If I had to trace it all back to one thing - one foundational catalyst that takes me from childhood to adulthood to entering the vaunted halls of Nerd Valhalla, a.k.a. Jeopardy!, a.k.a. the Alex Trebek Stage at Sony Pictures Studios in beautiful Culver City - I think it just might be Eyewitness Books.
Sure, I could point to other things, like the complete edition of the Great Books of the Western World collection, published by Encyclopedia Britannica and purchased by my great-grandfather sometime in the 1950s, which still sits on a bookshelf in my parents’ living room. The stacks of issues of National Geographic magazine, which my grandfather purchased a subscription for Maybe the World Almanac or the Rand McNally road atlas that we always had at hand, or the endless supply of novels for both kids and adults that jammed every corner of our house.
All of that laid the groundwork for someone with enough stuff lodged in her brain that she could make it through three levels of testing and auditions to get on Jeopardy! and not make an ass out of herself. It won’t shock you, however, to learn that an eight-year-old did not read Edward Gibbon’s “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” or Thomas Aquinas. I mostly just liked admiring the solemn-looking spines of the book, assuming that someday I’d access the knowledge locked up in there. Spoiler alert: never read either. But I know who they are and what they wrote, which is enough to get a question right on Jeopardy!
Eyewitness Books - the colorful, accessible, exactingly researched and beautifully photographed series of educational books covering a vast array of topics, published by Dorling Kindersley in the 1990s - now that was my style. And for a certain stripe of millennial who were between the ages of roughly 8 and 12 in the early to mid 1990s - the kind whose teachers didn’t believe them when they said they read all the books for the summer reading challenge - Eyewitness Books were literally the coolest thing ever.
The big, bold title on the cover offered a window into countless worlds. OCEAN. RENAISSANCE. ANCIENT GREECE. REPTILE. ASTRONOMY. HORSE. One sturdy hardback book was the gateway to the riches of human knowledge. The design, which retroactively became classified into the “utopian scholastic” aesthetic, kept the young eye busy with gorgeous photos and graphics as the rest of the brain absorbed the text. Before the internet came and eventually pureed such elegant depictions of scientific and cultural topics into incomprehensible slop, there was a period where content like Eyewitness thrived. Think educational CD-ROMS or games like “Myst,” live action PBS kids shows, “I Spy” books, science museums, whale murals on buildings, the entire vibe of Future World at Epcot. These things make me happy. These things make me feel safe.
So how does this lead to my Jeopardy! appearance? In my estimation, it’s a pretty straight line. As will surprise absolutely no one, I grew up in a Jeopardy! house. My mom is a fierce J! competitor and a massive fan of the show, and even auditioned for it herself in the early 2000s. By the time I was in middle school, I was beginning to hold my own in watching the show with my parents. We looked down on Wheel of Fortune. Jeopardy! was for us.
And though the show has, of course, evolved over the years in many ways, its core identity - celebrating the joy of learning and knowledge through friendly competition - has remained the same, as has its aesthetic. The general set design since the early 1990s has incorporated many of the same design features you might find in my beloved utopian scholastic: strong lines and curves, bold colors, endearingly nerdy intro sequences. These things make me happy. These things make me feel safe.
I can’t recall exactly when I started taking the Anytime Test to try to get on the show, but I’m guessing that it was not long after the show began offering tests online in 2006. I don’t know how many times I’ve taken the test, but I know it’s a lot. I know I always did pretty well - generally, if I answer it, I’m probably right - but I also know I never got a follow up email or call. Until March 31, 2026, that is. It was different that time.
In short order, I attended the group test in early April, followed by the game play audition in May. As you learn at the end of that audition, once you’re in the contestant pool, you could be called at any point in the next two years. They could call you in a week. They could call you in 729 days. Some people don’t get called at all. Superstars like Amy Schneider had to wait years to finally get on the show. Be patient.
I waited. A month after the audition, I got laid off from my job. Internal chaos and barely-controlled depression ensued. I went on unemployment. I began working two shifts a week at my best friend’s new candy and gift shop in downtown Bangor, Oh Grow Up, while I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. Jeopardy! was not on my mind.
It was a soupy, humid afternoon in early July, and I was making small talk with a nice lady buying lemon drops at the candy shop when my phone rang. The caller ID read Sony Pictures Entertainment. I stopped talking to the lemon drop lady and answered the call. By the time I put the phone down, I had been invited to be on Jeopardy!, lemon drop lady had left, and I had no one to scream to but the inflatable dog-shaped pool float hanging from the ceiling.
