToC and this tournament), he has never once trailed entering Final. On my left stands Michael, destroyer of worlds, the guy who beat the whole planet when I was struggling to pass the Jeopardy! test.

  “Quiet, please,” John Lauderdale says.

  I’m standing at the centermost of the three contestant podiums, which are wider and deeper than they look on TV. My feet are teetering on a wooden box, creating the illusion of height for the camera.

  “Quiet…please,” John Lauderdale says, stopping this book in this instant.

  Not far away, on a hillside in Thailand, Yut feels a moment of inexplicable serenity.

  CHAPTER

  25

  NOT QUITE LETTING GO OF OUTCOME

  Also, A Massive Explosion Caught Live on Videotape

  “Quiet…please.”

  Though glowing with color from remote-controlled spotlights, the room is remarkably quiet and still.

  The black plastic buzzer feels cold in my hand.

  I look at the first round of categories, hoping there’s a way to play ahead. The writers are not making the games easy.

  HISTORIC QUOTATIONS(Hmm…this could be anyone or anything.)

  PLAYING PRESIDENT(This is probably movies and TV with actors playing the prez.)

  FISH, BIRD, OR MAMMAL(OK. So no snakes, frogs, mushrooms, or viruses.)

  BRITISH SPELLING BEE(Eek. Mike’s Canadian. “Mike’s spelling bee.”)

  BEEN THERE…(No idea what this is.)

  DONE THAT(And this is also anyone doing anything.)

  The only think-ahead categories are BRITISH SPELLING BEE and PLAYING PRESIDENT. I choose the latter. Before the first clue, I’ve got Michael Douglas, Martin Sheen, and Harrison Ford in my head.

  Bruce starts us off with the British spellings. Fine by me. Michael, being Canadian, will almost certainly know all of these, so let’s get them out of the way, while we’re warming up on the buzzer. But Bruce finds the timing first:

  Bruce!

  Bruce!

  Bruce!

  G-A-O-L, D-E-F-E-N-C-E, and M-E-T-R-E later, Bruce is running up a lead.

  I’m behind on the buzzer. Then early. Then late again. The fraction of a second between Alex and the Go Lights seems faster than it was in the first round. I am struggling to find it.

  On the fourth clue, my light comes on after a delay. I assume we have all rung in early, and my buzzer has simply come out of the lockout first. I’m in through pure luck.

  Zero-for-four. My timing is badly off for some reason. The buzzer will be another opponent today.

  If I don’t figure out the rhythm, I’ll go down the same way I did to Eric in the Masters. The same way I did to Kim and Dan, and Grace and Wes before the minor miracle. I will trail all game long, with only a Final mistake from someone else left to hope for. I’m a decent enough Jedi that I’ve rarely looked at the lights. But today I am dead if I don’t change my plan.

  Studying the timing right now, in this chaos, is my only hope of survival.

  I will have to play Jedi, trying to feel the right millisecond, but while watching the Go Lights each time, to learn where this millisecond might be. Shaving and adding small fractions of time.

  If this seems unlikely, I assure you—it is. I have never been able to navigate the Go Lights in midgame. I barely even know how to begin.

  Late again. And again.

  Michael beats me this time. Bruce loses the rhythm slightly, but Mike’s homing in.

  But then Mike blows a guess, and I pick up a rebound. OK.

  BEEN THERE turns out to be about identifying the country by outline. Mike and I split that column, but I can hear his thumb clicking. I know what he knows, and he knows just exactly what I do. It is like I am wrestling my twin.

  We both pass on Zambia—I did the same thing in Africa once, come to think of it—and I finally jump to the safety of Playing Presidents, hoping to coast on medium-strength clues while I focus more attention on the buzzer.

  The first clue is mine, but there’s no clicking from Mike. Only Bruce tries to buzz. Still, my timing was right. This is good.

  The second clue is a video, so there’s no timing to work on. (A video or audio clue just rolls, long after Alex stops speaking, and then at some point the Go Lights go on. You just plan a response and watch the Go Lights. Pure reflex. No timing at all.) I’m disappointed, since it breaks the rhythm I found only seconds ago.

 
CHARLTON HESTON IS SEEN HERE AS THIS PRICKLY CHARACTER BEFORE HE BECAME PRESIDENT

  In the video, Heston slaps a man for insulting his wife Rachel. Andrew Jackson once killed a man after just such a scene.

