Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!

by Bob Harris

  I must anchor myself and relax. I must stop seeing Tom kicking my ass.

  See the obvious.

  Well, I’m not ready. That much is obvious. So I know the next step.

  Admit you don’t know squat.

  OK. I’ll aim my Weapon with care.

  Doing nothing is better than doing something stupid.

  OK, OK, back off, enlightenment. I’ll keep my hand the hell off the buzzer. If I know, and I know that I know, I’ll buzz. Otherwise, nothing. Just trust in the process.

  This would be a test of pure Jeopardy Zen. What is the sound of one hand not buzzing? My only chance was to swear off the Weapon as never before.

  Believe it or not (although you can really believe it), not far away, on a bench in the sun on a hillside in Thailand, I once mentioned this game to a saffron-robed monk.

  Yut thought it was funny, the whole exercise.

  Was he laughing with me or at me? I wonder.

  Let go of outcome.

  Oh. Whichever. Right. Never mind.

  Frank Epstein, I should add, is a Los Angeles police officer. He playacts stern gruffness, but he’s kidding. I think. Al Pacino would play him. But only if Frank said it was OK.

  If Frank is as controlled with the trigger as he is with a buzzer, there is one neighborhood that sleeps very safe.

  This is the second straight tournament where I’ve played a local cop named Frank. I would say this is odd. But compared to everything else, it is not.

  The first clue goes by. I’m not sure. I let it pass.

  I do this over and over. More than my usual third, I am letting half—half!—of this entire game go by unplayed, unattempted. Surrender is my only chance to survive.

  Tom and Frank are as careful as I am. They also know not to play with a Jeopardy Weapon. So they aim every shot. I stand down. Even when I try to ring in, they usually beat me on the buzzer, over and over and over. And then I stand down again, letting yet another clue pass. And another. And another.

  It’s nerve-wracking.

  I’m in a distant third place at the first break.

  Ken Jennings once responded correctly to twenty-five of the thirty clues in a single round. At the rate I’m going, I might not even attempt that many responses all game.

  Before the first round is over, I have passed up at least a half-dozen clues on which I knew the right response but was not quite certain enough to ring in. I haven’t brushed up enough yet. Here’s an example:

  THOUGH PATENTED IN 1862, THIS CRANK-OPERATED MACHINE GUN DIDN’T BECOME OFFICIAL U.S. ARMY WEAPONRY UNTIL 1866

  That’s the Gatling gun, I think. And then: Wait—what if it’s the Maxim gun? No, it’s Gatling. Maxim was something else. I think. Ahhhh! I better not buzz.

  “What’s the Gatling gun?” Frank quickly responds. I suppose I should be glad that the cop knows his weapons.

  With just one extra week to review my notebooks, I’d be playing a completely different game. Maybe I shouldn’t have stuck around in Tasmania, taking those night-vision photos of vomiting penguins. I try to put this thought out of my mind. Besides, the clues and the competition are more than enough of a burden.

  ST. AMBROSE CREDITS THIS MOTHER OF CONSTANTINE WITH FINDING THE TRUE CROSS OF JESUS

  Jesus, I think. The writers have made the clues as difficult as in the Masters. I’m not ready. “Who is Helena?” Tom smoothly intones, pulling away in the distance. I have to squint just to see his shadow on the horizon, even though he’s just two feet to my left. This guy is good.

  So is Frank. Third place might be how this works out.

  With five clues left in the first round, I get a clue and control of the board. The Daily Double still hasn’t been played, so I hunt around the bottom, finally landing on it.

  Choosing a wager is a challenge. My little spurt has taken me up to $3800. But Tom has $6600, not quite twice my score. The category is STONES, and I’m not that good at geology. Worse, the clue is in the very bottom row, so it might be one of the hardest on the board. I can’t make my comeback, but a small wager would also tell the other players just how unready and unconfident I am. So I bet $1500, a least-bad compromise between unwise large and small wagers, and hope for the best.

