Season 26 player (2010-02-26).
Season 25 1-time champion: $20,000 + $2,000.
Jeopardy! Message Board user name: smartypants2675
Husband's Jeopardy! Message Board user name: Haplo9000
Kori Tyler - a High School Teacher
Cordova, Tennessee
January 14, 2009
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a trivia nerd. I love anything involving trivia- Trivial Pursuit, Knowledge Bowls, the totally random questions on cereal boxes. And at the top of my lifetime to-do list: go on Jeopardy! and win. But I never thought it would ever actually happen.
I recently started teaching high school, and one of the many cool things about my job is that I can stay in my classroom and grade papers before I go home. See, there’s a TV in there, and one of the only channels it gets just happens to be the station that carries Jeopardy!, and I’m almost always still at school when the show comes on. It became my happy afternoon ritual: wave goodbye to kids, turn on the TV, grade papers and wait for Jeopardy! One day I was wandering around the internet, and wound up on the Jeopardy! website. I signed up for the e-mail alerts, and one of those messages mentioned the Online Test. Online test? Piece of cake! I thought- especially since it seemed like every time the Brain Bus came to Memphis, I was working.
There was one problem: the night of the Online Test there was also a University of Memphis basketball game. And everyone who knows me also knows of my insane devotion for the Memphis Tigers. Hooray for Tivo!! We were able to pause the game for the half-hour it took to complete the test. (The Tigers won that game, by the way. It was a very good night all around, as it turned out!)
I honestly didn’t expect to hear back from anyone, but then out of the blue, there was an e-mail, inviting me to Chicago for a live audition. I about had a heart attack. My husband and I made a mini-vacation out it, leaving our 3-year old with his parents (thanks, Jay and Caroline! I literally couldn’t have made it on the show without you!) and bumming around the city for the weekend. Finally, Sunday morning came, and I think I was the last one in my group to arrive- just made it in the nick of time! I was a little intimidated by all the doctors, lawyers, teachers, and engineers who were there with me, but I realized pretty quickly that I had a secret weapon: since I teach, I can Project My Voice, as my students can attest. So I felt pretty good coming out of the audition, plus I met a lovely guy, Jim Davis, who lives in my grandmother’s hometown of Freeport, IL. One of the lessons I learned that day, and a recurring theme of Jeopardy! for me, was this: it’s a really small world. (Jim, by the way, was trying out for the 2nd time, and finally made it on the show. When his episodes aired, I called my husband and began yelling at him- “The Freeport guy is on Jeopardy! And he just won!!”)
After the audition, I went back home, and hoped for The Call. While I waited, though, I began studying, reasoning that if I do get The Call, it will undoubtedly be during the school year, when I wouldn’t have any time to study. So I read like crazy- books, magazines, websites, you name it. I found a website that has archived Jeopardy! questions. I watched Jeopardy! twice a day- reruns on GSN, and the first-run shows in the afternoon. I practiced buzzing in with my Jeopardy! pen (a souvenir from my tryout), trying to get the timing just right.
Finally, at the end of September, I left work and turned on my cell phone. There was a message from Glenn- would I call him back? The drive back home from my school seemed like one of the longest of my life. I managed to make it home without hyperventilating (barely), and was asked to come out and tape on November 5th.
The morning of the taping, I was the first one downstairs in the hotel lobby, but it wasn’t long before I was joined by other contestants- Michael, Rick, Victoria, Alison, and quite a few others. Michael, it turned out, was the defending champ from the previous day. Everyone was incredibly cool, friendly, and good-natured, which was a relief.
On the way to the studio, the radio was playing, and I happened to hear an ad for the musical Wicked. I love musicals, and for about 3 weeks before the taping, I’d been on a serious Wicked kick, listening to it over and over on my iPod. If I’m really, really lucky, I thought, maybe I’ll get a whole category on Wicked. It seemed like a good sign.
That whole morning is a blur: getting to the studio, being greeted by the Jeopardy! staff (henceforth referred to here as the Contestant Wranglers), filling out paperwork, getting a real Hollywood make-up artist to make me look amazing… Robert, Tony, Glenn, Corina, Maggie, John, and the entire Jeopardy! crew are the nicest, most professional, most fun group I’ve ever been around. They immediately put everyone at ease and cracked jokes with all of us like we’d been pals for years. One of the best parts of the morning was the mock game, where we all got a chance to perfect our buzzer technique… and then it was finally time to play the game for real.
