Jeopardy Leaves Harvard Broke

What is “losing to USC,” Alex?

Students across campus learned the answer to that question Monday night as they watched a Harvard junior come in last place in a nationally-broadcast college championship episode of the TV game show “Jeopardy!”

Leverett resident Mary N. Naam ’05 ended the game show—which was taped more than a month ago in New Haven—with a disappointing $0, while Yale undergraduate Robert Schrum finished with $11,400. University of Southern California (USC) student Ken Basin advanced to the college semifinals with $16,800.

Naam lost the $5,600 she had collected in the show’s first two rounds in the “Final Jeopardy” category of New Orleans. Asked which country controlled the Big Easy at the end of the American revolution, Naam wagered it all and lost after writing “What is France?” on her console. Schrum, going into the final round just barely ahead of Naam with $5,700, also wagered his full winnings—and doubled his pot with the correct response of “What is Spain?”

Basin, meanwhile, gave the same wrong answer as Naam—but had wagered nothing, leaving him with a still-commanding lead over both Ivy League competitors.

Naam started the game off well enough, correctly answering the first question of the night by identifying “aardvark” as a two-syllable animal’s name beginning with two vowels.

But she lost her lead soon thereafter, and remained at the bottom of the pack for the rest of the half-hour broadcast.

Asked about the average color of the universe, Basin blandly wondered, “What is tan?” while Naam showed a bit of crimson vocabulary in asking “What is taupe?” Both, however, were ruled wrong.

The Yalie stayed silent as host Alex Trebek told them that the correct answer was “What is beige?” and quipped, “They called it cosmic latte.”

And Naam particularly rued one mistake, in which she said “Cheetos” instead of “Fritos” in a question about brand-name munchables.

“That hurt a lot,” she said. “I don’t want to be the Harvard girl who can’t keep her snack foods apart.”

As a result of such a showing, Naam—who has received a good deal of non-Harvard fan mail since the show’s taping—said that she had hoped few would take notice of her mass-media appearance.

“I didn’t tell anyone [about the airing],” she said, adding that she watched the episode last night with a small group of blockmates.

Still, Naam said that watching her trivial defeat on the small screen had not been as painful as her memory had led her to expect.

“I was kind of pleasantly surprised,” she said. “When I came back I could only remember the questions I got wrong; I couldn’t remember any of the ones I’d gotten right.”And despite her ultimate loss, Naam managed to answer a number of tricky questions correctly over the course of the program.

Asked to put together a pun involving the telephone’s inventor and a common ingredient in a garden salad, the Yalie jumped to ask, “What is bell pepper?”—the wrong response. Naam, however, buzzed in with “What is Alexander Bell Pepper,” which the judges ruled correct. Basin had no reply to the puzzler.

That consultation with the show’s judges appeared to take only a moment to television viewers, but Naam said a similar controversy involving one of the Eli’s responses had in fact taken far longer in person than it did on screen.

Skillful editing of such intermissions brought the taping, which lasted close to an hour in real time, down to around 30 minutes, she said.

“It was amazing how fast they made everything go,” Naam said.

And after meeting Trebek in person, Naam also chalked up the host’s patented on-screen charm to the show’s producers.

“I’d say it’s the magic of the editing room for sure,” she quipped.

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.