Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!
Page 33
Let’s make it a true Daily Double, I say. If I miss it, it’s over.
HIS ENTRY IN THE WORLD BOOK LISTS BIRTH AND DEATH AS (1913–1975?)
I was a paperboy when I was young. Every time a dog found a bone in the late 1970s, newspapers in the Snow Belt said this man had been found.
Who was Jimmy Hoffa? and I’m up $2800.
“Good one,” Michael says. I can’t see his face, but he means it, I’m sure. He’s an excellent sport, probably much better than I am. I’m certainly too focused to respond right this second.
I get the next clue—the one after a Daily Double—which itself is surprising, enough that I’m late on the buzzer again. Mike blows through the next two.
Michael!
Michael!
This last clue is even more frustrating than usual. Sarah from the Clue Crew is on video, hinting at the Arabic word for a market. She does this while walking through the Khan al-Khalili, a souq (that’s the word Sarah’s hinting at) among the world’s most historic. I’ve just come back from Cairo. I’ve just walked right by there.
Another kink in the Matrix? Maybe not. If you play well, the cards in the game should repeat on occasion. There’s no end to Trebekistan, but the roads cross back and forth.
Michael’s timing is better, by a smaller split-second. “What is a souq?”
I am late. I will have to shave time yet more finely again.
Khan al-Khalili, I should add, is also a novel by Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz. I’ve never read it, nor any of Mahfouz, not yet. But he’s inside my notebooks, and easy to remember. It’s a one-to-one: Egypt + novelist = Mahfouz.
Two clues later, I almost panic. It’s more video from Egypt, focused on a picture of Mahfouz, and here’s Jimmy from the Clue Crew:
BROWSING CAIRO’S MANY BOOKSTORES, YOU’LL INEVITABLY COME ACROSS WORKS BY THIS AUTHOR, THE 1988 NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
GAAAH! I MUST GET THIS!
Michael’s hand isn’t moving yet. It must be nearly time to buzz in. I have to play Jedi, shaving off fractions of fractions. Aiming for the instant between the Go Lights and Mike’s thumb starting to rise.
Who is Mahfouz? I say.
Alex takes a beat. I think he’s checking my pronunciation, lest the tape need reviewing with air-puffing syringes. But this is correct. Maybe there’s still a chance to gain some control over time.
But Bruce!
And Michael!
And Michael!
And Michael!
And Bruce!
Michael’s now back in the lead. Ahead by as many dollars as milliseconds.
FILL IN THE BLANK draws several blanks. We play some advanced Zombie Jeopardy. We’re aiming our Weapons and firing carefully. The writers are pushing us hard. Ten clues remain.
Michael!
Michael!
I should be falling behind now, brain losing oxygen, starting to see a Great Jeopardy Light in the Sky. But both of Michael’s responses are wrong.
Bruce and I split up the rebounds. And still:
Michael! again. He is murder.
Two clues later Michael calls for his next clue, and Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo-dwoo-dwoo-dwah. The last Daily Double.
I have a slim $200 lead. Michael bets for the win. He goes big. He goes courageous. He bets $3000 on himself. There will be only five clues left when he is done. The whole game may come down to Michael’s response.
I stand to one side, helpless, watching my milliseconds running out.
NUMBER OF DIFFERENT OPENING MOVES POSSIBLE BY ONE PLAYER IN A GAME OF CHESS
I know Michael will get this. Eight pawns can move one space or two. That’s sixteen. Two knights can go forward and right or forward and left. That’s four. (8 × 2) + (2 × 2) equals Mike’s gonna win.
“What is twenty?” he says.
And that’s checkmate.
In the bleachers, I can feel the other players relaxing. The rest of the game will be killing time. We know how this ends. Michael has beaten me. He deserves to win. This game can fade now into blackness.
Besides, Mike has math on his side.
Five clues remain. All in 1970S POP MUSIC. This is good for me, but my opponents are old enough to have danced in those years.
In the last fifteen clues, I’ve given two correct responses. Two. I’ve won on the buzzer just once. I just came back from Cairo, and still I got passed over in Egypt. I’ve buzzed in first and been right only four times all round.
Not far away, on a hillside in Thailand, even Yut looks a little concerned.
Five clues remain for my Jeopardy! life. I will probably need at least four of the five.
I take a breath, preparing to fire when ready. I have been watching Michael’s hand as it moves with each clue. Stealing glimpses, from my spot in the center, sensing rhythm, trying to feel my twin kick. I’ve been a hair late. Then half a hair. Then a quarter. Then an eighth. I need not to be late.
I need the right millisecond.
Right…now.
My light comes on. What’s “Weekend in New England”?
Michael’s lead is now $2400.
Right…now.
My light comes on. What’s “Rumours”?
Michael’s lead is just $1600. Distant commotion begins in the bleachers offstage.
Right…now.
My light comes on. What’s “the Captain”?
$400 to go. Hushed whispers. In the audience, I feel bodies leaning forward.
Right…now.
My light comes on. What’s “Sir Duke”?
And I am suddenly, improbably, back in the lead.
