Jeopardy! memories - Part 2

Hi! I appeared on Jeopardy! on May 13th and I lost! Here are some memories of my game and the taping day in general.

Overall thoughts

In the first few weeks after coming home from my Jeopardy taping, I dealt with increasing feelings of crushing disappointment that I had lost my game. In these low moments, I repeated to myself: I made it all the way to the Alex Trebek stage! I met Ken Jennings! I spent the day with amazing people in the green room! I gave some correct answers! I participated in Final Jeopardy and was the only contestant to get it right! These thoughts helped keep the disappointment at bay, or at least in context. Most of all, I tried to hold on to the memory of how happy I felt at the end of my taping day. I vividly remember being so proud of myself and how I did in my game, even if it didn’t lead to the outcome of a victory. If Past Bridget was that thrilled with the experience, fresh off a defeat on the Alex Trebek stage, then Current Bridget can be, too!

I still feel disappointed sometimes but these days most negative feelings boil down to the fact that I’m just so sad that it’s over. And that is a gift, in a way, to have experienced something that - as hard as it was! - you wish you could do all over again.

With the passage of time (it has now been about two months since my tape date), my only remaining specific disappointment/regret is that I didn’t get to any of the Daily Doubles before Tristan did. I knew 2/3 of them and my plan going in was that I would do a true Daily Double against such a formidable opponent. So I’m sad I didn’t get a chance to do that!

Day-of practicalities

I had prepared a Jeopardy hype playlist with lots of high-energy “I can do it!” music…and couldn’t bear to listen to any of it when the time came. Instead, the ONLY song I could tolerate for a few days beforehand was “Into the West” by Annie Lennox and Howard Shore, from The Lord of the Rings movies. So I listened to that on repeat and I found it incredibly grounding.

On the morning of the taping, I got ready for the day and ate some breakfast and then my dad and I headed down to the rental car so he could drop me off at the studio. As I was saying goodbye to my mom at the hotel, the last thing she said to me was “do you need some diarrhea medicine to take with you, just in case??” and if that isn’t my family’s love language, I don’t know what is.

I met up with the other contestants at the studio lot and it was this weird combination of “we’re going to be spending the day together, but also, we will be competing against each other” vibes. Valerie (she’ll show up on Friday’s game) ended up being Big Sister General of the green room and got us all warmed up and socializing in no time.

For a few minutes as we mingled, I at least was trying to spot the returning champion among us. I had a guess about who it was (Jessica! She oozed ease and confidence and expertise) but then surprise! It was Tristan, who was introduced to us at that point as a 3-day champion. A hush - a small one, but a hush - fell over the green room. Three days is…intimidating (Tristan himself is an absolutely lovely human being). We were starting to realize that some very difficult games lay ahead of us.

Hanging out with everyone in the green room was such a highlight for me. I loved getting to know everyone’s deal, how they made it to Jeopardy, what their weird areas of expertise were (I learned a lot of apple facts from Chayce), what overlaps we had in geography or jobs or travels. We also had a live feed of the games on a TV in the green room, and it was a blast to watch Jeopardy with fellow contestants. People would gently call out answers, not for every clue but for many, and there was a certain kind of pride in occasionally getting one that no one else knew (for me it was Monday’s episode’s “box braids”). Tuesday’s board had a Finland clue - missed it by one game! I was almost able to calm down for a bit as we sat and talked and snacked and watched and waited for our turns. I had been really apprehensive about jet lag affecting my performance and while I did feel it a bit, I think adrenaline made up the difference.

Part of getting ready to go on stage included light to medium help with hair, makeup, and wardrobe. I originally had on a different outfit but when I showed up at the studio, wardrobe expert Brigit (!!!) said it might not work with the cameras. She chose another sweater from the outfits I had brought as a backup, and I was actually kind of glad since that sweater is my most Bridget item of clothing. It’s from Uniqlo and it’s just…a blue sweater. Very no-nonsense and I really got to feel like myself on stage. I wore a necklace on loan from Magdalena that she got in Satiago de Compostela. Its charm shell thing was neatly thumb-shaped, which made it a nice talisman to hold onto during thoughtful moments before and after I went on stage.

Oh, and there was a Marimekko pillow in the green room!

Rehearsal

I wanted to make sure to put a whole section here just to say one thing: Kyle was one of my opponents during rehearsal and he absolutely killed it - on the buzzer, in responding correctly to clues, everything. The fact that he ended up in the negative going into Final Jeopardy in our actual game is just evidence of how fickle the boards can be, and how simply unlucky you can end up on your big day. He would beat me, probably easily, nine games out of ten. But this game happened to be the one that didn’t work out for him.

