Once again, I did not expect to be running back to the dressing room between shows as the Jeopardy! champion, but I excitedly changed into another dress shirt and headed back out on stage. I was up against two more formidable opponents, and once again felt somewhat out-gunned on the buzzer. Watching the show tonight, three months later, I felt like I looked even more out of it than I remembered. Long stretches of time went by when I wasn’t ringing in at all, and I wondered if I’d ever catch up with Adam.

Here’s me getting introduced and finally smiling a little more:

Here’s me standing smugly while Alex recounts a conversation we’d had after the last game: there weren’t many misses in the last game, he said, but I took credit for most of them. Smile, dummy!

For the first time during my time on the show, play was stopped for a clarification, and, in the end, a score correction—not once, but twice. The contestant coordinator came up on stage, we all turned around to face away from the board, and the producers viewed tape, listened to audio, and determined that Sarah had given an incorrect answer but was awarded the money for that question. Once she said “Berenstein” instead of “Berenstain” Bears, and once “Jesse Owen” instead of “Owens.” Tough breaks. I heard the mistake both times, and sort of wish it had been ruled incorrect at the time so I’d have had a chance to ring in for it, but no dice. Those two score corrections proved to be important for my survival, though.

A fairly large wager on a Daily Double about Britain in World War II also saved my bacon, and got me back into the game. Once again, my Anglophilia pays off. I also made a guess on “Tim Lincecum,” as I’m not a follower of National League baseball and didn’t watch the World Series this year; not sure why I knew that. I was helped out by categories on Scouting and international art museums, which I wouldn’t have thought would be strong categories, but who knows. I wasn’t penalized for quitting scouts before I got to Webelos after all… And somehow, I got the location of “Starry Night” wrong, though I’ve seen it, and got the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam correct, even though we only visited there after the taping, but before this episode aired.

Here’s me wondering to myself if Alex has ever heard of Delicatessen, which I have just named as my favorite movie of all time, an accolade I never think about but am always asked about and should probably have a better answer for.

I had managed to keep things close despite feeling out-gunned on the buzzer, and in Double Jeopardy, I snuck into the lead by the time we started on the last category remaining on the board: “French Cuisine.” I didn’t feel very strong in it, and the high dollar value clues offered my opponents the opportunity to pull into the lead. I knew I probably wasn’t going to get any of them, and totally missed “Chateaubriand,” which Aimee and I had discussed just a few days before, as well as “tapenade,” which I knew but totally blanked on. Luckily, neither of my opponents got the last clue, and my slim lead was preserved. This was an extremely tight game.

I’m sure it’s just a phenomenon that happens as the games go on, but the more I won, the more I felt comfortable taking risks in Final Jeopardy. I guess because I’d already won, I felt like it wouldn’t be the worst thing if I went down in flames with a big wager, and at the same time, I was giving myself the best chance to win in the event that I did actually know the answer. The category was “Playwrights,” something I’d say I felt better about than “Scientists” or “Biographers,” but still not particularly confident about. I bet everything I had to to cover Sarah’s potential all-in wager, and the question came up. I skipped over the part about Tony Awards, which I don’t know anything about, and honed in on “Oscar” and the year, 1998. I had just been reading about Oscar’s most infamous awards, and “Shakespeare in Love” beating “Saving Private Ryan” for Best Picture in 1998 was on the list. I also knew that Tom Stoppard had a hand in the screenplay, and the answer made sense. It made sense to everyone else, too; we all got the correct answer. The lucky circumstance of barely coming out on top at the end of Double Jeopardy ensured that I would win if I got the answer right and bet big enough. And I did.

Four games! What?

Here’s the game archived on J! Archive.

For the time being, the show is on YouTube. The shows are no longer on YouTube.