With "Jeopardy!" champ on a profitable streak, previous contestants reveal how they prepped to compete on the present.
NY Submit picture composite
With 30 video games beneath her belt, “Jeopardy!” contestant Amy Schneider has been on a streak of success, profitable greater than $1 million and touchdown within the recreation’s high 4 highest-earning rivals.
However, as earlier Jeopardy! contestants reveal, profitable is not only a matter of getting Mensa-worthy intelligence.
Deep dives into databases, honed buzzer strategies, sample recognition and even youngsters’s books all contribute to gaming the sport.
“If something has been on TV for 35 years, it comes with loads of developments,” Austin Rogers, a 12-time winner who walked away with $411,000 in 2017, informed The Submit.
The 43-year-old bartender from Spanish Harlem mentioned that, as soon as he knew he was going to be on the present, he studied 11 hours per day for 2 weeks main as much as his look.
His information of selection: the fan-run database J! Archive, which maintains greater than 48,000 game-board clues from episodes going again to 1985.
“I'd open random video games [on the archive site] and play them in my head. I seen what comes up probably the most. If a query says ‘artist in Iowa,’ it must be Grant Wooden,” mentioned Rogers, whose e-book “The Final E book of Pub Trivia by the Smartest Man within the Bar” (Workman Publishing) is out Feb. 22. “And if it says ‘Thornton Wilder,’ the proper response all the time must be ‘Our City.’”
Sadly, that was a hard-learned lesson: “Someway [Thornton Wilder] was the one ‘Closing Jeopardy!’ reply I bought incorrect,” Rogers mentioned. “However fortunately I did properly sufficient all through the sport that I nonetheless gained.”
The J! Archive additionally presents a search characteristic, by means of which customers can see which solutions are most frequently repeated on the present. “It tells you that if ‘Cubist’ comes up, the reply will nearly all the time be ‘Picasso,’” mentioned Rogers, who solely realized about this perform after his run concluded.
Jeffrey Williams, a TV editor from Los Angeles who appeared on one among late host Alex Trebek’s last episodes in December 2020, adopted the recommendation of James Holzhauer — a Las Vegas gambler who famously gained some $2.4 million on the present in 2019.
“I picked up a tip from Holzhauer and acquired youngsters’s books on world historical past and geography and presidents,” Williams informed The Submit. “Holzhauer accurately identified that for those who perceive how the clues are written, a youngsters’s stage understanding of the subjects offers sufficiently big signposts to get you into the ballpark of a solution.”
Rogers recommends aspiring contestants be aware of the present’s frequent pop-culture references. “I watched movie diversifications of well-known works that usually flip up on ‘Jeopardy!’: ‘King Lear,’ ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ Bible documentaries,” mentioned Rogers, who runs trivia nights on the Brazen Head bar in Boerum Hill.
He additionally centered on memorizing superlatives — longest rivers and tallest mountains — in addition to state capitals. “There is no such thing as a excuse for a ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant to not know these solutions,” he mentioned. “They're simply remembered with mnemonics or songs.”
With a view to memorize minerals on Moh’s Scale of Mineral Hardness —Talc, Gypsum, Calcite, Flourite, Apatite, Orthoclase, Quartz, Topaz, Corundum, Diamond — Rogers considered this mnemonic: “The Geologist Can Discover An Ore Shortly By means of Appropriate Information.”
Williams, who practiced 90 minutes a day for 3 months, mentioned he used J! Archive to “see holes in my information. It confirmed me that I didn’t know a lot about Nobel Prize winners. So I went down a Wikipedia rabbit gap on that one — and benefited when a class known as ‘First Nobel’ got here up. It additionally helped me to determine the place clues have been main. You begin to discover wordplay within the clues, which information you to the proper solutions. You understand that the clues are extra than simply trivia questions.”
For instance, Williams recalled, “Within the class of World Capital Bingo, the clue was ‘G, 1812: Not named in honor of a DC school, this capital of Guyana, previously Stabroek, will get its new title.’ The reply is, ‘What's Georgetown?’ You already know that as quickly as you hear a DC school that begins with G. I don’t need to know something in regards to the historical past of Guyana.”
However earlier than you may present how good you might be, it's a must to buzz in forward of rivals. Rogers, who swapped cocktails for membership soda and cranberry juice throughout his two weeks of cramming, centered as a lot on the bodily because the psychological.
“I walked round New York with a thumb exerciser on my hand; it’s usually used for rehabbing fingers and has a resistance much like that of the ‘Jeopardy!’ buzzer,” he mentioned. “I listened to episodes on my telephone, practiced buzzing in and appeared like a frigging weirdo.”
Williams, in the meantime, studied a e-book known as “Secrets and techniques of the Buzzer.” The perfect tip, he mentioned, “was to chill out your arm so as to pace up hitting the buzzer.”
His different recommendation: “Buzz in because the host says the final syllable.”
Although he competed on just one episode, Williams is grateful for the expertise.
“I misplaced and nonetheless suppose it’s the best,” he mentioned, nonetheless savoring his “shining second” of getting run the “Shakespeare” class. “In 20 years, when I'm eligible to qualify once more, will I take the ‘Jeopardy!’ [application] take a look at? Rattling proper I'll! And I’ll take performance-enhancing medicine to extend my reflexes.”
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