Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! (45 page)

THIS MIDDLE NAME OF SUPREME COURT JUSTICE WILLIAM DOUGLAS REMINDS US OF AN EARLY AVIATOR

It’s a lay-up. He’ll nail it. But Frank pauses to ponder.
Come on, you can do this,
I think.
The “O” was for Orville. I know that you know this.
And then I think,
What the hell, why am I cheering him on?
Like he can hear my thoughts from two podiums away.

“What is Orville?” Frank says, like he hears me, leaping far in the lead. I feel twenty-eight things, but there’s no time to sort them. In seconds:

BECAUSE THIS IS A MILLION-DOLLAR TOURNAMENT, YOU HAVE TO SPELL THIS MIDDLE NAME OF PRESIDENT WARREN HARDING

What’s G-A-M-A-L-I-E-L?
I blurt, no hesitation. Another small gasp from the crowd. I’m still trailing, but charging. A pudu, now ferocious himself.

I belong here,
I think.
I may not win or go on. But I’ve earned this now. I belong.

In the first clue in
WINNINGS,
I pick up $400. Frank’s lead has been cut to $1000.

The second
WINNINGS
clue is worth $800 more. Frank is now up by only $200.

Eight clues left. Closing in.

But I am thinking too much. I am forced to let the $1200 clue go by:

USE YOUR GENERAL FUNDS IN THESE TWO “GENERAL” COMPANIES IN THE TOP 5 FIRMS IN THE FORTUNE 500

Asked for two giant “General” companies, I think quickly of three: General Foods, General Electric, General Motors, in that order. I cannot aim my Weapon and hesitate. Frank instantly buzzes in, and chooses Electric and Motors correctly. I have truly forgotten my engineering degree.

His lead is $1400. Seven clues left. For $1600 and the lead:

ON THE CHICAGO MERCANTILE EXCHANGE, THIS INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY IS ABBREVIATED “PB”

I think quickly:
PB is a chemical symbol for a traded commodity…

What is lead?
I blurt out.

This is wrong. Very wrong. A klutzy high-dollar mistake.

“What are Pork Bellies?” Frank says, picking up the rebound and jumping far in the lead with just six clues remaining.

Six thousand people suddenly chortle and giggle. It is a moment of choking stupidity.

The Merc, as I know, because I once lived in Chicago, is a place where you trade cattle and lumber and livestock. It’s the
Commodities
Exchange where you trade metals. And lead is so cheap, of course, it even
means
“worthless,” although they trade it in London and elsewhere. It’s no “opportunity.” Pb, yes, of course, is the symbol for lead. But my answer is still almost as dumb as it looks.

All of Radio City Music Hall begins laughing. Six thousand people. More in-flight entertainment. Just like
that.
It took less than ten seconds.

But this time, I don’t care. I’m not thrilled, but it doesn’t hurt. Kinda cool. I’m still playing and glad. I think I might laugh, too, given time.

Rachael soon finds the last Daily Double, so I can’t catch Frank before the Final. I breathe and refocus and remember the plan.

A wild card is still possible with a correct Final response. So I let most of what follows go by unplayed, never guessing, barely touching the buzzer. At the end of this round, Frank has $19200. I have $15800, and Rachael has $10100.

My goal was $20000 when I walked on the stage. I can still pull it off.

It comes down to just one clue again.

I bet $4200 for an even $20000. A wild card spot, if I respond correctly. A small present for Jane I can take home.

The Final Jeopardy category—
p-TING!

ESPIONAGE

HE WAS BORN IN INDIA; HIS FATHER WORKED FOR THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT, & HE WAS NICKNAMED FOR A KIPLING CHARACTER

OK. We need an overlap between Kipling characters and spies in Great Britain…Jungle Book…Mowgli…Gunga Din and Kim…Kim…Kim Philby, the Third Man case, MI6 in the sixties.

Before Alex has even finished reading the clue, I begin.
Clackity-click-whap-clackity.
Electronic pen on hard glass.

I finish exactly three seconds into the Think Music, dropping the pen with a certainty I once couldn’t have imagined:
Who is Kim Philby?
and done. I check my spelling and reasoning, and find no cause for worry. This is an unusual feeling for me, as you certainly know.

As the Think Music enters its second chorus, I have fifteen full seconds to relish the scenery. I am standing near center stage of Radio City Music Hall before a packed and excited house, near the climax of a show they’ve enjoyed.

Some contestants also receive memories they will cherish.

I catch Alex’s eye with an accidental glance. He’s smiling in the half-light, possibly taking it all in for himself. I suppose he might feel something similar here. But I look away quickly. These moments are private. And the Think Music is ending at last.

Rachael has written down “Who is Kim Philby?”

She’s
right.
So I know I’ve advanced.

Frank will respond correctly, of course. This is why his name has become such a gold standard. But Frank, to my shock, is just shaking his head.

Frank has written “Who is John le Carré?”

This is a very good guess at first glance. This is the pen name of David Cornwell, who is British and writes novels about espionage. This fits most of the clue.

It’s an even better guess at second glance. Before writing novels, Cornwell himself was a spy, working for the British Foreign Service during the Cold War. He was betrayed in West Germany, however, by a Soviet mole.

And which spy betrayed Cornwell? You guessed it:
Kim Philby.

It gets even wilder at third glance.

As this very clue is asked on that
Jeopardy!
stage, David Cornwell is about to begin writing a novel called
Absolute Friends.
In this book, Cornwell mentions Kim Philby. Not as a double agent. Not as a mole. Not as the man who betrayed him.