Would you believe my worst case of the nerves was actually while I sat in the audience, watching the first game being taped, and not during either of my games? I was completely out of my mind with the adrenaline rush, and got to see Victoria win the first of her 3 games (what a relief I didn’t have to play her! Plus, I totally blanked on the Final Jeopardy! for that game- a question about James Joyce’s Ulysses.) When Game 2 of the day turned out to be a tie, all the remaining contestants got a little restless. Having co-champs means one less person gets to play, and that person has to come back and tape another time. I’m not sure why, but I had pretty much convinced myself that I was the one going home, which meant I would have more time to study. So I went to lunch in a pretty good mood, figuring I’d enjoy the rest of my day. And naturally, that’s when they called me up to the stage!
The first game was a lot of fun, although I can hardly remember which categories were in the games I played and which were in the games I just watched. Ranjan, the defending champ, stayed in the lead for the whole game, while Eric and I battled it out for 2nd place. I decided my best strategy was to stay as close as I could, and not to buzz in unless I was sure of an answer- and just to have fun. The nice thing about taping in the Jeopardy! studio is that, once the game gets going, you hardly know the audience in there, since the lights are all on the stage. It’s just you, your opponents, Alex, and the Buzzer. So you just play the game, and forget about everyone else. Finally, we made it to Final Jeopardy!, and I had managed to stay in 2nd place. The category came up, and I almost cried with joy: Musical Theater. (Wicked! It’s going to be a question about Wicked!!! Was what my brain kept screaming).
I agonized over my wager forever- Ranjan would probably beat me, but I finally realized that I was guaranteed at least 2 (poor Eric had been knocked out of Final Jeopardy!, every contestant’s worst nightmare), so I might as well go for it. I had $10,000. I bet it all.
The answer came up: Name the musical that starts out with the main character arriving from Singapore with her son, to start a job paying 20 pounds a month. Ok, definitely not Wicked. But almost as good. I’ve seen The King and I more times than I can count. I own the soundtrack. At least I could go home with my head held high- I would get the Final Jeopardy! question right. And then they revealed Ranjan’s answer, and he had guessed Mary Poppins. Totally, totally unexpected. But there was no time to celebrate, because there was still one more game to play.
Game 2
My opponents for the last game of my all-too-brief, glorious Jeopardy! reign were Ellen and Jack. We got our make-up retouched, recorded our Hometown Howdies, and we were off. Once again, it was a close game- none of us could pull ahead for very long. I got my one Daily Double and whiffed it (John Jacob Astor?? Meh). Once again, I began to pull back on my educated guessing- I was terrified of losing money needlessly, so I ended up not answering a few that I might have gotten- since I wasn’t 100% positive on those answers, I skipped them. By the end, Ellen was in front, I was in 2nd, and Jack was in 3rd, but it was anyone’s game. Final Category: Alphabets. I had no idea what to wager, but I felt good about the category.
I can’t remember my bet, but I think it was $10,000 again (out of $14,000, if I’m remembering right). The answer came up, something about the letter of the Phonetic Alphabet that shares its name with a warrior tribe. I knew the answer- Z, for Zulu. But I wasn’t sure if they were asking for the letter, or the name of the tribe… and I guessed wrong. I wrote “What is Z”, and spent the last 15 seconds looking dopily at the screen. Our answers were revealed: Jack got it right, Ellen and I missed it, and just like that my Jeopardy! career was over. (The Trebek giveth, and the Trebek taketh away!)
It’s been difficult keeping the results of my game secret, so it’ll be a relief once the show finally airs! I’m so happy that I had the opportunity to do this- I’ve started telling all my friends that I got to go on the Rolls-Royce of game shows. I owe thanks to the Contestant Wranglers who made the entire experience such a delight from beginning to end- thank you so much!!- and to all of my family, friends, co-workers, and my students at Fayette-Ware High School, who were incredibly supportive and excited for me. |
