I recently had a player who just got The Call reach out for help preparing for the show. I wrote down much of my advice, which was becoming a trend. What then happened was the simplest of brainwaves: “Hey, I bet other people have some advice to give, too!” Boy, did they! And as the responses began to come together in this document, I realized that there was something special in how everyone interacted. In that spirit, I’ve tried to preserve that energy and give the feel of friends at a coffee shop riffing off each other. I hope you enjoy discovering all of this as much as I did.

Congratulations. You just got “the call.”

You’ve just had the first of what is sure to be a sequence of unforgettable events in your life, and, though you don’t know it yet, your entry to an extraordinary club—Jeopardy! contestants. You’re excited, you’ve told a few people who can keep a secret, and now you are looking at this unbelievably long form as they are working to prepare for the possibility you might be doing a lot of interviews soon. There is so much to do! But how can you make the most of it, and most of all, how do you process it? Most of all, how can you make this count?

You hear many contestants talk about the “fugue state” you are in on stage. I call it “Game Show Brain.”

What is Game Show Brain?

Game Show Brain is most closely related to how your mind responds to high-stress situations, as your brain starts discarding inessential inputs and zeroing in on the problem at hand. (Readers of Malcolm Gladwell’s parascientific work “Blink” will recognize the reference.) Your pulse races, rising into the mid-100s. Time seems to both slow and speed up at the same time. You can feel the lights on you, and you must move fast and act fast, showing your best self. All that pressure now comes on you, and you start making mistakes. What’s worse, you know they are mistakes when you are making them. Sometimes a wrong answer pops into your head, and you can’t get it out of the way to find the right one. Why am I such a dork in this interview? Sometimes you draw a blank, and only a blank. And why is that other guy beating me on the buzzer all the time?? It’s all those ways your mind works that don’t usually give you that mental vapor lock that can hurt you. 

Couch Brain is what you want. This is you at home, pen in hand, cat in your lap, watching the show, shouting answer after answer at the TV. You are making intelligent bets; you are navigating clues like Magellan. But you’re also at ease, telling stories like it’s four rounds deep at the bar. You are shaking off misses like they don’t count at all. You are watching triple stumpers drop with the same sort of dismissive shrug as at home. Most of all, you are unbothered. You aren’t necessarily trying to play the best, just your best.

We talk about this a lot because much of this guide is meant to help you bring the Couch Brain to the weird world of a game show set. These tips and stories are intended to provide examples and structures to deal with all the surprises you will have that day. The structures carry the stress, so you don’t have to. When you get on set, you are ready to be the same adorkable trivia machine you are with your cats at home…the best version of you. That’s why this guide exists—all of us who have been there before and looking forward to rooting for you want to help you be at your best.

What To Do Between Now And Before Tape Day

Start practicing!

There is nothing in this world you are your best at the first time you try it. This includes Jeopardy! Start tuning in every night, and spend some quality time with reruns on Pluto TV if you have more time. Here are the key things to practice:

Buzzer Timing

This is the single most leveraged thing you can work on. And one key thing to note is that this is buzzer timing, not buzzer speed. If you can get a USB digital buzzer, get one. If not, get a clicky pen and watch the show and develop the muscle memory of processing a question, making the decision of whether you would ring in or not, and going to town on that clicky pen when the camera cuts from the clue on TV to the players behind the lecterns ringing. Practice it standing up. The more you can do to practice as if you were on stage, the more it helps.

Find an online game to play if you can get a digital buzzer. Get Fritz Holznagel’s epoch-defining work “The Secrets of the Buzzer”.

Whatever you do, don’t let your moment in the practice game behind the lectern be the first time you ever play.