Cornwell describes Kim Philby, of all possible things, as someone with the same name as a Kipling character.

Trebekistan is everywhere.

I have
won.

What the hell?

I have actually won. I’ve defeated Frank Spangenberg, whom I watched long ago from a world far away, who ranks with the best who ever played.

It’s an upset, of course. Douglas clocks Tyson, Flutie passes to Whelan,
How Green Was My Valley
beats
Citizen Kane.
A pudu outrunning a moose, just this once.

I cannot wait to see Jane. We did this.
We
did this.

Standing with Alex, center stage. I look up from Frank’s armpit. He is pleasant and sincere with congrats. Since he’d bet large for a win, not simply to advance as a wild card, he was now out, eliminated, just like that, falling not to my skill but to having thought about outcome.

Still, Frank is a New York City cop. We are playing this game only months after September 11. I believe Frank knows far better than I how little this game really matters.

If we play twenty times, I think Frank wins a dozen. Or twenty. Or quite possibly thirty. And this would be fine. I have one. It’s enough.

So we stand there with Rachael, herself a Tournament of Champions winner. Six thousand people applaud. Years later in Los Angeles, the windows of this coffee shop might break any second.

In a moment we’re off, ushered down into the front row, to watch the remaining four games. I sit between Rachael and Frank, making friends, spending the day watching a parade of great players displaying their skill.

Each group descends from the green room and plays. Each trio soon joins us and asks how the first game turned out. I take secret delight watching each group try to mask their surprise. I could let their shock tell me there’s still much left to prove, so much that I still need to show. But there isn’t.

Nine of us will play again tomorrow. In two days, one of us will be a million dollars richer.

But the token from the Luxor is worth more.

It was strange that two such great champs were already out of the field, but of course, that was the point of the tournament. More shocks followed in the other games, too. Soon, Robin was gone, our international champ, felled partly by
bioluminescence
in the category
15-LETTER WORDS.
(Glowing meat is a thing best not trifled with.) Eddie, Kate, and Babu also fell by the end of the day.

But Chuck Forrest played like Chuck Forrest, of course, overcoming Leslie Frates and Eric Newhouse in one of the finest games I’ve ever watched. Between them, they responded correctly fifty-six times:

“Who is Gaudí?”

“What is Bayreuth?”

“Who is Aaron Burr Tillstrom?”

At the end, Leslie and Eric advanced as wild cards, and Chuck had the highest score of the day.

Returning to the hotel, all fifteen of us agreed that the matches were all fairly even. It was obvious there was little between us. One clue here, a Daily Double there, one lucky category, a millisecond of a blink on the buzzer. (My math, incidentally, had been surprisingly decent. If Frank had won our game, my $20000 score would been enough for the last wild card spot, advancing in a tie. My guess was correct to the dollar.)

Robin Carroll and I wound up talking about Jane. Robin is a fan of Jane’s writing, and Jane’s a fan of Robin’s games. I promised to say hello in each direction. Robin is a tech writer and full-on triple-kid mom, one of the few players I’ve met who won with almost no study, in her case because there was simply no time. She plays Jedi, has trouble with the Forrest Bounce, loves the game win or lose, and I think she misses her dad as much as I miss mine, appreciating her parents even when she’s onstage.

Brad Rutter had been briefly thrown by one clue about the Icelandic Parliament. Which by now I thought
everyone
knew was the Althing. But to be fair, Brad knew his African capitals, and the difference between Kigali and Kampala. He probably also knew the distance between them, the train schedules and fares, which window to sit at to get the best view, the name of the woman who had installed the new safety glass, and the man who had broken her heart. Brad played football in high school, one of the popular kids, and had a squadron of friends in the crowd. He worked in a record store until his big wins, and always laughs when he says he might still be working there otherwise.

The afternoon and the evening went on like this, all comparing of clues and exchanges of phone numbers and e-mails, less a competition than a well-informed party.

That first moment, when the curtain rose, and it felt almost as though Frank and Rachael and I were briefly on the same team, became more the rule than the exception. These were just hardworking people with great curiosity, all willing to try interesting things. One of which was
Jeopardy!

Knowledge and creativity and a sense of community wove through all of their stories. Eric worked for the Alzheimer’s Association. Leslie Frates and Babu taught Spanish and history. Kate was a law school professor. Claudia and Eddie were newspaper writers. Rachael was an attorney getting a degree in biotechnology. Bob Verini and India both worked in theater. Leslie Shannon ran a technology research lab after living on four continents. Jeremy was an EMT who had saved numerous lives.

The conversation hopscotched far corners of Trebekistan.

Chuck, whom I sought out to thank for his book, was glad to chat for a while, hanging out in a hallway of the Waldorf-Astoria. We were both playing the next day, so we had to be brief. There was much sleep to gather, and I still wanted to review a list of foreign phrases that Jane had faxed to my room.

As we chatted, I learned that Chuck lived in London, where he’d founded a group that worked to prosecute war criminals. Well, of course. No surprise.
Of course
Chuck fought ultra-evil. I was finally able to hang almost even with the guy, and it turned out his day job was Superhero. Me, I told jokes to alcoholics and complained on the radio. Chuck was bopping around Eastern Europe and the Middle East, helping governments figure out the whole justice thing. Me? I said “boo-beef” for eight thousand dollars.

But Chuck was humble. (Of course he’s good at
that,
too.) Years later, he would tell me he was a little surprised at his own success the first time on the show, and about a clue (“What was
The Sotweed Factor
?”) that was as big a surprise to him as “Who are the fishmongers?” was to me.