‘Jeopardy!’ GOAT Ken Jennings Says Nothing Comes Close to the ‘Intensity’ He Experienced in His First Game
]
Ken Jennings became a household name during his record-breaking run on Jeopardy! in 2004. The quiz whiz racked up 74 wins and over $2.5 million in cash, and later went on to earn the title of Jeopardy!’s Greatest of All Time in 2020. Now serving on the legendary game show as as guest host and consulting producer, Jennings clearly remembers the very first Jeopardy! episode that launched his fame.
‘Jeopardy!’ GOAT Ken Jennings | Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage
Ken Jennings had to wait a year after his audition to appear on ‘Jeopardy!’
Jennings was on vacation in LA with a pal and wanted to try out for Jeopardy! When they learned the auditions would be held after their return home, they decided to take an extra road trip.
“We drove back home and came back,” the Jeopardy! star told Vulture in 2020. “My wife was all right with it. We had been married for about four years at that point, my son had just been born, and we had recently moved into our starter home. I was a computer programmer at a small firm. So, we both drive back to Los Angeles, and we both passed the test at the Radisson on a Tuesday morning. It was great.”
Jennings nailed the tryout and was given the green light for Jeopardy! He ended up having plenty of time to study.
“A year goes by,” he recalled. “I totally forgot about it, and suddenly I’m sitting at my boring job and a guy from Jeopardy! calls me. He was basically like, ‘Hey, you’re going to be on the show in three weeks.’ I panicked.”
RELATED: ‘Jeopardy!’ GOAT Ken Jennings Responds to Matt Amodio’s Loss While Fans Wonder if He Threw the Game
‘Jeopardy!’ GOAT calls first episode ‘a real experience’
Though he had practiced playing the trivia game countless times at home to prepare, Jennings admitted that being on the Jeopardy! stage is a different ball game.
“It’s crystal clear in my mind,” he said of his first episode in 2004. “Of all the years of amazing experiences I’ve had on Jeopardy! since then, nothing has come close to this one in intensity. Playing Jeopardy! for the first time just knocks your socks off. You’re expecting it to be chill like it is at home, and it’s so different on the other side of the screen.”
Meeting Jeopardy! icon Alex Trebek, who died in November 2020, was high on Jennings’ list of favorite memories of his initial game.
“You can’t believe the pace and the intensity and the number of things you’re being asked to do at once, in addition to the surreality of having Alex there,” he commented. “It’s a real experience. I had almost put the game away before the end of the second round, but then one of my fellow contestants found her buzzer groove, so I only had a narrow lead going in Final Jeopardy!”
Ken Jennings recalled first seeing Alex Trebek in person
Jennings revealed a rule that prevented Trebek from mingling with Jeopardy! competitors, even those who stay on the show for a great length of time.
“I never really got to hang out with him during my entire run because of those really strict FCC regulations left over from the ’50s game-show scandals,” he explained. “Contestants have to stay apart from the staffers who know the material.”
As a longtime Jeopardy! viewer, Jennings was a loyal fan of Trebek and shared what it was like to see the game show legend in person for the very first time.
“I remember standing behind the podium when he first walked out,” the Jeopardy! GOAT revealed. “It was almost like an angelic visitation or vision, something you heard described and can’t believe it’s actually happening to you.”
RELATED: ‘Jeopardy!’: Former Champ James Holzhauer Considers Recent Winning Streaks ‘Fairly Normal
Amy Schneider rules the ‘Jeopardy!’ super-champ era. Some former 5-day winners are jealous they never got the chance.
]
That’s another common feeling among the 15 contestants interviewed for this article — just wishing they had the chance to see how far their quiz skills could take them. Elise Beraru, the very first contestant to ever win five games on the first season in 1984, purchased a color television set, VCR and stereo with her winnings. Now, she no longer watches the show; the last time she tuned in, she said, was Alex Trebek’s final episode last January. While it’s difficult to watch anyone else host, that’s not entirely why she’s still skipping episodes with Amodio and Schneider.
The secret to ‘Jeopardy!’ champion’s success: ‘Who is Eminem?’
]
Eminem isn’t a “Jeopardy!” contestant, but he’s fueling one of the show’s all-time greats.
Amy Schneider, the current reigning, defending and undisputed “Jeopardy!” champion, draws her winning inspiration from Eminem’s Oscar-winning “8 Mile” theme “Lose Yourself,” she told host Ken Jennings on Wednesday’s episode of the syndicated game show.
Jennings, himself the all-time winningest “Jeopardy!” champ, asked Schneider during the interview segment about her pre-show ritual, and what gets her into “fighting shape” for the show.