To put some concrete numbers to it, neural processing limits reactions to the lights to about 230ms or so. (In my prep, I tested this on Fritz’s website over several hundred iterations with a variety pack of grips by having his read muted, giving myself only the lights to go on). Going on audio rhythm, I was able to halve that pretty consistently. Since my appearance and playing online games, I’m able to hit a rhythm at about 80ms with an acceptable error rate. The great monsters of the game can get to the 40-60ms range, but that comes with about 20% of their buzzes being early and incurring a 250ms penalty. Our experience suggests that the optimal buzzing strategy against top-flight players is around this zone. However, against “average” or rookie players, you gain more from dialing the aggression back slightly and avoiding penalties. But the critical point is “treat it as a precise rhythm to hit, not a lightning-quick reaction.” Precision, not speed – and this is why you sometimes see people with very unconventional buzzer grips (rowan’s high-lefty, Sam Buttrey’s two-handed attack) succeed: it’s the grip that lets them precisely nail the rhythm, more so than necessarily the fastest way to convert a neural impulse to a button press.

To translate this into something actionable you can do, I offer this example: For rowan’s performance in Second Chance, our strategy was to drill like maniacs on maximum aggression to try and drive that timing down as far as possible, but then have rowan take a step back from that edge and “grip it and rip it” for the games. In other words, we tried as hard as possible to get “maximum performance with moderate errors” down as low as possible so that “relaxed performance” would become lethally effective. The results spoke for themselves. To distill this down to simple advice, “practice the rhythm approach as much as you can, get good, but when you get on set, you are better off loose and relaxed than hyper-aggressive.” If you are against someone running red hot or a really good super-champ, you might be forced to press and try to get some super-precise buzzes, but if that’s the case, it will be challenging regardless.

Wagering

As you watch Jeopardy! games on DVR, plan your strategy on wagers for both Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy!. If you master this and the buzzer, you are well on your way to a winning streak. For Final Jeopardy!, The Jeopardy Fan has a great guide.

Daily Doubles are more fluid, and the more practice you can get regarding betting, the better. Generally, the more you can test scenarios and results, the better. Another thing to remember: when you are on set, you will feel the need to issue a prompt answer on your wager. Please don’t fall for it. Take the time you need to make the right bet.

Clue Selection and Daily Doubles

Remember, the value of controlling the Daily Doubles is not just your taking a massive leap in your score; it’s keeping them out of your opponents’ hands. It’s more ideal to lose $5 on a Daily Double in your nightmare category than see an opponent double up on the same question.

I will co-sign on this one. Not doing this was a significant error in my game, and it’s still one of my most glaring weaknesses in the practice games I play today. The marginal value of “getting used to the category first” is so thin in all but the most exotic categories; I wouldn’t bother. The other side is that the later the Daily Double emerges in the game, the more volatility it introduces. If you are playing against some emerging super-champ, you might want the volatility or the chance to build up enough score to take a giant swing. You also give your opponents more opportunities to find them, and “having the daily doubles” is significantly better than “not having them.” The cases where you wouldn’t hunt a Daily Double are so much at the edges it’s not worth remembering them.

If you do this right, you may also get the opportunity to find back-to-back Daily Doubles on consecutive clue calls. If you are so brave as to “Roger Craig” those Daily Doubles and go all-in on both (or as I call it, going ‘Full Schiffler’), you could amass a potentially unsurmountable lead. There is little that can be more defeating to an opponent than to watch their hopes at getting a Sunday punch in on someone disappear or to see their own giant lead evaporate in a cloud of bold wagers. It seems like a small thing, but these momentum shifts can considerably affect the crispness of buzzer timing and really quickly throw a game out of hand.

Conversely, as powerful as this is, you must also practice being on the wrong side of a Schiffler and knowing how to come out of it guns blazing, ready to run over the board and make a comeback. Having that fighting spirit to squeeze the most out of every game, and never letting a turn of events take you off your best performance is a potent edge. Here I cite rowan’s Immortal Game, where they ran out to a dominant lead in the J! Round, missed a big bet on the first Daily Double, and then Schifflered the second.

Rather than receive this second Daily Double with the energy of defeat, rowan instantly shoved all-in with an “I’m getting my damned money back” attitude, doubled through, and then steamrolled into what I maintain is the most extraordinary single-game performance (accounting for quality of competition) in the history of the show. But all of this could have turned the wrong way without the resilience and attitude to forget the events of ten seconds ago and keep swinging—and they delivered a knockout blow.