  THE BLACK TYPE OF THIS OCTOBER BIRTHSTONE IS QUITE RARE, & MORE VALUABLE THAN THE FIRE VARIETY

  Jane had prepped me on birthstones for the Masters. Two years later, thanks to butt-oriented mnemonics, this one remained in my head:

  In college, a friend and I used to salve our depression by making escape runs for pizza down an icy brick road that shook his tiny sports car so hard I could imagine my own butt falling off through the floorboards. Senior year, he took me out on my birthday. And thus my birth month—October—is connected (via my vibrating little bottom) to my friend Paul’s rusting old Opel.

  What’s an opal? I reply, playing now by the seat of my pants.

  The Double Jeopardy round:

  OPERAS BY CHARACTER(I need study time for this; now I might know one or two.)

  1970S TV(Yes!)

  THE HUMAN BODY(I haven’t reviewed this yet, either.)

  EVERYTHING HAS A NAME(Although this category name doesn’t tell us much.)

  THE SECRETARY OF STATE WHO…(Eek. I haven’t studied enough.)

  DERIVED FROM ETRUSCAN(You are kidding me…right?)

  DERIVED FROM ETRUSCAN turns out immediately to be simple wordplay, seeking out words that can be spelled from letters in the word Etruscan. So at least this is something mere humans can do.

  Tom gets the first two in THE SECRETARY OF STATE WHO… right away, picking up Colin Powell and John Marshall in about twenty seconds combined. The third one I don’t know right off and so, again, must let go.

  THE SECRETARY OF STATE WHO GAVE WAY TO EDMUND RANDOLPH IN 1794

  Frank guesses incorrectly, which gives my subconscious a few extra seconds. Suddenly I notice my finger is moving on the buzzer. It’s involuntary. My hand seems convinced that my head knows the response. I have no idea why.

  Who was Thomas Jefferson? my mouth says. I am both surprised to hear this and bizarrely certain of the reply.

  This would be some deep-seated thing, I am thinking (although not in these words; there’s not time), some neural cluster stimulated by long-ago practice, state-dependent retrieval from a forgotten mental cranny, triggered now perhaps by the stage and by Alex.

  “Correct,” Alex replies.

  This must be how a high-school quarterback feels in his forties, his arm aching but still mustering one last perfect spiral, with no thought or planning but still marveling at the result, wondering just how his hand still knows what to do.

  Speaking of quarterbacks and middle age: it occurs to me that Tom may be fighting the same rustiness that I am. He’s a lawyer with a family to raise. He has a new baby. The only thing cramming in his house is diapers.

  The next clue is a Daily Double. If I miss a big wager, still not ready for this level, there will be no chance to come back. I bet only to tie for the lead.

  THE SECRETARY OF STATE WHO SURVIVED AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON THE NIGHT HIS BOSS WAS SHOT

  I know this. I knew this. I know that I knew this. But I don’t know if I know this. Brain, will you shut the hell up?

  Hold on, I’ll get it, I tell Alex.

  I bow my head and breathe. This one should be easy. It’s the guy who bought Alaska. I think of an old cartoon mnemonic for the other targets on the night of Lincoln’s assassination: there’s Alaska, and garbage, and a big Johnson named Andrew—wait, go back to garbage—it’s sewage!

  Who is Seward? and I’m tied for the lead.

  Tom and I bounce back and forth for a few clues, pushing each other into errors, scooping up rebounds, playing even. Frank charges back, so we wrestle with a cop for a while. But Tom’s focus and discipline have never quite left him. He’s as careful as I am, letting clues go by, aiming his Weapon.

  The board starts to empty. The Final approaches. Whoever has the lead will probab
ly win.

  Tom hits the last Daily Double, bets large and confident, and jumps up by $3000 with just twelve clues in the game. I am once again fighting for my Jeopardy! life, and with time running out. There is no wild card.

  The next clue I know—What’s the thyroid?—but once again I don’t know that I know. I’m not ready. I let it pass. The nine steps on the Eightfold Path can be pure torture to follow.