Without her palms getting sweaty, her knees weak or her arms heavy, she went on to pay homage to Eminem’s 2002 smash.
“Right before the taping starts when they’re doing the countdown, I will get the song ‘Lose Yourself’ by Eminem going in my head,” said Schneider, an engineering manager from Oakland, California. “It’s just a reminder that this is my one shot at ‘Jeopardy!’ and it’s staying in the moment, and there’s no excuse for thinking about anything else. This is the only thing I need to think about right now.”
“Well it appears to be working out,” Jennings said, before adding in a “Lose Yourself” reference of his own: “If you’re going to be on ‘Jeopardy,’ " he said, “think about mom’s spaghetti, and you may win 35 times in a row.”
That total is now up to 36. Schneider, 42, won again on Wednesday, despite missing the Final Jeopardy! clue, an answer about which 2001 film was described by its screenwriters as “Clueless” meets “The Paper Chase.” (The winning question: “What is ‘Legally Blonde?’” Schneider guessed “Never Been Kissed.”)
But she won nonetheless, adding $17,800 to her total, bringing her earnings to $1,181,8000 and making Stans everywhere proud.
Schneider goes for win No. 37 on Thursday’s show, which airs locally on WDIV-TV (Ch. 4) at 7:30 p.m.
@grahamorama
‘Jeopardy!’ Notebook: On Day 38, Dayton native ties record for second place all-time
]
“We’ve learned a lot about Amy Schneider over the last couple months on the show,” said host Ken Jennings at the outset. “A few of the highlights: she used to have a podcast about ‘Downton Abbey,’ she met a real-life ninja in Tokyo, she scored a perfect 1600 on her SATs, she has a cat named Meep, she was into the Golden State Warriors even before they were good, her go-to karaoke song is ‘Creep’ by Radiohead. Folks, she’s been here 37 straight days. Today, we’re going to learn one more very important fact about Amy Schneider. Will she reach the ‘Jeopardy!’ milestone of 38 consecutive wins? That would tie her for second place all-time with ‘Jeopardy!’ legend Matt Amodio.”
Family was top of mind for the Chaminade-Julienne graduate during the interview segment, opening up about the loss of her sister in infancy.
Former Jeopardy champ says the show needs to bring back limits on wins
]
“Newer people just walking in there don’t really have much of a chance,” says Tom Nichols.
We’ve seen a lot of winning streaks on Jeopardy lately — which is causing some fans to complain it needs to shake up its format.
Tom Nichols, a five-time champion of the game show, recently told Boston Public Radio that he thinks the solution is to limit these endless streaks of success, which would involve retooling some of the player rules.
Before 2003, Jeopardy contestants were allowed to win only five consecutive games before they were forced to “retire.” When that rule was lifted, smarties like Ken Jennings — who in 2004 became the highest consecutive winner in Jeopardy history — began to hold the champion spot for weeks on end.
James-Holzhauer; Amy-Schneider Recent ‘Jeopardy’ champs James Holzhauer and Amy Schneider | Credit: Eric McCandless via Getty Images; Jeopardy Productions
“After about two or three wins, I think you’ve got such an advantage. You’ve been using the buzzer, — which is much more important than people realize; you’re a lot more comfortable in the studio; you understand the rhythm of the game,” said Nichols. “Newer people just walking in there don’t really have much of a chance, and that’s purely because the returning champions have mastered the mechanics of the game.”
“If you’ve done that for eight, nine, 10 games, there’s a reason they used to retire you,” he continued. “But the ratings are up, and people want to treat it like a sport and professionalize it. You might as well move the show to Vegas.”
Nichols sees this change to Jeopardy as its downfall, pointing out, “The whole charm of the show was to celebrate ordinary Americans showing what they knew. It was not supposed to be 38 games of Hulk Smash.”
Since contestant Amy Schneider began winning games last year, viewership of the game show has soared. Schneider is only the fourth contestant — and the first woman — to hit the $1 million mark, after Jennings, James Holzhauer in 2019, and Matt Amodio in 2021.
If the show isn’t going to tweak its rules in a “post-[Alex] Trebek” world, maybe it should consider going away altogether, the former Jeopardy champ proposed in a recent piece for The Atlantic.
“Maybe it’s time to retire the game — especially as they’re having trouble finding hosts who aren’t annoying,” Nichols wrote. “I’ve seen a few games recently in which some of the contestants simply had no chance even on a more level playing field. I want everyone on Jeopardy to have a good run, not just wave to Mom and Dad and then get creamed.”
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.