Let's face it. You watch a game show, you play along, you can't help but rant against the poor people on TV who mess up, screw up, say the wrong things, make a bad wager... I have to admit, I'm terrified of doing all of the above and then some. So, to give myself a fighting chance, I did some review. Alan recommended a very nice book for me called The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, which was very helpful. I also bought The New York Times to Essential Knowledge, which was less helpful because it was so big. I had my trusty 2009 Almanac and some trivia outlines from my friend Andy. But even armed with all this material, every once in awhile, I still managed to shout out things like "What is a semen whale?" when I clearly meant a sperm whale. By the way, one of the shows last week had sperm whale as the question - I think to the answer of what type of whale Moby Dick actually was. I'm really glad I did not play that game!
I also did not want to get into a Cliff Clavin situation, although it would have been pretty cool to write or say "Who are 3 people who have never been in my kitchen?"
Some of the topics on my list of things to study included: presidents, world capitals, chess, boxing, Native Americans, musicals, classical music, a whole LOT of literature, classic TV shows (So that when a $400 clue was fill in the blank - Ozzie & , I could at least know that it's Harriet), a brief look at the armed forces and weaponry, saints, and current events. My favorite was reading about the presidents. Many of them have fascinating lives and interesting tidbits. Here are some of my favorites:
Franklin Pierce was friends with Nathanial Hawthorne.
Teddy Roosevelt was shot but continued to give a 90 minute speech before going to the hospital.
Taft later became Chief Justice of the Supreme court.
Warren Harding's middle name is Gamaliel.
Herbert Hoover was a Stanford engineer and spoke Chinese.
Truman owned a haberdashery (what is that?). After FDR died, his response was basically "oh crap."
Nixon was found to have an 18-inch clot in one of his veins.
Gerald Ford survived TWO assassination attempts (Squeaky Fromme, Sara Jane Moore). Geez.
And of course, keeping straight who was born where, died where, etc. (8 presidents from VA, 7 from Ohio, Truman from Missouri, Hoover from Iowa).
Another important strategy is to realize the hints that Jeopardy! gives you. As Bob Harris writes in The Prisoner of Trebekistan, a bog fruit is always a cranberry. You don't even need to read the rest of the question. Similarly, Karl Coryat has a nice list of associations to remember. You can get a good sense of what sort of things they ask you by watching the show and using the J! Archive which is incredibly helpful.
So that's what I did. J! Archive, various books, the almanac, wikipedia. It can be sort of tedious, but you have to sort of like it. Find something that fascinates you, it'll stick in your mind better. For example, I think F. Scott Fitzgerald is really boring, so I can't remember his books that well other than The Great Gatsby. And there's really only like, 4 or 5 Fitzgerald books to know! I thought Tennessee Williams was awesome, so I can remember many of his plays even though it's been months.
In the meantime, I had to fill out quite a bit of paperwork, including 5 more interesting stories about myself and a smattering of other questions designed to make me appear more interesting than I really am in my 28 years of life. This part was really the part that caused me a lot of distress! I'm a MD/PhD student! I HAVE no life! Yet, I didn't want to have a lame story on TV. Eventually, I did the best I could with the true stories of my life and sent that off to Maggie. WHEW.
On to the show!
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