Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! (30 page)

Peter starts off the round at the bottom of the board, hunting for Daily Doubles on the $1000 row of
TOP 40 BONUS
and
WE’RE MALAYSIA-BOUND.
Each time Peter or I call for a clue, I hope to hear the
Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo-dwoo-dwoo-dwah
sound of a Daily Double being revealed.

Lyn hunts for a Daily Double in the $1000 row of
POETS’ RHYME TIME.
I dread the
Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo-dwoo-dwoo-dwah
when she’s in control. But it doesn’t come here, either. Instead:

SIR PHILIP’S RENAL ORGANS

And my light comes on.
What are Sidney’s kidneys?
I blurt, with barely a second thought.

This is something I would never have known a few months ago. I am starting to feel like a very different player from the terrified guy bouncing around with Lancôme up his snotter. I still don’t know much about who Philip Sidney
was,
of course. But now I can recognize him as a poet in less than two seconds.

I’m way ahead again, with $9200 to $2100 and $1700 for Lyn and Peter.

But then Lyn, the second librarian I’ve played in twenty-four hours (and third librarian in seven games), impressively rips through the rest of
POETS’ RHYME TIME,
whipping off

“What are Blake’s snakes?”

“What are Pope’s hopes?”

“What are Pound’s hounds?” all in a row.

I realize I’m just lucky our game board has been far stronger on pop culture than the classics. Lyn’s command of literature is as good as her silly rhymes.

Where are those damn Daily Doubles?
I wonder. Peter gets a correct response and selects from the board. No Daily Double. Peter gets another and selects. No Daily Double. Lyn gets a correct response and selects…

Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo, Bweedwooo-dwoo-dwoo-dwah.

Lyn’s Daily Double is in the category
FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY.
This is more harbinger, um, -ish -ness than I would prefer.

Lyn looks up at our scores. She has $4700. I have $9200.

HEAVY ARMOR & HEAVY RAINS DEFEATED THE LARGE FRENCH ARMY AS MUCH AS HENRY V’S MEN AT THIS 1415 BATTLE

One “What is Agincourt?” later, Lyn is at $8700. All I can do is smile, applaud, and hope for some heavy armor and rain of my own.

Lyn chooses again, and finds the last Daily Double on the very next clue.
Damn!
She now has the option to try to put the game away. Instead, she makes a conservative wager, essentially rendering the clue meaningless, choosing to fight on the buzzers for the rest of the game.

Still, my easy runaway is now a battle. And while the
TOP 40
category—my strongest—is gone, all of
FETAL ATTRACTION
remains.

Fortunately, we split what I thought would be Lyn’s strongest category three ways. Peter has kids, and thus personal fetal experience. I am lucky again. I then knock off three of the
HARRY GUYS
—including Harry Belafonte, one of the names I’ve thought ahead to—and manage to name an island that is much less obscure than it once would have been:

THE STATES OF SARAWAK & SABAH ON THIS ISLAND MAKE UP ABOUT 60% OF MALAYSIA’S LAND AREA

Because three different nations occupy portions of this same island,
What is Borneo?
is in my notebooks at least half a dozen times.

I now have a $2800 lead over Lyn. There are seven clues left, worth just $3200 combined. Lyn will need every clue to take the lead entering Final Jeopardy.

It is time to loosen my grip on the Weapon. The worst possible move is an incorrect response.

Doing nothing is better than doing something really stupid.

I choose a $400 clue in
MALAYSIA,
since Lyn hasn’t seemed strong on geography. If I get it, I’ve clinched the lead going into Final Jeopardy. If Peter gets it, I’ve clinched at least a share of the lead.

ENDAU-ROMPIN PARK IS ONE OF THE LAST HOMES OF THE SUMATRAN SPECIES OF THIS HORNED MAMMAL

Could be a rhino,
I think to myself.
But who knows what the hell lives in Sumatra?
I keep my hand off the buzzer. The only way Lyn is going to pass me is if I start guessing incorrectly.

Peter rings in. His “What’s a rhino?” is correct. I’ve now clinched a tie entering Final Jeopardy by doing absolutely nothing.

Peter selects a clue in
FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY
:

BY ALLOWING REBEL FORCES TO ESCAPE AFTER GETTYSBURG, THIS UNION GENERAL MAY HAVE PROLONGED THE WAR 2 MORE YEARS

George G. Meade was the Union general at Gettysburg,
I think.
But wasn’t that a
good
thing? Maybe somebody else was the screwup.
Again, I leave my Weapon uncocked.