Start Studying

In the 3-5 weeks between The Call and Tape Day, you aren’t going to radically make yourself a more intelligent person. But there are things you can do that will have a significant impact. Right now, the number one thing to do is get the Anki flashcard app and start drilling some essential things. The Anki app for the desktop is free, as is the AnkiDroid app for Android. AnkiMobile for iPhone is $24.99, but well worth it if you plan to study on mobile and not a desktop. AnkiWeb provides slick syncing features between desktop and mobile for free, making it easy to either study both places or make cards on a computer and then study on your phone with the same decks in one continuous state.

• Learn all the World Capitals, Longest Rivers, and Highest Mountains: these are the meat and potatoes of Geography, a subject that always gets asked.
• Get a deck of Jeopardy! Pavlovs. Pavlovs are specific key phrases that almost always connect to one answer. For example, “Finnish composer” is almost always “Jean Sibelius.” Learn these. And studying a Pavlovs deck is a better use of your time than downloading the vast deck of hundreds of thousands of Jeopardy! clues available on AnkiWeb shared decks and trying to focus on that since the Pavlovs are turns of phrase that come up again and again.
• Attack your weaknesses. Bad in literature? Start studying Shakespeare. Bad at science? It’s back to high school chemistry and physics. You will gain more from moving from “a black hole” to “I can steal a few clues” in your worst category than from moving from “nearly invincible” to “fully invincible.”

Most clues are written for a high school education or lower, so resources aimed at that level are the most useful to you. Coincidentally they are also usually the best at making what they teach memorable. For Presidents, I’m very fond of “Yo Millard Fillmore” by Will Cleveland for the quick, noteworthy study of the sequence. The book also relies on the “hitching post” approach for remembering the numbers of presidents – it only ties a number to every fifth president. So when they ask for the 18th president, the mental process is “15 → Buchanan → Lincoln → Johnson → Grant.” In the game, I can decide to ring in and solve the problem if I see a president and number.

Similarly: I don’t remember every year, but I know that Jefferson was elected in 1800, Fillmore was elected in 1850, etc., and that’s usually enough to efficiently pin a year to a president. Some of this is just an artifact of how my brain works. (rowan’s mental processes are entirely unlike mine, and their rote memorization skills are unparalleled, whereas I have to use relational data, visual images, or a life experience to tie a fact to.) So take this as a suggestion of something that might work for you rather than a mandate. 

I also noticed it got easier after a few weeks of intense studying. The more I exercised my learning “muscles,” the better I got at it, and I could sense a lot of ways my brain started acting more like it did as an adolescent when I was an absolute sponge for this stuff. I was picking things up faster from my study, and honestly, I was enjoying it. It’s one of the reasons I keep doing this stuff today. (also, playing Jeopardy! is fun.)

My other big recommendation is to go on J! Archive and play through old games. One handy tool is the j-play extension for Chrome. This will convert J! Archive games into a board format, cycle through the clues in order, and track your Coryat score. This was an essential tool for monitoring my progress. I also played ten games a day, figuring that’s double what I might have to do on stage (Like Gen. Suvarov said, “A hard drill makes an easy battle”) and getting myself to a point where I could play at least five games in a day while my brain is still daisy-fresh. The effects of fatigue were noticeable by the eighth and ninth games, so the drilling was good. Also, seeing hundreds of clues daily helps you start zeroing in on the writers’ favorite topics to drill on.

Tighten Up Your Social Media

I did not put in the bit about Mike Richards, but I also didn’t delete it.

The fact is that Jeopardy! is seen by millions, and perhaps 0.001% of those viewers are total turds that need to insert themselves into your consciousness. That said, 0.001% of 2 million viewers is still a healthy number of human turds. Everyone has to decide how to deal with it, but if it’s not something you want, best to lock it down ahead of time.

Chill

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The Day Before Your Tape Day

Understand Your Body

What To Pack

For your trip, bring as much of your nightly routine as you can with you. The more you can make the night like any other, the more sleep you will get. (expect to have minutes of rest, not hours). Again, we want Couch Brain here, so the more it can be like an average day, the better. Don’t forget to pack everything you need to bring to the studio.

