Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! Read Online Free PDF Page B

notice any Kleenex for a quick wipe, so I did the next logical thing.
    I sniffed.
    This, it turned out, was the idiotic mistake I’d been expecting.
    I had now snorted the entire glob up into my nose, deep into my sinuses, and possibly six inches along my spinal column. Since I assume you’ve never passed around a bottle of Jergen’s and a straw at an all-night cosmetology rave, imagine brain-freeze from a too-fast cold milk-shake, spritzed across the linings of your nasal passages.
    Ow.
    A rubbing-alcohol tingle rolled through my skull, obliterating 19th Century Presidents and everyone they held dear. Civil War Generals started to fade, and Europe began losing its capitals. Asia and Africa would soon fall away. My entire earthly awareness was focusing on the spreading twinge of Maybelline Shiny Man #7.
    Ow ow ow ow owwww.
    Past and future collapsed. Continents drifted. Nine civilizations flourished at Troy. In five minutes, I was about to be quizzed on national TV, and the only fact I could recall: My brain is filling with painful goo.
    This was bad. While Jeopardy! has several recurring categories, Alex rarely trots out Things Rammed Up Your Nose.
    So this was the end of my Jeopardy! career.
    Fortunately, after some interval of between three seconds and six weeks, I realized there was a massive box of facial tissue—identifiable by the words “facial tissue,” in fact, near the brand name—directly in front of my face. Always had been. Possibly since the founding of Los Angeles.
    I spent the next few minutes making funhouse faces and honking. Gwoooonngggk! Six passing geese were greeted in dialect. Glorngk, glorrrrngk! A tow truck thought it heard “Hello, sailor.”
    Finally, ahhhhh. And just in time.
    But now I would never figure out whether Buchanan or Pierce came first. And don’t even talk to me about Millard goddam Fillmore.
    Clearly, I was going to lose.
     
     
     
    Few great philosophical insights have come from things crammed into someone’s nose. It’s not clear that many philosophers even looked thoroughly.
    But let’s take a moment and notice that this whole tingly episode wouldn’t have happened if I’d simply managed to notice the giant Kleenex box directly in front of my face when I first sat down. Thus, before the first game even begins, we embark on what I humbly call the Eightfold Path to Enlightened Jeopardy:
     
     
     
1. Obvious things may be worth noticing.
     
     
     
    Most things aren’t nearly as difficult as we make them. This is true of Jeopardy!, which gives you hints in almost every clue, as much as anything I’ve ever been around.
    Before long, we’ll hit a bunch of other simple ideas that seem handy, in pretty much the order I learned them myself. Many are exceedingly obvious; all are much easier said than done.
    Buddhists, of course, follow an Eightfold Path in their own tradition. Enlightened Jeopardy is similar, except instead of a release from suffering and ego, you get lots and lots of money. Sometimes even cars and stuff.
    Granted, these objectives may be mutually exclusive.
    I never said I had every detail worked out.
     
     
     
    Our second step on the Eightfold Path is even more important than the first. In fact, it’s essential to everything that follows, including amassing your own series of Jeopardy! wins.
    To begin, close the book for a while. Seriously. Don’t make trouble. I have my eye on you, remember. In just a few pages, we’ll march into the studio, meet Alex, and start stumbling through an actual Jeopardy! game. But for right now, go away for five full minutes.
    And while the book is closed, see how thoroughly you remember your own private mental image of me bouncing around the Jeopardy! green room with a half-gallon of Cover Girl horked up my blowhole.
    Go ahead. Close the book, enjoy the mental movie, and come back in a few. You’ll have fun at my expense, and eventually it’ll help lead to a better memory.
    Come back when you’ve got a big dopey