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I appeared on Jeopardy! yesterday and won! I’ll continue to blog about my experience until it’s over. Check out the series so far:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

Stephanie, Jennifer, and I walk out onto the stage. I walk to the middle podium and write my name as I’d been instructed during the practice session. Stage manager John Lauderdale has us test our buzzers (as he will during every break in the action). A final “good luck” from Maggie, and it’s lights, camera, action!

The theme music plays, and the voice of Jeopardy! announcer Johnny Gilbert booms over the loudspeaker as he introduces the contestants. Johnny does a pretty good job with my name, even after lamenting in practice, “can I just say Smith?” Alex Trebek walks onto the set for the first time — now it’s real.

Stephanie starts us off with “At the Beach”, where I take two of five clues, including an annoying one about beach balls whose answer only becomes obvious after both my opponents guess incorrectly. Stephanie finds the Daily Double in the $1000 spot but wagers conservatively, so that we’re tied at $1000 coming out of the category. I feel like I’m at least holding my own.

Then I start to really get into it. “Illinois State Symbols” turns out to be a pretty easy category even if you don’t know the first thing about Illinois state symbols, and I take the first four clues in quick succession before a triple stumper about the state tree. Every clue is contested, but I keep winning the buzzer, one clue after another.

I feel fantastic at this point. I’m playing in rhythm, and everything just feels right. My enthusiasm is tempered somewhat by “Facts About Authors”, where I don’t even attempt four of five clues, and on the $800 clue I make an ill-advised guess — but I still feel settled and centered and ready to compete. In fact, though it’s strange to say this about a mental game, I feel I’m not really thinking and don’t even feel very mentally focused; I am playing on instinct. Perhaps my nerves are too on edge to do it any other way.

Going into the first commercial break, we’ve played 15 clues; I’ve gotten 6, made no attempt on 6, guessed wrong once, and (perhaps most importantly) have only been outbuzzed once, on the very first clue of the game. I have $2200, and my closest opponent, Stephanie, has $1000. I don’t think I could have imagined this going better.

During the break, Lisa touches up my makeup, and a production assistant brings out a bottle of water for me whose cap is labeled “2”, since I’m at the second podium. I can’t muster the presence of mind to “play ahead” (like Bob Harris) or to prep for the contestant interview, so I follow instructions and chit-chat with the Jeopardy! crew. Maggie comes on stage and gives Jennifer, who is at -$2400, some gentle encouragement.

And we’re back on camera. I barely listen to Jennifer’s conversation with Alex — my head is really buzzing now — and, to be honest, I am only sort of present in my own interview. I don’t even hear Alex mispronounce my last name. I stumble through explaining a cheesy and frivolous but thought-provoking class, inspired by the Voyager Golden Record, which I’d taught last year at Stanford’s Splash event. Alex makes a neither-here-nor-there quip about how we could talk to aliens using sign language; it is absent from the final cut that airs on television. I probably should have picked a simpler story that didn’t require so much explanation to articulate why it wasn’t silly. In any event, I am mostly just glad when it’s over and we can get back to playing.

The rest of the Jeopardy! round doesn’t go nearly as well. It starts off fine — I get two of five clues in “No. 1 in the NFL Draft,” where I expected to have no chance, and the back-and-forth with Stephanie in this category is incredibly fun. Ultimately, however, we play 14 clues, and I only get 3. I lose the buzzer to Stephanie 5 times (including the especially galling “what is the pick-and-roll?”), and I make another wrong guess, this time because I fail to realize that Black Monday isn’t the same as Black Thursday.

By the end of the round, Stephanie and I have switched places — she leads with $5400, and I have only $3000. Jennifer is deep in the hole at -$3000, the second day in a row where a contestant has been in such a position coming out of the first round.

Double Jeopardy! starts off just as badly as the Jeopardy! round ended. I flub a $400 clue in “Oscar-Winning Directors of the 1980s” and don’t even attempt the rest of the category (to be fair, my opponents struggle with it too). The next category, “Australian History”, is very tough; I sneak $800 but don’t attempt the rest. Stephanie abandons both these categories without bothering to uncover the $2000 clue.

Then we hit “Scientific Theories”, and I’m on a roll again, for the first time since the opening minutes of the game. I quickly run through the first three clues and then land on a Daily Double at $1600. Nice.

At $5800, I’ve just taken a $400 lead over Stephanie. I’ve spent absolutely no time thinking about Daily Double wagering strategy, beyond an instinct that I should make sure to be aggressive. Half my score seems to fit the bill, so I call $3000.

Alex asks me to name “the weakest of the 4 known forces.” In retrospect, this is an easy question, which could easily be reasoned out in a variety of ways; but in the moment, it feels quite tough. My head buzzes for what seems like an eternity. I briefly consider the weak nuclear force but reject it, primarily because I assess that they wouldn’t have included “weak” in both the clue and the correct response. I go with “what is gravity?” and breathe a sigh of relief as I increase my lead.

Regrettably, I don’t run the category (stupid GUTs), and after it’s exhausted, my momentum disappears. In the next two categories I attempt 4 of 10 clues and am outbuzzed by Jennifer on 3 of them (which feels particularly frustrating, because it has unfortunately become clear that she won’t be competitive in this game). In the final category, “Religious Matters”, I stupidly hesitate on a clue about Hinduism, get a clue on the Quran, and then land on the second Daily Double of the round.

I wager $3000, again with no particular logic beyond feeling like I should be aggressive; I have no clue whatsoever and thus erase my gain from the “gravity” get. Analysts will later criticize my wager for being “foolhardy” and too unaware of where we were in the game and where I stood (post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4). They are clearly correct that I wasn’t really thinking at all.

Going into Final Jeopardy!, I trail Stephanie $11800 to $8200. Jennifer sadly hasn’t managed pull herself out of the hole and will be excused with the $1000 guaranteed third-place prize. Alex calls out the category:

ENTREPRENEURS

You may find it incredible, considering that it’s hard to imagine a better category for me, but I don’t get even a little bit excited by this. All I know is that I’m down, and it never occurs to me to alter my wagering strategy based on the new information of the category.

During the last break, we get scratch paper and markers to calculate our wagers. I faithfully execute the strategy I worked out last night and wager $999.

We’re back. The clue appears. The answer is obvious. So obvious that Stephanie will definitely get it. I faintly hear some faraway music of some kind. The music ends, and the lights come up.

As is customary, Alex starts with the player who’s behind. “Who was Steve Jobs?” (it’s funny, I think it only occurred to me to write ‘was’ because his death was so recent) adds $999 to my score, for a total of $9199. Stephanie’s answer appears, and — what? She got it wrong! What did she wager?! $4800??! That means–

That means that I am a Jeopardy! champion. And I’m going to be playing this game again in about fifteen minutes.

I am so floored that all I can do is grin like an idiot.

An idiot who just won Jeopardy!.