Peter rings in. His “Who is Meade?” is correct. I’ve now clinched the lead entering Final Jeopardy by doing absolutely nothing, well-aimed.

There are still five clues—an entire category’s worth—on the board, but the rest of the round is superfluous. Lyn’s high second-place score will compel me to make a large wager
and
answer correctly to guarantee a win.

If I answer Final Jeopardy correctly, I win. If not, I probably don’t. Nothing else really matters right now.

As the last few clues roll by, one strikes me as absurdly obscure, the sort of thing that no amount of study or normal experience could fill in:

OF PROTON, ELECTRON, OR NEUTRON, WITH “SAGA” IT’S MALAYSIA’S NATIONAL CAR

Lyn, Peter, and I just stand there, staring. Zombie Jeopardy. Who knows what they drive in Malaysia?

It’s not like someday I’m gonna be hitchhiking in Malaysia in a steaming rain. It’s not like I’m gonna accept a ride to Kuala Lumpur from a man I don’t know driving Malaysia’s national car, revealing the correct response in a way I’ll remember as long as I live. It’s not like I’m gonna go off wandering around strange countries for months trying to learn the right lessons after how things turned out with Jane.

Even Trebekistan isn’t
that
strange a place.

Right?

p-TING!

The Final Jeopardy category:

BRITISH LITERATURE

This may be Lyn’s strongest subject. It may also be my weakest. Alex briefly glances at Lyn. I can’t see Lyn’s face, but her expression reflects noticeably on his.

Two podiums away, I can tell that Lyn is grinning.

Back in the Snow Belt, Dad and I spent many autumns watching the Cleveland Browns in the years they were known as the “Cardiac Kids,” captivating our frogs-with-umbrellas neighborhood.

The quarterback was a tiny man named Brian Sipe. He stood only three-foot-two and weighed just nine pounds, the only NFL Most Valuable Player I’ve ever seen who was smaller than the opposing team’s cheerleaders. I believe he now lives in a tree, making cookies.

But damn, that teeny man had heart. When the fourth quarter came, Brian Sipe would stand his ground while 300-pound carnivores lunged and ripped at his flesh. Cleats hammering the frozen earth would thunder out threats of his imminent doom, and Brian Sipe would hold his place manfully. And at the last possible second, just before having his bum blown to pieces, Brian Sipe would sling the ball heavenward, seemingly at random. More often than not, this laced-leather token of prayer would fall into the arms of a guy wearing the same-colored helmet, not far from some unlikely goalposts.

Then my dad and I and everyone in the Snow Belt would all scream as if our testicles were coming unspooled. Including the women.

This was even more fun than it sounds.

If you were driving through Cleveland on a Sunday afternoon in the 1980s and thought you heard the sound of 250,000 people being force-fed into a paper shredder, that was the extra point being kicked.

And so, from September to December every year, our neighborhood would festoon itself in brown and orange, the Cleveland Browns’ colors, amid the endless coatings of snowy white.

Someday, just once, I wanted to be like Brian Sipe.

Even if we always,
always
lost the last game.

After the commercial, Alex even comments on Lyn’s visible delight at the Final Jeopardy subject:

“When we revealed the category—
ENGLISH LITERATURE
—a few moments ago, Lyn Paine smiled broadly. I think she likes this category.”

Ulp.
My
Jeopardy!
career could be over for good in exactly thirty seconds.

p-TING!
comes the clue:

THE 5TH EDITION OF THIS WORK, PUBLISHED IN 1676, INCLUDED A SECTION ON FLY FISHING BY CHARLES COTTON

“Good luck,” Alex says. The Think Music begins.

I have absolutely no idea. None. So, back to the basics:

Slow down and see the obvious.

What follows is my actual thought process, as verbatim as possible amid a pre-verbal spasm of neural chaos. Hum the Final Jeopardy Think Music to yourself if you like:

OK. “Fifth edition.” Is that the hint? New Edition was a band once…Ummm…“1676.” Is that the hint?
1776
was a movie I saw in junior high. Guys in powdered wigs singing about Abigail Adams’s combustibility…Errm…Is “fly fishing” the hint? The writers went a long way to get there. Hmm…Could be this Cotton guy, but I’m running out of time. OK…

The first chorus of the Think Music is ending. I have to begin writing in a matter of seconds.

Everything connects to everything else.

Fishing. Old books about fishing. Wait—
Moby Dick!
Yes!
Moby Dick!

On the tape, you can see my hand start to write.