Category Archives: Jeopardy!

Did you watch on Wednesday, May 3?  Did you notice the $600 question in the category “Aye Aye, Admiral”?  Years after he was booted from the Bounty, he achieved the ranks of rear and vice admiral.* I really like this piece, “Inside the … Continue reading →

My second crack at the audition room, in July 2015, was actually quite similar to the first one except that I went in determined to be effervescent and wasn’t infected with anything (except charm!). All I remember about the written test is … Continue reading →

There is no part 8. Just kidding.  Actually, I have just finished sending out emails to all the people who applied to the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference by the priority deadline of March 31.  We had a lot of applications, … Continue reading →

On, now, to the recent past!  In the summer of 2014, my friend Christine (a four-time Jeopardy! champion) mentioned that a pub trivia night was starting up at a recently opened bar and grill conveniently located between our houses.  We live … Continue reading →

There are a dozen reasons I’m glad I didn’t go on the show fifteen years ago instead of this year, but one of them is this: I wasn’t remotely ready to risk the embarrassment.  Pretty much nobody gets out of Jeopardy! … Continue reading →

Where was I? Oh, right, high school.  Let’s move along, shall we?  My episode airs May 11 and it’s not as if I get to write in this thing every day. I first auditioned for the show in 2002 or … Continue reading →

I don’t have any memory of watching Jeopardy! before the current version, which began in the fall of my senior year of high school.  Then again, I also don’t have a memory of a time before Jeopardy!; it feels as if … Continue reading →

I assumed you would take it for granted that in addition to being a scavenger of books, I was also a fairly obsessive and indiscriminate reader.  In these days of concern about fake news, I look ruefully upon my younger … Continue reading →

Whenever I read applications for poetry-related things–fellowships, residencies, academic programs–there are personal statements that begin by invoking the childhood roots of the writer’s connection to books, literature, reading or writing, e.g., “Ever since I learned to read at age three…” or … Continue reading →

Over the last few years, I’ve consumed a lot of the small subgenre of online writing that is Jeopardy! contestant narratives. Josh Fruhlinger, the writer of the indispensable Comics Curmudgeon blog, observes in his own writeup, “There seems to be some kind of … Continue reading →