  The next clue I do know, and I know that I know.

  IF THESE AIR SACS WERE FLATTENED OUT, THE LUNGS WOULD HAVE A SURFACE AREA OF UP TO 1,000 SQUARE FEET

  You may remember that I worked for a while as a writer on a TV drama about crime scene investigators with formidable powers. My contributions were tiny, but it’s the most brilliant show of its kind, perhaps the most popular program on earth, and certainly the brain-stickiest show ever devised.

  As a junior writer often asked to do research, my job involved getting to know a few coroners, who are morbidly funny as a means of survival. I can die now in three states knowing I’ll be dissected by people I like very much. So there’s that to fall back on.

  This is how I learned much about our lung-lining air sacs. If you drown, as it happens, which I hope that it doesn’t, mineral traces will lodge in these sacs in your lungs. If you’re found in the ocean but have sacs full of chlorine, you died in a friend’s pool, and your body was dumped. So choose your friends wisely.

  What’s the alveoli? I reply.

  Alex asks me to repeat this, which I do. But my speech is so slurry with the stress and the speed that it stops the game cold. It takes archaeological digging with air-puffing syringes to extract all of the sounds. With so much on the line, the producers try dearly to get everything right.

  I am lucky again. Someone finds all seven letters, under nine separate layers of pottery shards and Brad Pitt’s leather skirt. The game resumes.

  Tom’s lead is now only $1000. Ten clues left.

  He gets the next one. He’s up $1400.

  The next one, we all let go by. One mistake and it’s over. Just one mistake.

  We’re in DERIVED FROM ETRUSCAN. I grab enact for $1200. The lead falls to $200.

  The next clue goes by. It’s about a work by Tennyson. Which is forgotten, and by three Jeopardy! champs. Alfred Lord Tennyson, timeless poet, in this moment, is like the town in Wisconsin where Kim Worth and I met, or the guy with the plunger on his head. This is not reassuring.

  Frank gets the next clue for $2000. He’s closing in. Five clues left to go in one column. OPERA BY CHARACTER will determine our fate.

  Frank starts at the bottom, with the $2000 clue. We all could probably guess. But we all let it pass. One mistake and it’s over. Tom’s lead is $200. Four clues left to go.

  For $1600, the clue mentions a clown.

  BEPPE, SILVIO, CANIO THE HEAD CLOWN

  “Clown” is what matters. You need nothing else. This is a great Jeopardy! one-to-one. There is exactly one opera famous for its lead character clown. I am sure that everyone here must know this response. They must know that they know. The game hangs in the balance now, one hard plastic triple attack:

  Cliklikikkitylikkityclikit.

  My light, somehow, comes on.

  What’s “I Pagliacci”? and I’m up $1400.

  There are only $1200, $800, and $400 clues left. To have the lead entering Final, Tom, the better player, who has deservedly led the whole game, suddenly must get the $1200 clue and one other. The only other way he can take the lead is if I ring in incorrectly. So I won’t.

  Frank rings in on $1200. Once he responds correctly, I let go of my buzzer.

  You can win by not playing. But you know that by now.

  The Final, in SHAKESPEAREAN CHARACTERS, has a familiar response.

  KINGS EDWARD IV & EDWARD V, THE FUTURE HENRY VII & THE CORPSE OF HENRY VI APPEAR IN THE PLAY NAMED FOR HIM

  For the second time in my Jeopardy! career, I am thinking of Ian McKellen, and how much my father would have loved watching his doppelgänger seizing and seducing and chewing on everything in his path.

  Who was Richard III? I reply. Just as in Radio City.

  It’s the first time I’ve ever given the same response twice, and it occurs while playing against my second local cop named Frank.

  There is a kink in the Matrix. A black cat walks by.

  This feels weird, as if the world has just run out of all information. Jeopardy! will never exhaust its material, of course; the world is too large, and the writers too observant. This is just a coincidence.

  Still, there are many things that defy explanation.

