‘I finally got to ‘Jeopardy!’ then the machine James Holzhauer got rolling
I’m standing on a set that’s as familiar to me as my own living room. I’ve just landed on the first Daily Double. And I have a chance to take the lead.
I give my answer: “What is the glass ceiling?” Now I have $5,800 and the lead.
After all those years shouting answers at the TV screen, half a dozen attempts at the online tryout, and one morning in the studio, this is it. I’m going take down Goliath.
Goliath, in this case, is James Holzhauer, the 22time winner (through Friday) whose record-smashing run on “Jeopardy!” has turned him into a household name. He’s a speed demon on the buzzer who regularly nails all three Daily Doubles with sky-high wagers. He’s catching up to Ken Jennings, and he’s doing it fast.
I started trying to get on the show in college, and I would twice make it as far as the in-person auditions before, this January, I got The Call.
You get one chance to make your mark on “Jeopardy!” and I wasn’t going to waste it. Especially not when I knew I’d be the show’s typical lone woman, facing off against two men. No, I was going to win.
In any game of “Jeopardy!” there’s a returning champion. So when I arrive at the studio at 7 on a Monday morning, filled half with adrenaline and half iced coffee, to hear that our guy has already won twice, I just think: He seems ... normal?
Then we actually get to watch him play.
Three games went by. In the second one, his final total was $110,914, beating the previous one-game record by more than $30,000. (He has since broken his own record, with $131,127, and has won $1.7 million so far.)
In a strange way, though, the long odds felt liberating. A game I was still going to try to win, because Goliath or not, this was my one shot.
Most of James’ strategies aren’t new to the show — starting from the high-value clues at the bottom of the board, jumping from category to category, hunting for Daily Doubles. What makes him a “Jeopardy!” machine is all of that and his impeccable timing on the buzzer. It’s unreal.
If you have to lose at a game you love on national television, I will say it’s nice to have an ironclad excuse. Sure, I lost.
But I lost to the guy who keeps finding new places to add his name to the record book. And now, at least my friends still believe me when I say that on any other day, I could have won.