What To Bring To The Studio

Bring at least 5 outfits, ideally with as many interchangeable parts as possible. Bring some snacks (trail mix, protein bars, whatever you like) and something to drink. Be prepared for the possibility that the show will only give you food or drink during the lunch break. Make sure you are comfortable wearing whatever outfit you wear in the 60-degree weather you will experience inside the studio. Be bold about having a suitcase on set with you—everyone will have them, might as well have your stuff.

COVID Tests

Complete the COVID test form before you fly out; they usually email it a few days in advance. It doesn’t take long, and they can’t administer the COVID test unless you’re registered for it and have gotten a QR code to bring to the test.

The COVID test happens the day before. (It’s a good idea to test yourself before you fly out, though they no longer require you to send them a PCR result before you fly out.) There are two test time slots, at 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. It’s in the parking deck on the Sony lot, and you’ll go in the same entrance you use on tape day. The COVID test is an excellent chance to get a handle on where you’ll go the following day. One of the producers will meet you and tell you where to go. You’ll show your QR code, they’ll stick a swab in your nose, and you’ll be ready to go.

Last Things To Do

One piece of advice I give all the players I’ve worked with is, “Save your brain for buckets.” This phrase was born from an interview where basketball player Malik Monk explained that he had no tattoos on his right arm because “that arm was for buckets,” but it is based on ego depletion and mental fatigue. As President, Barack Obama liked to explain how he routinized every part of his day that wasn’t “making Presidential decisions.” His closet only had gray and blue suits, neutral shirts, and ties, so he only needed to grab a hanger. He never expended a calorie thinking about his clothes, his food (his staff liked to call him “Barry Seven Almonds” for his stripped-down eating habits), or his schedule. All of his mental energy went to the job. There are more in-depth principles you might remember if you read Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow,” but now is not the time to read that. The takeaway is that your conscious mind (ego) spends every day in an exhausting battle with your lizard brain to be your best. You can wear out your ability to make your best decisions over a day with a parade of distractions and engagements, and that’s one of the battles you don’t need to fight on stage.

In the same way, on the day of your game(s), you will want to save as much of your brainpower for the game as you can. One part is that I make all my decisions the night before. I pick out my outfit. I pack my day bag. I lay out my breakfast. The next morning I will get up, eat what I planned, put on the chosen clothes, and walk out the door. On the day, I strive for the Zen state of mushin, or “no mind.” Just being. What I’m not doing is thinking about work, social media, if I have enough clothes, what I will eat, where I will go after…all of that I already took care of. I’m just in the game. You might have a very long day ahead of you, and many champs see their streaks end on Friday, the last show at the end of a very exhausting day. So take that time the night before to take care of your future self and save your brain for the “buckets.” As a bonus, having this simple list of rote tasks to do the night before will help you get even a few more minutes of precious sleep.

What To Expect On Tape Day

Hurry Up… and Wait

Your initial call time will be early, so you will wait in the parking deck. When everyone is there, you will move onto the lot into the waiting area (at the time of this writing, this was the Wheel of Fortune studio). From there, you will wait again until the COVID officer briefs you on procedures, and you will wait again until you have more paperwork. And you will be doing virtually all of this and more without the distraction of your phone available. Just be prepared. Bring some flashcards or playing cards. The goal in all of this waiting for you is to manage your energy and be ready to be your best when the time comes; what you don’t want to do is spend the whole day with your adrenaline blasting away and then come out to the stage exhausted.

No Sleep

COVID Tests

One key thing to remember: Your goal is to test negative for COVID. Your goal is not just to feel well or not be affected by it. You need to test negative. In the last few days, before taping, bubble-wrap yourself. Find your most germophobic friend and do what they say. This is one time you aren’t being paranoid!

Contestant Briefing

Now it’s time to really get to know the contestant producers. This is one of several production teams within the Jeopardy! family, but the job of the contestant producers is to get high-performing contestants on the stage. Their job is to get you there looking and playing your best. They have no idea what the questions will be – the writers create the games, which are chosen randomly by the Standards and Practices team. 

(One thing you will learn – rigging game shows is a federal offense, and the one thing that would definitely kill the golden goose that is Jeopardy! stone dead would be a game-fixing scandal. As a result, the way things happen regarding who plays whom in which game is a bit Byzantine, but it’s set up to make it impossible for them to rig it if they want to. It also means they generally have less of a plan than you might expect at any given moment.) 

