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I appeared on Jeopardy! on July 10 and 11. Check out my series of posts reflecting on my experience:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Note: you can find a full archive of the July 11 game, including stats, here.

I come off stage, still grinning, having formed absolutely no memory of the chitchat I made with Alex while the credits were rolling. Robert congratulates me, leads me back to the green room, and tells me to get changed. I grab the next shirt from my suitcase and walk through the door labeled JEOPARDY! RETURNING CHAMPION.

Somewhat anticlimactically, it is just a small gray room with a full-length mirror, not unlike a fitting room at JCPenney, except without the pincushion or the bench on which to throw your discarded garments. Having glimpsed this sight that perhaps only a few thousand others on the planet have seen, I change my shirt and leave.

The rest of the contestants in the room congratulate me on my win, and we talk about things I have no chance of remembering. At some point, Robert picks up the next two cards. “Lynn and AJ, you’re up!” In what seems like no time at all, Lisa touches up my makeup, I get miked up again, and we’re headed back out there.

As in the last game, the first thing we do on stage is record our Hometown Howdies. I have to do a new one, this time introducing myself as “returning champion Prabhu Balasubramanian.” It has a nice ring to it.

A few minutes before the next show starts, Robert approaches me at the champion’s podium and asks, “Alex mispronounced your last name, right?”

“Did he?”

“He said Balasubra-MANE-ee-an. But it’s MAHN-ee-an, right?’

“Oh. Yeah.” (Even that isn’t how you say it — the syllables in question should be pronounced rather more like the English word money — but I’ve always felt that beggars can’t be choosers in such matters.)

“Would you like me to talk to him about it?”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Sure.”

Before I know it, the music is swelling, and Johnny Gilbert is saying, “…whose one-day cash winnings total $9,199!” Alex walks out and, to my complete surprise, anchors the entire opening banter of the episode on the pronunciation of my last name. I can’t WAIT for everyone to see this! It feels a little like destiny.

And now it’s game time again. I get off to a great start; I begin with “‘F’-Stops” and, for the third time today, win four of the five clues in a category. After a brief and counterproductive stop in “Internationalities”, where I needlessly flub an easy clue on Australian-rules football, we go to “Fast Food”, and I take three of five. In the moment, I’m ecstatic that I’m doing so well in this category despite being vegetarian; I’ve never even set foot in a Hardee’s and have no idea how I knew that it’s a sister restaurant of Carl’s Jr., other than that things are just going my way.

Then things start to go the other way. AJ, who is clearly the stronger of my two opponents, takes us to “Abbreviated Bands”, where he takes three clues in quick succession, beating me on the buzzer for two of them. You can clearly see my frustration on camera at the idea there could be any doubt that I know exactly what NKOTBSB stands for. Heading into the first commercial, AJ and I are tied at $3400, with Lynn on the board at $200.

In the contestant interviews, Lynn and AJ both tell stories that leave them looking pretty strange. Alex actually tells AJ straight up, “you may be weird.” I appear on camera as though I’m listening to and enjoying these conversations, but the truth is that adrenaline keeps me from really hearing any of it. My own interview goes much better than the last; I am pretty pleased with myself for saying on national television that I can “bust out” the tango, and I don’t mind in the slightest that it flirts dangerously with falsehood. (In a moment that’s edited out of the final broadcast, Alex asks me if I have a favorite dance, and I respond quickly, “I love the waltz.” I think that says a lot more about me than my flirtation with the tango, and I can’t help wishing they’d left it in.)

We get back to the action. Some time in the Jeopardy! round — I wish I could remember when, and perhaps it was actually before the break — there’s a snafu. Alex reads the clue, and then he calls on AJ — only AJ didn’t actually buzz in. His buzzer was apparently stuck from the last clue! They stop taping; Maggie comes on stage and asks us to turn around so we’re not facing the board, explaining that when something goes wrong, they want to be extra careful that, if something weird happens on the board to expose game information, we won’t see it. I suspect that they also don’t want us playing ahead during this unplanned break in the action. After what seems like an eternity, John Lauderdale comes over and tells us we’re ready to get started again. They apparently had to reboot the computer powering AJ’s podium. Go figure.