  I’ve answered exactly sixteen clues all game, and just six in the entire Double Jeopardy round. Six. I have let fully half of the game go by. And somehow, unprepared, I’ve defeated another Tournament of Champions winner.

  I say this not out of modesty: there is much luck in this outcome. All I have done is helped my luck do its best.

  There is much we don’t know. It is useful to know this.

  Not far away, on a hillside, I can still hear Yut laughing.

  After defeating two ToC champions and the winner of the 10th Anniversary Tournament, I no longer, at last, feel a debt for being asked to the Masters.

  I’ve now also defeated members of both the NYPD and LAPD.

  Let me add, then: I always obey traffic laws. Always.

  Speaking of which, when the taping is over, I give Tom and Arthur a lift back to their hotel. We climb into old Max and rumble off through Culver City. There’s no competition, just a bunch of guys with a common interest in everything. They have families with kids. Stable lives. I feel envy. They’re the real winners at the end of this day.

  I haven’t read Arthur’s novels, I confess on the ride, but I genuinely mean to. (And I have, finally, as you read this. There is much light on each page.) Arthur asks what I’m writing. I mention, perhaps, someday, an article about Jeopardy! Or a book, maybe.

  You can guess just what came out of that.

  I’m still studying for the second round when the month of first-round games start to air. I don’t know any results, except for the five from the day I was there. I watch every day, fascinated. Great players and friends fall almost daily.

  Leszek is out. One mistake. Only one. One mistake at the end.

  Mark Lowenthal, Chuck’s co-author, whom I hope someday to thank properly, winds up with just one single dollar.

  But my friends Fred and Jerome win easily. So does Grace. Mike Rooney gets through. And Dan Melia crushes his foes, both of whom finish with zeros.

  Suddenly my one dollar against Dan looks pretty good.

  Meanwhile, a full month passes at Jane’s kitchen table. The second round is approaching. The time passes slowly, just textbooks and dictionaries, almanacs and readers. Cliffs Notes and Spark Notes and still more inch-thick notebooks, filled with sticky weird doodles burning into my brain.

  Jane and I pop some champagne. This has nothing to do with my studies.

  Jane and I don’t care on what day we first met, but we have one date on the calendar we’ve watched now for years. And the anniversary has finally come.

  No sign of cancer. Jane is now officially healthy. It’s over. She’s as well now as I am. More so, probably.

  After all, I am studying for Jeopardy! again.

  Back to the books. Another month in my own private green room. Practicing along with the televised games, I am soon scoring better than ever. In Final Jeopardy clues, even at this extra-hard tournament level, I’m getting well over 80 percent correct.

  Again, I am given the first taping date available.

  But this time, I’m more ready than ever before.

  Just before taping, my sister’s not doing so well. In the Snow Belt, Connie’s having a fresh bout of Marvin, perhaps the most difficult yet.

  She has been responding to treatment for Crohn’s disease, even if the doctors were twenty years late ringing in.

  But there’s no cure for Crohn’s. There’s not
even much study. They don’t know the cause. They’re not sure where to look.

  I sit up and read. Perhaps it’s bacteriological, caused by a widespread organism that only affects some people for genetic reasons. I could put ache in your ears with long Latin names and some fussing and pointing. But I don’t know a damn thing. I just wish I did. And I’m surely just reading because I feel so damned helpless.

  The doctors themselves aren’t much further along. So Crohn’s patients like Connie are given arthritis meds, some of which help some of the symptoms sometimes. There are side effects, of course. I’ll spare you the details. You’d have a more pleasant chat with a coroner.

  Connie now needs the rearrangement of bones. Some of her hip will become part of her neck, replacing a piece of her spine. Then, to recover, all she’ll just need to do is lie perfectly still. While in agony.

  For a month.

  Or two.

  Or quite possibly three.

  She might need a nurse, just to get through the bother of still being alive. That’s if Connie stays lucky. Her head, already heavy, could go clunk with bad luck.

  It is possible to wear out galoshes entirely.

  There has got to be something I can do about this.