  Incidentally, Rachel died shortly before Jackson took office, supposedly due to the stress of the campaign, and Jackson held a grudge against his opponent for the rest of his life. Jackson’s sworn enemy? John Quincy Adams.

  I’ve never liked Andrew Jackson. But someday I must buy him a beer.

  Who is Andrew Jackson? is correct. But the video means I still have no sense of rhythm.

  On the next clue, the thirteenth, finally, I feel I’m finding the timing. There’s a one-frame collision, the great cliklikikkitylikkityclikit. And my light comes on. At last.

  But the commercial break stops us immediately.

  I have an early lead—fairly large, the kind I once got routinely—but no rhythm quite yet. My feet are not on the ground. Three Daily Doubles await. And my opponents are strong.

  In my chat with Alex, he asks about my travels, a silly detail that’s good for a laugh. But in our previous visit during my struggle with Tom, we spoke of another departure, one that was still on my mind.

  I’d just returned from a long trip through the sites of six of Pliny the Elder’s ancient Seven Great Wonders. (As for the seventh, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon will have to wait until Babylon doesn’t look so much like Iraq. This might be many lifetimes from now.) I told Alex a bit of what it thrilled me to learn:

  In Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, a seaside resort where rich people buy cheap retirement condos), a cabbie, when asked for the great Mausoleum, will drive to a disco where young people dance. There are signs with the word “Mausoleum” outside. The club’s pretty big, and it attracts kids with money. So these days that’s what “Mausoleum” means here.

  You have to walk off on your own in the sun up a hillside through neighborhoods filled with podiatrists’ offices, satellite dishes, cars half on the curb, and a new laundromat. A kid rides a bike, singing along with his iPod.

  By the side of a road, barely marked, is a kiosk. The tickets are gone, but the man doesn’t care.

  So you wander inside and it’s like you imagined—which is to say old, and it’s not a lot else. Few markers await you, and still fewer tourists. You might have the place to yourself.

  In its time, on this spot stood the world’s greatest temple, constructed by Mausolus’s widow and sister. (These were the same girl, Artemisia of Caria. I guess when you’re king, you’re the king.) It was such a big deal that a lot of our own buildings emulate theories of how this thing looked. Grant’s Tomb in New York is designed on what somebody figured King Mausolus liked. Two thousand years ago.

  Which is weird, in this lot, in a small Turkish seaport, where people now come just to go somewhere else and to dance and get laid. There’s nobody here, except me and some birds. I cough dust. The sound bounces across the far wall.

  Next door is a house with a car up on blocks and a back porch that faces the relics. Two children in Turkey are now growing up thinking everyone has a vast tomb in their yard. Mausolus? Yeah, nonchalantly. Who’s yours? Say what? There’s no Persian king at your house? Not even one dead guy, no satrap perhaps, no horny rich dude who was shtupping his sister? No kidding. I’ll be. I thought everyone had one. Going without must be hard.

  There’s not one thing in this place that the old king would recognize. Everything ends. Life goes on. I’ll be gone. So will you. So hug people tightly. Take joy in their heartbeats and drink something cold and go play in the shade. That is all.

  If that isn’t youth, I don’t know what youth is.

  If wonder is ancient, I’m glad to grow old.

  That’s not quite what I said then, in chatting with Alex, because I was still thinking about Playing Presidents: Hopkins as Nixon, Hedaya as Nixon, Waterston’s Lincoln, Devane’s JFK. (Even more, I don’t talk in that ponderous manner, much less venture into dactylic octameter. But Jane thinks it’s sexy when words form that way.)

  Besides, there’s only, like, half a minute or so.

  Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo-dwoo-dwoo-dwah.

  I hit the game’s first Daily Double.

  WILLIAM PARRY WAS JAMES GARFIELD IN THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTION OF THIS SONDHEIM MUSICAL

  James Garfield. Vice President: Chester A. Arthur. First Lady: Lucretia Rudolph. The guy by my mom’s house. The smartest president ever, the ambidextrous Civil War general. What the hell about him overlaps with Sondheim? He wasn’t in Gypsy. Sweeney Todd? He wasn’t a demon barber, although he could have cut throats with both hands. Sunday in the Park with George? Into the Woods? Garfield wasn’t shot by Bernadette Peters.

  Looking at the tape, Alex gives me fifteen full seconds. An eternity in Jeopardy! time.