But on the lot, the contestant producers are your friends. They are the ones that are there to make you shine, and they do it 10+ times a week, every week. They are very good at it, and they’ve seen everything. Don’t be afraid to ask them for whatever you need. You are not interrupting them. That’s their job.

But your first introduction will be The Contestant Briefing. Here the rules of the game, in every painful detail, down to the last comma, are explained to you. For every possible scenario, weird tie, or strange thing that might happen, they have already worked out the scenario and have a rule. And now you have to hear it. All of it. Get comfortable; this will be a while. They have to do it; you need to know it.

Practice Game

Next will be the walkover to the studio and the practice game. They will play through one full game, through which all the contestants are cycled (so everyone gets to play about a fifth of a game), but you get a chance to stand behind a lectern, ask for categories, and press that buzzer. This is a great—but brief—time. Your goal here is to get yourself as comfortable as possible as quickly as possible.

Wait Some More

Now it’s back to the waiting area. Eventually, the contestant coordinators will draw names, and the first batch of contestants are called up for microphone, makeup, and final fashion check. Then they will eventually come to the studio, which will begin the roughly hour-long process of making 22 minutes of television.

Getting On Stage

First Leg

Lights down, and here comes that theme music, and Sarah Whitcomb-Foss introduces you to the audience! (Johnny Gilbert records his voiceover later from home; he’s not in the studio) The host comes out with some patter, comments on the champion, and introduces the categories. It’s time for the first 15 clues. This is your chance to get your feet under you and start playing for real, but it’s also a shorter segment, so you can settle in and get feedback from the contestant producer. It’s easy to blink-and-you’ll miss it, but use these first 15 questions to find your rhythm. Champions will be Daily Double hunting and trying to get most of the value off the board when their experience advantage is at its greatest. Don’t worry about that. Just play the game you’ve played dozens of times. This most significant surprise once you settle in: you know how to do this. This only difference is how frustrating having other people on the buzzers can be. Shake it off, and do what you always do. These first clues will be done before you know it, so get in your groove now.

Pickups

Whew! That went fast. The host looks down at questions, intently listening into their earpiece. What’s happening is that the video producers and judges are going through the clues to make sure that the host’s read was correct and all answers were correctly adjudicated. Sometimes, some of the reads get flubbed, and the host will reread the incorrect clues so those can be edited into the broadcast seamlessly.

Interviews

Just In Case: Judging Decisions

One thing that never makes a broadcast is the effort expended on judging discussions. If you watch a full day of taping, you will probably see 2-3. What happens is that a contestant might give an unexpected answer that exposes an opening in the clue the writers and the host didn’t see. Or maybe someone gives a response that is correct but unexpected—for instance, saying “Rapa Nui” (the native name) instead of “Easter Island” and gets unfairly ruled as incorrect. Or sometimes the host flubs the read and gives away the answer. What can happen at any time is that the judges will stop the game while they deliberate with the producers. 

While this happens, the contestant producer will come out and have all the contestants turn their back to the board and have a casual chitchat for however long the judges need to resolve the situation. (They make you turn your back to the board because they might need to make some edits, which could accidentally expose a clue. Turning away keeps errors from piling up.) Remember, they have to decide the correct ruling, how to fairly resolve the error, and then how to present that on TV and blend it seamlessly into the broadcast. These discussions often take ten or twenty minutes. Afterward, they will explain the ruling to the contestants and how they will resolve it. They get up, cut in a crisp explanation, and it’s back to gameplay.

What I have seen happen in about two-thirds of these is that when the contestants come back from the judging, a player on the march comes back a bit flat, and the momentum abruptly swings the other way. Once again, this is where you must be resilient. If you are winning, keep pouring it on. If you weren’t winning, know that the door is now open to seize control of the game. As ever—wait actively and be ready to come out swinging.

Double Jeopardy!

This is when the game is in its genuinely decisive phase. The money on the board is doubled, and those two pivotal Daily Doubles are lurking. This is where great comebacks are authored or where dominance is asserted. The important thing is that, no matter how the Jeopardy! round went, you have a fresh set of categories, new clues, and lots to play for. Now is the time to get in there.

