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.I was sort of hoping he’d show up backstage, give us all a fist bump and a hearty “’Sup, playaz?” but, in reality, contestants are kept far away from anyone who might know the game material ahead of time, the host included.And suddenly we’re under way.Jerry chooses the “‘Epi’sodes” category, about words that start with the prefix “epi-.” I still feel like I’m playing on autopilot, like my brain is only half-conscious and my reptile hindbrain and spinal cord are doing most of the heavy lifting, but I beat Jerry and Julia to three of the early “epi-” clues, which helps my confidence.What is an epidemic? What is an epilogue? What is an epigram?At the bottom of the category, I have my first Jeopardy! experience with a familiar quiz bowl feeling: buzzing not when you know the answer but when you know that you will know the answer.It’s an odd feeling: the answer’s not on the tip of your tongue yet, but a light flashes in the recesses of your brain.A connection has been made, and you find your thumb pressing the buzzer while your brain races to catch up.This happens to me when I see the clue for the $1,000 “epi-” word: “The best example of something.”5 Something there looks familiar, even if I don’t quite have the word yet.Alex calls my name, and I grin dumbly and stutter for a second before the right answer comes out.More often than not, though, I find my overmatched brain frozen on answers I would have nailed at home.I’ve played Scrabble a thousand times but suddenly can’t be sure what the symbol on the board’s center square is.6 I can’t remember which 2002 movie had the line, “There’s a monster outside my room.Can I have a glass of water?”7 though I saw it twice.To quote the ageless wisdom of Jeff Bridges in the movie Tron: “On the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy.”For some reason, it’s important to me that I seem funny in my brief interview with Alex after the first commercial break.Julia has a killer story about pretending to be an invertebrate paleontologist at a cocktail party.No such urbane, cosmopolitan wit lurks in any of the anecdotes on my card, I’m painfully aware.I end up using my time to thank the kind strangers who gave me a lift when I ran out of gas in the Nevada desert once during college: two drunk teenagers and a truck driver named “Fuzzy.” Luckily, Alex is funnier than usual.When I express doubt that these three Good Samaritans are regular Jeopardy! viewers, he huffs in mock outrage: “Are you saying that drunk teenagers and truck drivers don’t watch Jeopardy!?”“Not as funny as Alex Trebek.” That will be the uninspiring inscription (“What is an epitaph?”) on my tombstone.Between some pretty accurate buzzer timing and Jerry missing a Daily Double about Sam Walton, I have a $3,000 lead at the end of the first round.Not too shabby.In the second round, I run up a $14,000-to-$5,200 lead over Julia before she hits the Daily Double.I wince when I see the category: “Actresses & Playwrights.” Julia works on Broadway.She bets a whopping $5,000, and of course knows which actress met Neil Simon when she was cast in his 1973 play The Good Doctor.8 Equal time, Jeopardy! Where’s my question about the Utah software industry?The heat is on, but I manage to ace the category on people whose last names start with “H.” The $1,600 question asks which U.S.president took office in 1877.I can’t believe it! My mountains of flash cards actually paid off.“Who is Rutherford B.Hayes?” I state emphatically.Four weeks ago, I would have been fumbling for Benjamin Harrison or Warren Harding.I now lead $22,800 to $11,900.The locked game is tantalizingly close.And then Julia Lazarus makes a Lazarus-like rise from the grave.She’s obviously bright—in the first round, she beat me to three of the six tough $1,000 answers.The only thing holding her back, apparently, was buzzer technique.And she finally figures it out: she’s been buzzing a fraction of a second too early.Now she’s beating me to almost every answer.I’m frazzled anyway, and this is the last straw.I panic.My last three buzzes of the round are all dead wrong, while Julia is relentless.To add to her luck with the Neil Simon question, two of the five answers in the “Senatorial Successors” category happen to be her home-state senators.She has no problem telling Alex who succeeded Daniel Moynihan and Al D’Amato.9 She probably voted for them.By the time the board is cleared, putting me out of my misery, Julia is one clue out of first place: she trails $18,000 to my $20,000.Rutherford B.Hayes, of all people, provided me with my razor-thin lead.I feel terrible about all the times I gloated about his having lost the popular vote to Samuel J.Tilden.I’m so sorry, Rutherford.“Final Jeopardy category today is: ‘The 2000 Olympics,’” says Alex, with his trademark Canadian gravitas.I can’t believe my good luck.I love the Olympics.During the last games, in Atlanta, I watched so many hours of Olympic coverage that I almost failed one of my summer classes.Only—wait a second.The Atlanta games were in 1996.The 2000 Olympics were in Sydney, I realize to my horror.Mindy and I were on our honeymoon in London the exact two weeks of the Sydney games.I didn’t see a single event.Julia doesn’t strike me as a huge sports fan either, but as long as she bets smart, the second-place player will always win a Final Jeopardy that stumps everyone.But even though I probably won’t know the answer, I bet big.You always bet big from the lead, goes the conventional Jeopardy! wisdom.Much better to lose because you didn’t know the answer than to lose because you knew the answer but didn’t bet enough.If I made that mistake, even after my friends called off the suicide watch, I’d be kicking myself for life.The commercial break before Final Jeopardy is usually the only time that the show stops tape.You’re given as long as you want to do the math required to make your wager.I bet a whopping $17,201, enough to beat Julia should she ill-advisedly bet everything.I triple- and quadruple-check my math, having learned from the sad example of Brian Weikle, the Jeopardy! prodigy who lost the most recent Tournament of Champions by a piddling $200.Weikle got the final answer right but did the math wrong, mistaking an eight for a six on his scratch paper, a mishap that cost him almost $200,000.It was possibly the most fateful typo in human history since the so-called Wicked Bible of 1632, in which the Seventh Commandment was misprinted as “Thou shalt commit adultery.”Now that the breakneck speed of the game has eased up, I feel exhilarated rather than dazed.For all my panic, I played much better than I’d expected, without humiliating myself in any major way on national television.I suspect I’ll get the upcoming question wrong and lose to Julia, but it’s all for a good cause.I wouldn’t have traded my honeymoon for anything, not even $37,201 and lovely parting gifts.Everything will be okay.The final answer appears on the monitor with an authoritative ping
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