The way they handle this situation is fascinating. It turns out that the show’s writers prepare six clues for every category: the five they place on the board, plus an alternate in case something goes wrong. The clue that had originally appeared is discarded, and a new clue is placed in its spot which doesn’t necessarily match the intended difficulty level for that dollar amount. Alex and others refer to this as “replaying the clue.” Again, I don’t remember which clue this happened with, and I’m not sure how I’d find out.

In any event, the second half of the Jeopardy! round does not go well. I take only three of fifteen clues (fortunately, two of them are worth $1000), and I lose the buzzer four times (three times to AJ) in “Baby, You’re a Rich Man or Woman”, an easy category about billionaires. I’m miraculously hanging onto a $1000 lead when the board is clear, but only because AJ misses a $2000 Daily Double on George Balanchine near the end of the round.

Double Jeopardy! starts off…acceptably. I take four clues total in “The 50 States” and “Movie Title References”, after which I still lead by $600. I feel frustrated about losing out on a $2000 clue about The Vow; in the moment, I can’t think of anything but The Proposal, which I know is wrong.

Then things get weird again.

AJ calls for “I Love ‘L.A.’” for $400. It’s a fairly obvious clue about Louis Armstrong, so I buzz in, and Alex calls my name. I have a momentary lapse of confidence in which I’m not sure how “Louis” is supposed to be pronounced (idiotic, I know), so I make a split-second decision to just use his last name, which is normally standard practice when identifying people as responses on the show.

…Except in this category, where each correct response must have the initials “L.A.”. Alex forgets this too. He says “Yes!”, the producers offstage yell out, I know exactly what I’ve screwed up, and we stop taping for the second time in this game.

Maggie comes on stage again, and we turn our backs to the board, knowing this drill by now. An eternity passes while the show’s producers decide how to handle this irregular situation. Finally, Jeopardy! executive producer Harry Friedman comes over to the contestant podiums and confirms why my response was invalid. He explains that Alex’s ruling will be reversed, but he also says that, because this situation makes it obvious what the correct answer was, Lynn and AJ are not permitted to ring in on this question when play resumes. (The reason they couldn’t simply replay it this time is that it was important to penalize me by $400 for my mistake.) So the reason my opponents stare blankly after my incorrect response is not because they don’t know the correct one, but because it would be unfair for either of them to take the money.

When Alex re-records a new ruling to replace the erroneous one, he comments, “you and I both forgot the category.” In the final cut that airs on television, the first four words of this sentence have been edited out.

Things go downhill from here. I attempt nothing in the rest of the category, and in the next category, “The Hard Stuff”, I lose the buzzer on four clues (the fifth is a Daily Double, which nets Lynn $2000). So, with two categories left, AJ has nearly double my score.

In fact, I manage only one clue the rest of the game — happily, it’s the “jumbo shrimp” response in the “Oxymorons” category. Going into Final, AJ has an even $19000, while I have $10400, and Lynn (who has closed the gap significantly) is on the board with $7200.

The Final Jeopardy! category is “Inaugural Addresses”. I am thoroughly on edge during the break. Because I don’t have at least two-thirds of AJ’s score, I cannot implement my wagering strategy from the previous game. In a nervous haze, I arrive at a wager of $7000, based on the usual assumption that AJ will wager enough to cover double my score plus a dollar. (I haven’t read the analysis yet, but I am fairly sure in retrospect that this wager makes no sense, since I have nothing substantial to lose by risking everything.)

The clue is easy; all you have to know is that George Washington was inaugurated in 1789, and that Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861. You also have to know how to add 1789 and 72, a task I struggle mightily with under the stress of wanting to salvage my losing effort.

A few moments later, my Jeopardy! run comes to an end. Everyone gets the right answer; had I wagered everything, I would have lost to AJ by a dollar.

In the postgame chitchat with Alex, AJ comments that he had to add 72 to 1791. Alex (a Canadian by birth) quickly corrects him, pointing out that Washington became president in 1789, to which AJ responds with something along the lines of, “well, it was close enough that I knew it had to be Lincoln.”

As I leave the stage, it hits me that I will never again play this game under the bright lights again. A wave of sadness washes over me.

But as I sit down with Sarah from the Clue Crew for my Winner’s Circle interview, I still have a big smile on my face. And you know why?

Because I am a Jeopardy! champion.