Final Jeopardy!

Another round of pickups happens, and then the contestant producers pass out paper so you can calculate your bid and tell you to write “what is” or “who is.” You have about 5-10 minutes here, and they will double-check if your handwriting correctly indicates your intention. The biggest thing here is you have all the time you need to get it right. No pressure.

While this is the highest-stakes round, it is also the easiest to play. The scores are mostly decided, and it’s just one question you can solve or not—no buzzers, no speed challenge. Once that think music plays, this is the place you most need your Couch Brain. Think clearly, don’t talk yourself into wrong answers, and don’t get locked in on the first thing you think of. Most of all, smile. Why?

Because you did it. You made it on, and you played your game.

Tiebreaker

Now What?

First thing—they come to take your mic, win or lose. If you win, it’s an interview with Sarah, then a rush to change. If you lose, it’s some paperwork and a tote bag of J! swag.

After Tape Day

The first rule of life in the Hang Time between taping and airing—no spoilers, no hints at spoilers. Keep it under your hat. You will feel some way about it, and that’s something to deal with, but don’t spoil the show.

That said, if you do have some exceptional circumstances, get in touch with the producers. They are there to help. I know of one contestant who got an advanced copy of the show to share with a relative in hospice care. But definitely be open with them. Remember, they have dealt with hundreds of contestants and continue to deal with hundreds more. They’ve seen everything.

I want to co-sign Mattea’s note: Game Show Drop is genuine, like coming off any other adrenaline high. I’ll also say that getting to go home, talk to my wife, and spend a few days to process the crushing disappointment in myself and find a place to have a little emotional distance before the world got to see it and render their verdict was absolutely essential. While I will never feel good about the events of that game, I still think much more fondly than not about my experience. I’ve also had the chance to be there for other contestants who took it much as I did, and I think it was helpful to see that I wasn’t “broken” for my experience, and hopefully beneficial to them as well.

Air Day

Celebrate this day—no matter how you did or how you feel you did. You are about to discover that way more people than you think are much happier for you than you think. It’s like a high school reunion, family reunion, and “This Is Your Life” all rolled into one. If you want it to be, this day can be fun. It can also be a chance to engage with some of the worst people to have opinions. (which can also be fun) But know that no matter what happened on your tape day/s, this can be a Great Day.

After Air Day

Getting Paid

Expect a check 120 days after your airdate, which is standard practice in TV production. Don’t buy that car yet! Some champions who have gone on longer runs have gotten interim checks faster (long runs can be disruptive to everyday life and can get expensive).

Meeting Other Contestants

There is one more thing that no one tells you about: The J! Contestants social club. There is no way around it—doing a game show is a profoundly weird experience that you can’t understand until you’ve done it, and it’s a fantastic basis for a common bond amongst people who generally share the same interests, like intellectual curiosity and learning. Either you will find them, or they will find you. The community of former J! Contestants is broad and warm, and it’s a great club to join. No matter how traumatizing or disappointing the show might have been, the experience of getting to know your fellow travelers in TV production is one of the most incredible enduring benefits of this experience. And we look forward to welcoming you in!

One other note on the J! community. I was ashamed of my performance and didn’t even watch my episode when it aired. (I was on a work call that branched into China and wouldn’t end.) Later, when I did Master Minds, I decided to do a virtual watch party, mainly because many people didn’t get Game Show Network, and it was easier to stream it together, and fifty-four people gathered to watch with me. I would have never thought “five to four” people would want to watch. But this wonderfully supportive community loves to celebrate each other, and finding such a great group to be associated with has been so rewarding.

Taxes

You will have to pay taxes on your winnings (they are not withheld) and likely taxes in California. If you have an accountant, let them know what’s going on and make a plan. If you don’t have a tax person, hold off on that new Ferrari. You’ve waited a lifetime already to get on—so what’s a few more weeks to cash in?

Other Pearls of Wisdom

In Conclusion

You’re strapped in for an experience of a lifetime, and one that will be uniquely yours to cherish. Go make it the best you can. We’re rooting for you, and can’t wait to see how you do!