The buzzer

People who have competed on Jeopardy will tell you how tricky the buzzer timing is…and they are correct! In rehearsal, they told me I was too slow on the buzzer. In my actual game, at the first break, they told me I was too fast on the buzzer (I had overcorrected). After that, I remember feeling more dialed in to the buzzer timing when I focused on the indicator lights at the edge of the board instead of Ken’s voice (other people in the green room found the voice timing more helpful). It’s hard to describe the experience but it was something like: inhale the clue with your brain as fast as possible and then sort out: do I know the answer? And then try to make sure to remember what that answer is if called upon! This complicated (and extremely fast-paced) process explains why contestants sometimes buzz in and then don’t have the answer at hand. But the flip side is that you sometimes err on the side of not buzzing in and then realize, too late, that you would have had the answer at hand in the moment. This happened to me a few times and it was very frustrating. Usually, though, when I did choose to buzz in, I was getting blocked by Tristan. Also, he knew way more stuff than me so he one hundred percent deserved to win!

Anecdotes!!!

I had to give the show a few pages’ worth of brief fun-fact-y anecdotes ahead of time for possible use during the interview portion. They asked for our own ideas but also had a few specific prompts to answer (which is why a lot of people have the same kinds of stories over the years). My personal favorite that I submitted to production was my story about how I once got Wordle in one guess, with the word CHARD, and they liked it enough to put it on the shortlist. I was also hoping I’d get to talk about my 103yo grandpa and 100yo grandma who just celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary, but that didn’t even make the shortlist.

Instead, the anecdote the production team zeroed in on was one I had hesitated to submit in the first place. I actually don’t want to say too much more about it so I don’t get anyone - Moroccan beekeepers or otherwise - in trouble, but yes, production ran the story by legal and made clear to me what I could and couldn’t say. Ken also double-checked it before interviewing me on-camera. I am as surprised as you are that they allowed it, but I do think it’s a fun and heartwarming anecdote about the wider Jeopardy community!

(W)(L)ynken, Blynken, & Nod

I have thought about this response every single day since my game. It’s such a specific TO ME piece of children’s literature. I can picture the artwork in the book my mom used to read to us. As soon as Ken ruled my response incorrect, I had half a second to think “oh my mom is going to kill me.” (She’s been very kind about it, of course.) Watching the episode last night, you can almost see me look in her direction in the audience.

A potpourri of other thoughts about specific clues

My incorrect response of patchwork - for a 2k clue, oof - was a complete guess. Tristan was so good on the buzzer that I think both Kyle and I felt like we needed to ring in even on clues we didn’t know for sure, just to get a chance at responding. On the other hand, I was fairly but not completely certain on Nigeria - another 2k clue - but wasn’t feeling aggressive/desperate at that point in the game. No one rang in on that one at all.

I did not know one single clue in The Celebrity’s Favorite Team category. Not even a whisper of an idea on any of them. A real intersection of weak spots for me, that category was!

But I was PUMPED to see Polish History come up on the board in Double Jeopardy. I was so sure I would find a Daily Double there but it was not to be.

Another tricky thing about live game-play is that you can’t tune out, not even for a moment, if you buzz in but someone else beats you to it - because they might answer incorrectly! It felt good to pick up Teutonic and 1939 from another contestant’s initial incorrect response.

Daily Doubles

When my dad and I practiced wagering strategy the day before, we also talked about Daily Double wagering - how most contestants bet too little money. I was determined to bet all, or almost all of my money if I got a DD. This resolve solidified when I saw what I was up against with Tristan. Unfortunately, I didn’t land on any of the DDs. Tristan took all three; of these, I knew revival for sure. It was so hard to stand there and not be able to answer, especially since Tristan didn’t think of it in time. I knew Bizet - but I am actually not sure I could have come up with George in time and that category required both names. I did not know melange at all - the clue pointing toward Dune confused me more than helped me. So it’s not really obvious to me whether the outcome of the game would have been any different if I’d landed on any of the DDs, and maybe that’s for the best.

Final Jeopardy: Wager & response

I mentioned that my dad and I practiced wagering strategy for an hour or two the day before my taping, and I’m so glad that we did - even though it ended up being completely unnecessary for my actual game score situation! Tristan had a runaway, and Kyle didn’t make it to Final Jeopardy, so it literally did not matter at all what I wagered: I was a lock for second place and its 3k USD prize. (Edited to add - Jeopardy wagering calculators would probably have told me to only bet maximum 3999 in case Tristan made a truly, bizarrely catastrophic betting mistake but…yeah no.)

