Courtesy of Jayenth IyengarAfter the airing of “Jeopardy! College Championships,” which began on Nov. 7, Washington University contestant junior Jayanth Iyengar can finally speak openly about what he characterizes as “the experience of a lifetime.”
Iyengar readily admits that one of the most difficult parts of playing the game concerns the nature of the questions involved.
“[The questions] were all very challenging on the whole and took everybody out of their comfort zone a little bit,” he said.
A geography buff since he was little, Iyengar was pleased to encounter categories such as “World Capitals” as well as the “Continents” category that appeared during his final jeopardy round. He would have preferred to see some topics regarding finance, business, and industry, however, where his education as a business major would have been of more use.
“Because of the nature of the game and its inherent unpredictability, you have to hope for the best and be prepared for the worst,” said Iyengar.
He recalls the dreaded category entitled “Cabinet Department Anagrams” which he faced in the quarterfinal game. Contestants are given mere seconds to process the information provided with each clue. “It was almost impossible,” he said.
Equally unsettling was the category “State ‘NC'” in that same round, in which each response had to contain the letters “nc.”
Aside from the difficulty and unpredictability of the categories, Iyengar encountered another challenging feature of the game: the buzzers.
This system works by way of a set of small light bulbs, which give the signal that the contestants can buzz in by lighting up when the clue has been completely delivered. As Iyengar explained, “the secret to success is buzzing in right when the lights turn on, in the millionth of a second gap between when they’re illuminated and when they’re not.” Thus, Iyengar discovered that it is not so much a matter of speed, but of perfect timing.
Due to this set-up, a contestant’s success in any given round depends not only on his or her knowledge of the categories, but on whether or not they are “in the zone” when it comes to buzzing in. “No matter what you know or don’t know, there’s a lot of luck and a lot of skill involved.” In Iyengar’s case, he remembers that during his Double Jeopardy! round of the semifinal game, he was more in control of the buzzers: “I felt more competitive. with every [question] I had a chance of getting in there.”
Yet despite these sometimes frustrating challenges, Iyengar asserts that he has no complaints about the experience as a whole. He was most impressed by the treatment he received, causing him to characterize “Jeopardy!” as a truly “first-class organization.” From the limousines that picked up the contestants at the airport to the nice hotels that they stayed in, “they treated us with lots of respect and attention the whole time.”
In addition, the people Iyengar met while taping the show amazed him. He describes all of the other contestants as bright and interesting people, emphasizing that “I can’t say enough good things about them.” As the contestants hailed from all over the country, Iyengar enjoyed being exposed to such a diverse group of people. He still keeps in touch with the other contestants, and they send messages through a Google group to which they all belong.
Iyengar was even impressed by what he was able to observe of Alex Trebek. Although the contestants were not able to directly interact with him outside of the show, due to regulations resulting from a series of scandals that occurred during the ’50s and ’60s between game-show hosts and contestants, Iyengar got the impression that Trebek was “a fine individual.”
As he recalls, during the commercial breaks, Trebek would work hard to keep the audience entertained by saying witty remarks and going out into the crowd. “My impression was that he’s much more calm and warmer in person than he comes off as on TV.”
Despite the fact that he ultimately came in third place, Iyengar’s “Jeopardy!” experience is one that he will “always cherish.”
During the final round, he recalls that champion Nico Martinez of Stanford University had both knowledge and luck on his side, as he was completely dominant on the buzzers the entire time; nonetheless, Iyengar won $25,000 for his third-place finish. “Everyone likes to win, but I enjoyed the experience.to be on there and go through everything on there was just amazing.”
After he completed filming the Jeopardy! College Championship, Iyengar returned to St. Louis to face yet another great challenge, as he found himself thinking endlessly about “Jeopardy!” As he said, “The only real negative part of the whole thing was when I got back to St. Louis and for the first three or four days back I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I was just sitting in class thinking about what happened in each round.”