Adrenaline flows so intensely that I can feel my hand cooling from sweat on the buzzer’s soft plastic. I’m up by $1200 with just one clue to go. If Michael still gets it, that whole run was just wasted. But if I am too eager and buzz in with a wrong guess, I’ll take it away from myself. The last clue of the round:
“AND IF ONE NIGHT YOU HEAR CRYING FROM ABOVE, IT’S ’CAUSE” OF THIS, THE TITLE OF A 1976 HIT
And I do not know the game’s final $2000 clue.
I let go of the buzzer. I wait. I can only hope. I even gesture surrender.
And Michael and Bruce let the clue go, too.
It’s the single best comeback I’ve ever made, a long march down the field with the clock running out. It’s the best game I may ever play.
And I know it’s still half luck. But so is my presence here in this game in the first place, a dozen ways over, not least being born.
That last clue, incidentally, refers to the song “Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel.”
Last time I saw an angel disappear in this book, it was headed for the Taj Mahal. Maybe we should crank down the power on Howard’s End.
I am breathing. My heart is beating. I know I have an 80 percent chance of winning. Just one more clue remaining, and I can go home.
The Final Jeopardy category—p-TING!
INVENTED WORDS
IN WORKS BY LEWIS CARROLL, THIS WORD MEANS “FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON; THE TIME WHEN YOU BEGIN BROILING THINGS FOR DINNER”
Merv’s lullaby begins, ticking and tocking, measuring each passing moment as it slips into the past.
OK…OK…
Milliseconds pass.
Where is there a cooking scene in Lewis Carroll? Does somebody cook Tweedledum and Tweedledee?
I do not see the obvious.
Broiling, OK, that’s the clue. Broiling, cooking, roasting, broasting, poaching, peeling…But it’s an invented word. For dinner. For cooking dinner.
I do not relax and slow down.
The second chorus begins. From two other podiums, I hear the familiar clackity-click-whap-clackity of light pens on glass. Bruce and Michael have already finished. I still do not see the obvious.
Four in the afternoon. That’s about teatime. Which is British. But that’s also not particularly invented. What am I missing here?
Time ticks away. It goes in only one direction. The final notes finish. I write down What i
s teatime? as the tympani thumps its final bum-BUM.
In the thirty-two years, one month, eight days, six hours, and forty-five minutes that my father and I shared this planet, Dad must have recited the first lines of Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” to me, just for the sound of the INVENTED WORDS, five or six hundred times, including three times in this book.
You already know the correct response. Even if, just like me, you don’t see it quite yet.
The poem begins with this:
’Twas brillig…
“Brillig.” Which sounds like “broiling.” It’s the second damn word.
When confirming Bruce’s response, Alex begins to recite “Jabberwocky.”
My spine comes unscrewed. My head is a torch. It’s not about loss. Not this loss, anyway. I just miss my father with all of my heart.
Right…now.
It’s actually funny to lose in this fashion. It’s perfect, in fact. It’s the ultimate Cleveland. After years of study, far-flung travel, and notebooks filled to the edges, I’ve somehow forgotten the poem that I heard from my crib to my dad’s final bedside and all thirty-two years in between.
I’d have figured it out on the day when I first passed the test. I’d have thought it was easy, something every kid grew up with. “Doesn’t your house have Lewis Carroll?”
When I first came on the show, I was afraid of a failure that in some sense might dishonor my family. This was mostly a joke, but that’s exactly how this feels. I have forgotten my very own dad.
So the poem just erupts, a cathartic explosion.
I finish the rest of the stanza Alex starts, then skip ahead to another small morsel of Dad’s favorite poem, which emerges with every emotion you’ve felt in this book, all at once:
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
I’m trying to laugh. What a magnificent coincidence. Perhaps the best one of all. But I see Dad’s broken smile, his laugh through bad teeth, a tired gray face with a child’s soft joy in his eyes. So I spout glorious nonsense with grief in my voice and every inch of my body.
It is a slightly odd moment. Apparently, not many people recite whimsical poetry while grieving their fathers on game shows on national television.
Michael and Bruce are the pictures of sportsmanship. If I look a sore loser, they just let it slide.
Alex, whom you’ll know by his “Oooh,” looks concerned. There’s no way to explain. We just smile and push on.
Center stage, credits roll, we wander off to the bleachers.
Dan Melia is standing there, waiting, the first face I see. The Ivy League Serial Killer hugs me at once.
Outside, on the pavement, rain assaults all of Sony. The sky is filling with my exact mood. It’s cinematic as hell, the trip back to old Max in the Sony garage.
Max is waiting, just as always, in the same space as forever. The same one he was parked in when you opened this book.
But there’s one major difference, in the years that have passed. I find it when I reach for my keys.
I have a coin in my pocket. From the Luxor. Jane’s token. My favorite Jeopardy! memento.
I have already won after all. I now win every day.
It turns out, incidentally, that Dan Melia not only knew “brillig,” but has in fact taught a college class in which Lewis Carroll’s precise definitions for each word of the poem were specifically discussed.
This is just how things should be.