So during the time given to calculate and write down our wagers, I took a few moments just to make sure it really didn’t matter what I wagered. I basically went through the wagering steps I had studied with my dad, just in case! I’m sure production was thinking, “surely she knows it doesn’t matter??” but they very graciously gave me a minute or two to confirm that to myself. In the end, I realized I basically had a symbolic choice between betting nothing, or everything - and I decided to bet everything on myself! Why not bet 4000 pretend dollars that I would know the answer?? So I wrote down 4000 as my wager and felt good about that.

Now, the category: Films of the 1990s. Time slowed down (and also I think there was a small break in filming while they set everything up), and I had a few moments for these thoughts to race across my brain:

OMG we just watched Dances With Wolves as part of my “studying,” what if it’s Dances With Wolves, I will die!!!

OK, so, movies that I can remember first-hand, but nothing too far past the time I graduated high school in 1999, try to stick within those parameters.

What are some movies from the 1990s?? Let me name all the ones I can think of…

Now, the clue: “In French, this 1993 film is called ‘Un jour sans fin’.“ Here’s the thing: I do not speak French. I speak other languages, but not French! I cannot explain to you how I was able to parse the meaning of the clue as something like “The Day That Never Ends.” Just general linguistic osmosis, I guess? Enough similarity to English words? Two teaching visits to Poitiers in recent years? I mean do YOU speak French, and if not, did you figure out the meaning? I bet many of you could.

OK, meaning decoded. Well, what movie is this? My first thought was “oh it’s one of those Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy movies! What were they called?” and I am so lucky that my brain could not remember. If I had remembered Before Sunrise, I would have written it down, and gotten stuck on that, and not been able to think of another movie.

Instead, my brain skipped past that and bounced over to The Day After Tomorrow. Nope, too late for the category. Live/Die/Repeat? No, first of all it’s actually called The Edge of Tomorrow, and it’s also too late for the category. And it was in that moment that I literally physically startled slightly and realized: IT’S GROUNDHOG DAY. I wrote that down with full confidence and I was right.

Tristan wrote down Braveheart, which IIRC he said in the post-game interview he knew was wrong but you kind of have to try to write down something. When Kyle came back onstage, I think he told Ken he was thinking The Neverending Story, which is a really good guess! But too early for the category.

So I bet on myself and won that bet, if not the game, and the final score of 8000 for me vs 10,200 for Tristan made my loss look much more graceful than it actually was.

The End

After lunch, I watched the remaining two games of the taping day in the green room with the other contestants. I really enjoyed decompressing with others who had just been through the same thing, or who were about to. After the tapings were over, there was a bit more paperwork to sign and then it was time to go! Nothing really prepares you fully to go on Jeopardy; nothing really prepares you for what you feel afterward, either. It was a bit like freefalling.

In fact, the next morning when I woke up, I opened up my podcast app as usual to see what episodes awaited me. And then I was hit with the thought: what’s the point? Why do I need to know stuff anymore? This was a devastating thought to have enter my brain, almost involuntarily. Fortunately, the feeling had worn off by the time I was finished eating breakfast. Phew! I was able to joke with my family about how it was nice to be a little bit stupid again, but I was relieved as soon as my natural sense of curiosity came back.

In the two months since appearing on Jeopardy, I’ve gradually felt some of my studied-up-on knowledge gently fade away. It was fun knowing Almost All The Things for a while! I actually liked knowing US presidents for once - it made for a great framework to hang other historical facts on.

Thanks and some words of encouragement

I would like to thank Jeopardy for having me on the show. The production team and staff there work with groups of nervous nerds day in and day out and still manage to help us have the time of our lives. It was a special kind of magic they were cultivating there! I would also like to thank Jeremy and my family for supporting me from home: helping me study, helping me relax, helping me practice, helping me pick a wardrobe, and cheerleading me when the self-doubt started to creep in. Finally, I would like to thank everyone else who cheered me on from afar (there were a few people who knew ahead of time) and especially those who dropped everything to come to LA to watch me in the studio: my parents, my MIL, my SIL, and my sister. It meant everything to me.

The last thing I’ll say in this post is: if you enjoy watching Jeopardy and find that sometimes, you get more than a few clues right: apply to be on the show! It’s a long process so just take the first test for fun and see if anything comes of it! Just live your life (and study geography) in the meantime.