It’s All in Jeopardy

Over the last few months my wife and I have become devoted watchers of Jeopardy. This hadn’t been planned. We had never sought out Jeopardy, or any other game shows before. Yet, we find ourselves night after night anxiously awaiting the next contest, especially the Tournament of Champions.

I watched game shows quite a bit while growing up. But then again, I watched almost everything back then. My favorites were the $20,000 Pyramid and Family Feud, but I also enjoyed others like the Match Game and Password. I would even at times watch old reruns of What’s My Line, You Bet Your Life and I’ve Got a Secret.

Jeopardy, however, was never high on my list. I preferred those game shows that involved snappy answers to silly questions, as opposed to those that made me think. I wanted to laugh at the wacky things the recently married said on the Newlywed game, or the “spontaneous” quips Paul Lynde spat out from the middle cube in Hollywood Squares. The actual questions and answers were superfluous.

Jeopardy provides an entirely different source of enjoyment than those other game shows. For Jeopardy, the only thing that matters is the answer and corresponding question. The bon mots from Ken Jennings and, before him, Alex Trebek, are generally lame. The time of the show when the nerd contestants introduce themselves is often terribly discomforting.

And yet the show works. I had to ask myself why. The categories are often obscure. The answers range from ridiculously easy to impossibly hard. The need to provide a response in the form of a question is an unnecessary twist that is often mangled (“What is Napoleon?” “Who is the Rock of Gibraltar?”).

I have concluded that the secret of Jeopardy is that it provides viewers with a false sense of intelligence. The game allows you to consistently fool yourself about what you know and how well you know it. You find yourself constantly thinking, “I knew that” or “Well, that’s an easy one” as answer and question flash by.

The truth is that if you’ve played Trivial Pursuit, you do know questions to some of these answers. You just ignore the fact that the ones you do know tend to be the $200 and $400 answers, like “A government slogan of WWII said to sink ships” or “Before directing movies like “SE7EN,” David Fincher directed this singer’s videos for ‘Vogue’ & ‘Express Yourself’”. You snap off the questions to those in no time. (“Where is loose lips?”; “Why is Madonna?”).

The $1600 or $2000 answers are a good bit harder, but those seem to always come up when you are sipping iced tea, or the cat is meowing. You become convinced that, absent distractions, you would have known the questions to answers like “These subatomic particles come in 6 flavors, including up, down & strange.” or “The College of Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas is named for him.” (“Whom is Quarks?”; “What is Howard Hughes?”).

It is especially gratifying when you know a question that the contestants get wrong; then you can really gloat. “Those idiots. How could they not know that?”. The other night the Final Jeopardy category was “Ancient Literature”, and the answer was “The first known play by Aeschylus was named after this foe he fought against in 480 BC”. Since I have spent an inordinate time over the last couple years listening to a podcast on ancient literature and history (not all the nerds are on Jeopardy) I immediately knew the question. The three contestants, who had ripped it up all night, did not. Boy, did I feel superior!!! (“When are The Persians?”).

This sense of superiority can be expanded dramatically by watching “Celebrity Jeopardy”. The answers are much easier, and the contestants less learned. It’s not quite like the SNL parody (Answer – “The sound a dog makes”. Sean Connery – “What is Rhuff? Just how your mother likes it, Trebek.”), but sometimes it’s not far from that. (“I’m glad I got to be Frank Drebin of ‘Police Squad’ and kiss Priscilla Presley”; “Kathy Lee: I hate that sushi condiment, but love hot stuff, so I’m not sure why”). (“Which is Leslie Nielson?”; “How is wasabi?”).

After a bit, and with some prodding from your mother-in-law, you start to think that maybe you could actually compete on Jeopardy and imagine the game you would play. Conveniently, all the categories are things you know. In my fantasy game, I can hear Ken Jennings call out “The Bothers Marx” (the comedians, not Karl and his brothers Hermann and Emile, though they were affectionally known as Huey, Dewy and Screwy), “World Literature I have Read”, “The Russian Revolution”, “Beatles Solo Projects” and “70’s Movies”. The Double Jeopardy categories are “Sherlock Holmes”, “Philadelphia Sports Collapses”, “Reinsurance”, “WWI”, “60’s Cartoons”, and, miraculously once again, “The Brothers Marx”. Final Jeopardy is “Potent Potables”.

You notice that there is no math or science in my imagined game. I have always stayed away from those subjects as much as possible, and – lucky me – they have not appeared. I guess that if I had to I could hark back to the Self-Paced Astronomy class that fulfilled my science requirement in college, but I doubt if that would get me past the lowest rung of answers.

At this point in my reverie my attention is again captured by the game on the screen. I realize that the categories not only include science and math, but drill down to specifics like “Science Etymology” or “Math Symbols”. It is likely that some category like that comes up, and, when it does, I might as well put down the buzzer.

I also notice that the contestants have milliseconds to ring in before their rivals and then come up with the questions. They can’t lean back in their comfy chair and contemplate. Since I often must think for a few seconds to answer the question, “What is your name?”, this could be a problem.

I think it best if I put all these fantasies of competing in Jeopardy aside and just enjoy watching Troy, Ben and Yogesh reel off the questions from categories as diverse as “Bulgarian Royalty”, “The Geography of Insects” and “Find the Fractal”. But if the answer “Yankovic song from his ‘Weird Al in 3D’ album that references a game show” crops up, I will puff out my chest and proudly shout “Whose is ‘I Lost on Jeopardy’?”.