I spent the next seven weeks watching every episode of J! I could, practicing my buzz-ins with a clicker pen and keeping track of both my correct and incorrect answers. Per the contestant brief, I assembled an array of cute, camera-ready outfits. I worked very hard to not tell anyone besides immediate family and very close friends what I was doing. We managed to go to Los Angeles for nearly a week in late August and not raise too much suspicion.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the game day experience for future J! contestants, but here are my big takeaways from my taping.
The buzzer is really hard! It is nothing like a clicker pen. It doesn’t click. It’s more like a video game joystick, and it’s shockingly sensitive despite not moving very much when you buzz in. I found this to be the single hardest part of competing, as you no doubt noticed if you watched me frantically mashing the button during the first round of my first game.
The set is, in my opinion, beautiful. The screen is huge and all-enveloping. The colors are vibrant. They keep it quite cold in there, but trust me: you will not notice once you start playing the game.
Jeopardy! is an incredibly well-oiled machine, which is what you would expect from such a beloved institution. Producers and staff want to make it as seamless an experience for you as possible, and they succeed in that in every way. They tape five episodes a day, so it’s all got to run smoothly! Plus: as a non-showbiz person, it’s kind of cool to eat lunch in a studio commissary.
Everyone that makes it onto the show is a regular person who loves J! with all their heart, and is just beyond excited to be there. I truly loved meeting everyone on my tape day. They genuinely could not have been nicer and more supportive. It’s a cliche, but I really wish everyone could have won. They all deserve it.
Ken is great. He’s as witty and charming as he seems.
Game one was a nail biter. We had a watch party at Orono Brewing Company in Orono on Wednesday night, and by the end of round one I legitimately had to ask myself during the commercial break “Wait, did I win?” And then I was impressed by my own comeback, which I already knew had happened because it’s me and I was there. Thank you, Lindsay Vonn. Thank you, “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Dr. Strangelove.”
I came into game two feeling confident, but quickly ran into a few snags. Two categories involving wordplay (Word Puzzles and Quasi-Related Pairs) which are among my least favorite types of clues. A missed opportunity in not answering Linda Hamilton, a.k.a Sarah Freaking Connor. And Nicolas, an extremely nice kid from Florida who is ridiculously smart and, of course, knew the answer to Final Jeopardy (The Everglades!).
And then it was over! Including my second-place finish on the second game, I won just over $20,000, which (after taxes) is enough to pay off some credit card debt, put in a new shower and flooring in our upstairs bathroom, go on a decent vacation and sock a little away. It’s been a tough financial year, so it is all incredibly welcome. It is not enough to change our lives, but don’t worry: my life has been changed. My goals in going on the show were A. To make it to Final Jeopardy and B. Win one game. You only have to win one to be a champion, and goshdarnit, that’s what I did.
Really, though, there’s a third goal: I wanted to make both my parents and my town, Bangor, proud. I take a lot of pride in living in the Queen City, and really, I am who I am because my mom and my dad encouraged me from literally the second I was born. After school classes on mask-making, jazz and tap, landscape painting? Sure. You’re collecting cool bugs out in the neighbor’s field? Great. You want to watch “Citizen Kane” instead of going to a classmate’s 14th birthday party? OK. You’re writing a “novel” at age 10? Let’s get you a typewriter (yes, an actual typewriter) for Christmas. How about a few more Eyewitness Books to go with it - “Aztec, Inca & Maya” looks right up your alley (I still have a copy of this, btw).
I think a lot of J! contestants likely have similar stories or backgrounds. One of the reasons I think the show is so special and is so much more than “just” a game show is that it is truly one of the last pieces of mainstream culture in the U.S. that celebrates learning, knowledge and - let’s be real - facts. It is entirely based upon knowable things, documented and agreed upon and widely accepted. No fake news. No slop. No bad science. And as if that wasn’t enough, it’s a bastion of fair play and integrity in competition. Can you imagine someone being a visibly sore loser on the show? Unacceptable.
In our current socio-political climate, Jeopardy! is something you can hang onto as a reliable bastion of civility and humanity. The rhythms of it are predictable - even if the clues certainly are not - and it’s always on at the same time in the place you call home. That makes me happy. That makes me feel safe. I’m honored I got to be a tiny part of it.
This was a joy to read. Congratulations on a stellar performance backed by wit, charm, and cute outfits!
So beautifully written, Emily. Congrats on achieving your three goals!