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"Cowboy Curtis" is not the Answer, Einstein

Jeopardy! Gives Rocky Mountain Trivia Fans a Chance, Finally

By Jenny Shank, 3-30-06

Alex Trebek, 1974.

For the past few weeks, Denver's newspapers have been salivating over the recent Wheel of Fortune taping at the convention center. In the Rocky Mountain News alone, the TV columnist interviewed Pat Sajak, the fashion columnists gushed over Vanna White's stylist, and a features writer covered the taping. I wasn't as excited about the Wheel's visit to Denver as local journalists seemed to think I should be. Wheel of Fortune does nothing for me. Wheel of Fortune is for philistines. Is that a snobbish remark? Does it sound like something the debonair and slightly pompous Alex Trebek might utter? Well it should. Because when it comes to game shows, I'm a Jeopardy woman.

From an absurdly young age, I have dreamed of competing on Jeopardy. In high school, my nerdish, dateless friends and I were obsessed with the show, and we would discuss the previous day's Jeopardy episode each day in chemistry lab. In college, I briefly wrote material for a campus sketch comedy group, but my range was limited—most of my sketches were takeoffs on Jeopardy ("Monosyllabic Jeopardy," in which all the answers were words like "dude" and "yo," was my biggest success). In recent years, I took far too much personal interest when Alex Trebec shaved his moustache and when the show increased its Double Jeopardy monetary values to compete with the payouts of the briefly insanely popular "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"

All the while I have bided my time, hoping to try out for the show one day. But I've never been to L.A., and I would feel a little ridiculous scheduling an entire trip around a Jeopardy tryout—what if I, a lifelong Jeopardy obsessive, failed to qualify? How would I show my face in nerdish enclaves ever again? The answer, clearly, was to wait until Jeopardy held one of its periodic regional tryouts somewhere close to home. Then I could take the contestant test without a huge outlay of cash, and if I didn't succeed, no one would have to know about it. So I waited for the tryouts to hit the Rocky Mountain region. Jeopardy went to Chicago. It went to New York. It went to Seattle. But it has never once—to my knowledge—held a tryout anywhere in the Colorado vicinity.

But last week, I received an email from my Jeopardy mailing list subscription with some happy news. For the first time ever, Jeopardy was going to offer its contestant test online. I immediately registered to take it, noted the time of the test on several of my various calendars and day planners, cleared my schedule, and scrutinized the FAQ. There was one dispiriting section recommending that everyone take the test on a PC. I am a Mac user exclusively, so I was saddened when I read, "We do not encourage you to take the test on a Mac." I wanted to have the best possible chance at success, so I plotted with my husband, who agreed to sneak me into his place of business after hours, where I would have access to a PC.

The big night arrived Wednesday. I reread the instructions: I would be given fifty questions, and be allowed fifteen seconds to respond to each question. I logged on fifteen minutes before the test was to start, as advised. A pop up window with Alex Trebek and a countdown clock appeared. As I waited for the test to begin, my hands began to sweat. I tried to do some deep breathing. I worried I would have to pee. At last it started. I frantically read the questions and typed in the answers. I had some successes (remembering that the battle between France and England in 1066 was called the battle of Hastings, and that the co-writer of "The Communist Manifesto" along with Karl Marx was Friedrich Engels and that Alexander Calder invented the mobile), but what I mostly remember were my mistakes. The worst feeling was knowing I knew the answer but having a brain jam. The answer to a literature question about Thackery's most famous novel was "Vanity Fair," I realized the minute after the test ended, but at the time, no words came to me, only an overpowering vision of the face of Reese Witherspoon, who played Becky Sharp in a recent film version of the book. And when I was asked to name the actor who played Morpheus in "The Matrix," I could not think of his name—all I could come up with was "Cowboy Curtis," the character the correct answer, Laurence Fishburne, once portrayed on "Pee Wee's Playhouse."

There are sure to be so many people taking the online test across the country that I would probably have had to get a perfect score in order to advance to the next step of the testing process. Though they didn't tell me how I did, I'm pretty sure I missed too many questions to advance to the next round, but I had enormous fun. As soon as I was finished with the test, I immediately wanted to take another one. I went around grinning like an idiot for a while, my Jeopardy craving finally sated. Jeopardy may have discriminated against the Rocky Mountain region in the past, but if it continues to offer online testing, there's bound to be a contender from these parts one day. And hey, maybe it could be me.

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