Read Online Final Jeopardy by Stephen Baker - Free Book Online Page B

strict limit of five matches for returning champs. This seemed unfair to Friedman, and he debated it with colleagues for years. The downside? “You get somebody on the show who is there forever,” he said. Imagine if the person was unlikable or, worse, boring. Nonetheless, he lifted the limit in 2003. And the following year—wouldn’t you know it?—a contestant stayed around for months and months. It seemed like forever. But this, it turned out, wasn’t a bad thing at all. Ratings soared.
Jeopardy
had hatched its first celebrity.
    His name was Ken Jennings. Nothing about the man suggested quiz show dominance. Unlike basketball, where a phenom like LeBron James emerged in high school, amid monster dunks, as the Next Big Thing, a
Jeopardy
champion like Jennings could surprise even himself. A computer programmer from Salt Lake City, Jennings had competed in quiz bowl events during high school and college. A turn on
Jeopardy
would be a kick. So in the summer of 2003, he and a friend drove from Salt Lake City to the
Jeopardy
studios in Culver City and took the qualifying exam. Jennings was pleased to pass it. And he was surprised, nine months later, to get the call that he’d been selected to play. He promptly started cramming his head with facts and dates about movies, kings, and presidents.
    His first game came a month later. Before the game, Jennings, like every other contestant, had to tape a short promotion, a “Hometown Howdy,” to be played in Salt Lake City the day before the show aired. It is typically corny, and his was no exception: “Hey there, Utah. This is Ken Jennings from Salt Lake City, and I hope the whole Beehive State will be buzzing about my appearance on
Jeopardy
.” Little did he know that within months, not just the Beehive State, but the whole country, would be buzzing about Ken Jennings.
    In his first game, he wrote in
Brainiac,
it was only through the leniency of a judge’s ruling that he managed to win. After two rounds, he held a slim $20,000 to $18,800 lead over the next player, Julia Lazerus, a fundraiser from New York City. The reigning champ, a Californian named Jerry Harvey, trailed far behind, with only $7,400. The category for Final Jeopardy was The 2000 Olympics. Though Jennings had been on his honeymoon during the two weeks of the Sydney Olympics and hadn’t seen a single event, he bet $17,201. This would ensure victory if Lazerus bet everything and they both got it right. If she wagered more modestly—betting that he’d miss—and won, a wrong answer would cost Jennings the game.
    Trebek read the Final Jeopardy clue: “She’s the first female track-and-field athlete to win five medals in five different events in a single Olympics.” Jennings wrote that he was racked by doubt. He knew that Marion Jones was the big medal winner in that Olympics. (In 2007, Jones would admit to doping and surrender her medals.) To Jennings, Jones seemed too obvious. Everyone knew her. There had to be some kind of trick. But he couldn’t come up with another answer. In the end, following common
Jeopardy
protocol, he skipped her first name and wrote: “Who is Jones?” A botched first name or middle initial, players knew, turned a correct response into a wrong one. “Mary Jones” or “Marianne Jones” would be incorrect. But a correct last name sufficed—or it usually did. The trouble was that Jones was such a common name, like Smith or Black, that someone who didn’t know the answer might have guessed it.
    In the end, Jennings could have won the game by betting nothing. Lazerus flubbed the clue, coming up only with “Who is Gail?” a reference to Gail Devers, a gold medal sprinter in the 1992 and 1996 games. She wagered $3,799, which left her with $14,801. It was still more than enough to win if Jennings missed it or if the single name failed to satisfy the judges.
    He showed his response: “Who