A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

HER LEGAL RIGHT TO POST THIS IS NO LONGER IN .... JEO ... IS NO LONGER AT RISK: In order to spoiler-protect for those watching on delay, Amy Watts' account of her performance on Jeopardy! tonight is below the fold for the time being.

ANYONE THAT SENDS ME A CARLTON FISK ROOKIE CARD GETS A KICK IN THE NARDS: Thoughts on my Jeopardy appearance:

First and foremost - everyone and I me everyone that works for Jeopardy! is super-duper nice and they make sure the contestant experience is fun. If you are lucky enough to get the invite, go go go!

Second, Alex Trebek is a stone cold fox and somehow even more handsome and very charismatic in person.

Third, Johnny Gilbert ALWAYS talks like that. It made me giggle.

Well, I did ok.

Here are the things I did right:

• Fabulous hair day
• Managed not to swear either in frustration or embarrassment
• Wagered the correct amount by the time I got to final Jeopardy so that I did go from third to second. Hey, an extra thousand bucks in your pocket isn't much to sneeze at.

Here's where it all went wrong:

• Number one rule of Jeopardy! - unless it's your Daily Double or Final Jeopardy - Don't GUESS! Even if the game has been lousy, even if you're behind. Keeping your mouth shut doesn't actually cost you money.
• If you're up against two contestants with similar knowledge inventories to you, hope your buzzer reflexes are better than mine were.
• I overthought things. For the $2000 answer on European Art I almost rang in to say Rembrandt because I thought "Well, what other Dutch painters do I know?" But then I thought, "But it can't be Rembrandt, that's too easy for $2000." To contradict my earlier advice, I should've rang in with my first guess. And as to the catcher in the title of this post? When I rang in, I thought, "Well I've heard of Fisk, so he probably didn't play for an obscure team. Probably Yankees or Sox. Sox seems right. But wait. Everybody knows the Yankees or the Red Sox, so it can't be that easy for a $2,000 question. I'll go with White Sox." You saw how well that worked out for me.
• The talk to Alex part really rattled my nerves. Before then, I wasn't nervous because I was just focused on playing the game. Then we came back from "commercial break" and we did the Alex banter and suddenly I realized, "Holy S**T! I'm talking to Alex Trebek. Alex Trebek is standing within touching distance of me and I'm having a CONVERSATION with him, like where he says something and then I say something and he says something back." And that's when my hands started shaking.

Other bits and pieces:

Final Jeopardy - Given the amount of money I had, and the correct wagering strategy, it didn't matter whether I got the question right or wrong. (By the way, this post happened right before I went out to tape and was not in the least bit hypothetical from my point of view. It, and the Slate article, really really helped me. If you're a future contestant, you MUST practice wagering strategies before you go out there. If you haven't rehearsed scenarios a million times so that you develop an instinct for the math and what to do, you'll freeze under the lights. I couldn't possibly have studied for the answers I'd see on the boards, but I could practice wagering and I'm glad I did. My friend that went with me out to LA has a PhD in mathematics and helped me by checking my homework on wagering strategies. When she was sitting out in the audience and saw my wager revealed she said in her head, "Exactly.")

As to the Final Jeopardy question - when Alex revealed the right question I was gobsmacked. All my life, I'd heard the phrase as "Hold down the fort." So when I was casting about for a military-related three word phrase that could have the meaning they gave, "hold the fort" never occurred to me. I Googled it later and "Hold the fort" gets many many more hits than "hold down the fort" so I'm clearly in the minority. But now I'm wondering if it's a Southern thing. I was in a meeting this morning when a coworker coincidentally said "Hold down the fort." Be interested to hear in the comments what you guys think. Oh, and for the record, I usually have beautiful penmanship - I'm mortified that my question was so illegible that Alex had to ask for clarification when reading it.

Regarding my talk to Alex story, if you're curious I do have a picture of the cartoon in question. Over the years I've taken some liberties with the wording in telling that story, but the gist is there. And here we were at prom. True story: After high school I lost touch with John and because his name is so common, and he has yet to join Classmates or Facebook, I've no idea where he is or what he's up to now. It's no Nicholas Sparks long lost love story, but we were good friends in high school and I'd love to hear from him. I'm hoping he's out there watching and recognizes himself in the story and finds me.

And if you're wondering what we were saying when we were clustered downstage around Alex during the end credits? We were commiserating about how much we sucked on both boards and arguing with Alex about which category it was that we completely botched.