  He had that metal bedframe that hid the bullet that Alexander Graham Bell went looking for with the metal detector. His house is called Lawnfield. It’s on Mentor Avenue, just down from a big shopping mall…

  “Bob…?” Alex prompts, waiting patiently.

  A shopping mall is a kind of forum. And A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. But that was in Rome. Although Garfield spoke Latin. He could write it in one hand and write Greek in the other…

  Fifteen seconds, in TV time, is an entire cycle of Troy.

  Alex has seen me pull obscure facts from every hole in my skin over the years, and I want to live up to his faith. But kindness goes unrewarded sometimes. I lamely guess Merrily We Roll Along, hoping perhaps to move backward in time as its characters do.

  “What is Assassins?” Alex gently explains.

  Right. Garfield was assassinated. It’s like his one act as president. Which is why his innards were probed by Alexander Graham Bell in the first place. Amid all the noise, I did not see the obvious.

  I miss the next clue, too, as always after Daily Doubles. Michael beats me on the buzzer. So my best category goes by, and I still can’t find the timing.

  Quotations zip by. Michael flies through the category. Clue after clue after clue. He is a millisecond ahead of me on the buzzer. I am late. I am late. I am late.

  I can hang on just barely, and only because of my dad.

  Dad loved words.

  He wasn’t a big reader, and he rarely wrote very much. His hands were so broken by his work that it took him a full hour to write a short note to his mom. But he loved long loopy lines of aleatory alliteration, he fastened to assonance, he savored the texture and rhythm of sounds.

  My dad loved Edward Lear. Lewis Carroll. Ogden Nash. What a strange bird my dad were.

  I do not imagine that a single month of my life passed—ever, during the thirty-two years, one month, eight days, six hours, and forty-five minutes that my father and I shared this planet—that Dad didn’t recite Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” to me, just for the sheer delight of the apparently meaningless syllables. “‘’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves,’” he would begin. And then came this big loopy grin.

  One other thing, completely unrelated, which he said many times, for no reason: “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” This was Dad’s verbal ceremony when something was about to begin, whether it was a driving lesson or a difficult personal talk. He never explained this. It was just a fun phrase that he liked.

  I was forty-one years old, and Dad had been gone for ten years, when I saw those words again in a book while studying for a certain quiz show. I was compelled to learn what they meant. In 1898, it was how a great man in charge told another great man in charge it was time to start killing other human beings in quantity. I think if Dad had known this, he would have used another phrase.

  AT MANILA BAY, COMMODORE DEWEY SAID TO THIS CAPTAIN OF HIS FLAGSHIP, “YOU MAY FIRE WHEN YOU ARE READY…”

  Who is Gridley?

  Thanks, Dad.

  Another clue. Michael outdoes me again.

  Then I manage to get in, and respond incorrectly. He picks up the rebound.

  T
he three of us then split the few clues still remaining, but an odd habit is starting to build. Michael has started lifting his hand as he buzzes. This is easier to glimpse now, almost impossible not to feel. And it reminds me, quite clearly, how often Mike’s raising hand is winning.

  Since the last commercial, Michael has outscored me $4800 to $200.

  Double Jeopardy begins with more of the same:

  Michael!

  Michael!

  He kills Bruce and me both on the buzzer, right away.

  The categories are

  EGYPTIAN LIFE(Yes! I was just in Cairo.)

  1970S POP MUSIC(I will save this if possible. My strongest category all game.)

  LABOR(Dad was in the United Auto Workers. Yes!)

  YOUR NUMBER’S UP(OK, this should be about average.)

  FILL IN THE TITLE(Perfect for anyone who is memorizing, like me.)

  I’M JUST A “BILL”(OK, wordplay. This one’s fine, too.)

  Bruce gets the next clue. And he leads us to LABOR.

  I get lucky on the timing, and pick up $800, although I still cannot make time behave. But then: Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo-dwoodwoo-dwah. I stumble into a Daily Double.

  I consider my wager. I now trail by just $1600, one clue’s worth of money. But Michael is death on the Weapon so far. If things proceed as they’re going, I will trail entering the Final. That’s very likely the end of my run.

  If I don’t make a move, I’ll be done in five minutes. Besides, this clue is in LABOR—a strength, thanks to Dad—and it’s in a relatively easy $1200 spot. You pick your shots. This is a good one to take.