The eighteen who advanced from this round were amazing. About half were contestants I’ve played or know well.
Dan Melia and Michael Daunt both lost to Jerome Vered. Jerome then beat Frank Spangenberg (who had beaten Grace Veach) and a woman named Pam Mueller, who was terrific three games in a row. So Jerome made the Grand Final.
Brad Rutter, the Rutterminator, won out over Steve Chernicoff and Mike Rooney. He then defeated two folks I don’t know but am impressed with, John Cuthbertson and Chris Miller, reaching the finals of his second straight mega-tournament.
Jerome, Brad, and Ken played at last for two million. Bradzilla won all three games. The Record Store Record Holder beat the Brigham Thumb in a blowout. Ken’s last Final response also included: “Go Brad.” I think this tells you more about Ken Jennings than do his seventy-four wins.
The Ultimate Tournament brought together more than a hundred old champions. Not just to play, but to play afterwards.
The tone was reflected by Alex himself, moments before the first game of the $2 million final. Jerome, Ken, and Brad had been breaking the tension by kidding about behind-podium nakedness. They didn’t realize their mikes were live, or that ears might be listening.
The connections behind the walls remain unknowable, of course. It’s not clear how the joke current flowed. But when Alex was introduced to begin the first game, he emerged with a straight face, his unruffled demeanor…and no pants.
Boxers, incidentally.
You can see this yourself on the Jeopardy! DVD. It is an Easter Egg, fun to find on your own, and it’s pretty damn funny, although the shock the players felt can’t be reproduced. It is only a shame that books can’t include similar things. So for this moment, you’ll have to enjoy the evidence of pants unseen, unseen.
The frat party was on, once the games finally aired. Now every old friendship among us could at last be renewed. New ones could finally begin. There are clusters of players around New York, L.A., and San Francisco, and other small scatterings in most other places. There are dinners and movies, as with any group of friends.
On the night that the public saw Brad win the $2 million, he and Jerome and Fred Ramen and Rick Knutsen got together in New York. A few hours later, when the shows aired in Los Angeles, Mike Rooney and Steve Berman and Jane and I were in a Santa Monica bar. The East Coast called the West Coast, and we passed the phone around.
It’s all ad hoc and informal. I spend a few hours with the frat when I can. There have been several fine evenings out so far.
But the night of my last game is still the one I like best.
In the hotel in Culver City where traveling players usually stay, there’s a place to sit down and relax. It is too bright to be a bar, but even so, we all know it’s where we’re going when we’re done. It’s big and it’s empty and it’s quiet like church. It’s a fine place for a half-dozen tired players to sit together and share time at the end.
Dan buys the first round. His girlfriend Dara is here. She hugs me, a bit sad for my loss. Soon Eric Newhouse walks in. He has fallen, much as I have, and is in need of some cheer. So we trade tiny details and start to let our buzzer hands finally rest.
Fred Ramen comes by and drops himself at our table. The Luxembourgian prince has been hurled from a tower. We get some food, a bowl of nachos that taste a lot more like walnuts. There’s a TV with nothing good on, playing silently in the background. Bruce Borchardt pulls up a chair. He’s changed his shirt, and the new one looks cool. Michael Daunt, who can’t talk to Dan because they’re both still among the living, visits with me on the other side.
When it’s time, we watch the TV, and see Michael win his first game, a match he played a lifetime ago. Soccer happens. We cheer.
By the bar, an old dog falls asleep.
Butter tea, everybody. Let me buy you this round.
My thoughts wander back to a small white house in the Snow Belt.
Last time I visited, Mom showed me a large red hat, which many women her age have begun to wear, inspired by a poem about growing old. She’s doing well. Except her daughter has a tough time coming up.
Connie’s surgery date is approaching. This will be the rearrangement of bits of her skeleton, after which she’ll have to remain very still through months of a difficult recovery.
Even worse, Connie’s old bed, too soft to navigate easily, will be a terrible hindrance, itself a likely cause of much pain.
It would help a great deal to have something fancy that rises, like hospitals have.
Fortunately, you can buy these. You can have them delivered.
And they cost only a little more than the consolation award for the game I’ve just played.
Jane will chip in, because that’s how Jane is. But for once in my life, finally, I have used this small brain for Connie.
So at least that wasn’t a total waste.
Empty glasses. Yawns and stretching. We’ve been here an eternity.
Oh, and Dara and Dan are engaged. Didn’t they tell me?
They didn’t tell me. We haven’t been able to speak for months.
Where and when? It’s fantastic.
They’re still planning things now. But that’s the thing. They don’t know. But they do have a daydream idea.
They would like to marry on the Jeopardy! set.
No way, not a chance that the producers would say yes. But Dan and Dara will ask. Life’s too short not to try. And sometimes daydreams come true.
Dara asks: So will I do it?
Will I do what?
Would I be willing to perform the ceremony, as their minister?
Dan throws back his head and applauds.
From Alex’s podium, we will discover, you are much closer to the contestants than it might appear in the course of a game.
Perhaps you have to stand there to see what I mean.