Smarter Than You: How My Roommate Went on Jeopardy and Brought Home the Dough

I m going to be completely unoriginal here. My roommate s wicked smaht. Yes, yes, I know, this is Harvard. Everyone here is brilliant, right? But seriously, my roommate really is, and now I have proof. Certainly I could have begun a paean like this two years ago, but few would have bought it without my new information.

A bit of background. When we were first-years, my entryway occasionally watched >=Jeopardy<= whenever the Simpsons weren t on. I was always quick with my responsesaquick, yes, but wrong more often than not. The script always went like this: Alex would read the question. >=Of the three aB s,<= he would chant as he read from his covered and phonetically scripted tele-prompter, >=the one who left town when rejected as Philharmonic conductor of his native Hamburg.<= I d blurt out something to the effect of >=Bach, Who is Bach?<= A few seconds later, Dave would mouth under his breath, >=Brahms, maybe.<= A few seconds later, Alex would report >=Oh no, I m sorry, we were looking for Johannes Brahms on that one. Player 2 choose again.<= I would attempt to play it off, insisting, >=Oh yeah, I knew that, because....<= Truth is, I didn t know the answer, but nine out of 10 times Dave did. Sure, he d inflect his voice for every answer so we d think that he was guessing, but everyone in the room knew that he knew. No one guesses correctly that often. That s another thing about Daveain addition to being wicked smaht, he s insufferably modest, which is one of many reasons that if I could be more like anyone I know, it would be him.

So this September when the Cambridge Charles River >=Celebrate the Charles River Festival<= Fair (or whatever it was) pitched a >=Jeopardy<= tent at Dunster s doorstep, we dragged Dave there and then to tryouts at the Park Plaza the next morning. If you ever get the chance to take this mythical test, especially in Boston, be prepared for a sobering peek at life 20 years from now. Of the 30 people there with us, the vast majority were 30 or 40-something Cantabrigians who spent the entire time cracking jokes about the number of times they d already tried out. Dave, Will and I sat next to each other trying to decide whether Alex really would be as obnoxious in person as he is on the air. (He doesn t come to the tests, we learned, but later determined that, indeed, he is as ridiculous as he seems.) The 50-question test came and went, and shortly afterward the staff returned with our graded papers. After a few reassuring words to those who didn t pass (>=Just tell everyone you missed it by one question,<= they offered with a chuckle), they asked those who did to raise their hands when called. To no big surprise, Dave s name was one of the first. Another one of our blockmates, Will, was called a few seconds later, and, believe it or not, my name was eventually called as well (it must have been that question on Steve Biko). The three of us were left sitting there right next to each other, hands raised with the rest of the room giving us dirty looks.

Fast forward three months: I stumble through the door after a late afternoon seminar to find Dave draped over the couch looking deathly ill. >=Tough day?<= I inquired. >=They called me,<= he replied. Thinking back over the last two years, I struggled to come up with who >=they<= might be. Was the Ad Board finally coming down on him for the one beer our proctor caught him with freshman year? Improbable, but I mention it anyway. No laughter. >=aJeopardy called me. They want me to fly out later this month, and I don t know if I want to do it and....<= Dave still wasn t particularly psyched about being on television in front of the show s 15-million-person viewing audience. From my perspective, there was really no choice. Admirable modesty is one thing, but stupidity is quite another. The chance to be on >=Jeopardy<= isn t something most people would turn down, especially someone with as much a chance to win as Dave. In the end, he went.

A little known fact about >=Jeopardy<= is that the show tapes five shows a day on Monday and Tuesday of each week. Consequently, every show you ve ever seen has been taped months in advance. Dave flew out the last week in November and got called to the podium during the fourth show that Monday. Simply put, he wrecked house, raking in just over $8,000. Then, as returning champion, a repeat performance. Finally, on Tuesday morning s first tapingaDave s third showahe, to quote him and many others, >=crashed and burned.<= Maybe it was fate getting back at him for having the gall to look down at the screen displaying his winnings during the opening segment. Or perhaps it was the several on-camera interactions that made Alex Trebek look like the dope he is. In any event, Dave was sent packing, albeit $16,400 richer.

As for me, I m left wondering if maybe, just maybe, I ll one day follow in his footsteps. Doubtful.