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"The secret to a successful pub quiz team, I now know, is breadth of specialization"

 When I heard through the grapevine (Facebook) that Hawk & Griffin holds a weekly pub trivia competition, I invited my sister and some friends to join me there to see what it was all about. I had recently auditioned for the TV game show Jeopardy, and thought a pub quiz might be good practice. It turned out to be tons of fun, a boisterous event of good-humored rivalry with a lot more informal teams competing than expected. We also enjoyed the tasty British pub fare, so we became patio regulars on Wednesday nights. 

     I wish I could say that my gameshow-ready knowledge base made me an instant pub trivia czarina. It didn't, but we did tie for prize eligibility a few times, only to perform shamefully poorly in the tiebreaking "dart-off." The secret to a successful pub quiz team, I now know, is breadth of specialization. Alas, our group has nobody knowledgeable about sports!

     In February I was stunned to receive a text message from a Jeopardy producer, asking when would be a convenient time for a phone call. It took a lot of blinking to make sure that text said what I thought it did. Eventually I was able to breathe again! A month later my husband and I were flying to California for my Jeopardy adventure.

      Few things can be more intimidating than meeting the legendary Ken Jennings (kind! modest! skinny!) on the Alex Trebek Stage. It was exciting and terrifying, though everybody was as gracious as could be. I couldn't help noticing that most of the other competitors were less than half my age. There were a dozen of us, including an alternate, there to participate in the five Jeopardy games that would be taped that day. We developed camaraderie as we spent hours together in the Green Room, playing practice games on-camera, and lunching in the Sony studio canteen. 

     For months Jeopardy had been conducting back-to-back tournaments featuring former champions, and we were one of the first groups of "regular contestants" as the show resumed normal operations after a writer's strike. We worried that our less-experienced Jeopardy gameplay would not compare well with that of the super-champions whose photos decorated the Green Room. Everyone's biggest fear was of being eliminated before Final Jeopardy. But Ken Jennings himself made a point of telling us, we had already more than beaten the odds simply by being there. Well over 100,000 people take the Jeopardy online test every year. Only a few hundred get the chance to appear on the show. We knew how lucky we were. From time to time, someone would burst forth with "Hey everyone! Can you believe it, we're really here!"

     I'm not allowed to reveal the outcome of any game or games I was in, so you'll have to watch the show on Tuesday, April 30th to find out. In the DC area, that's 7:30 PM on WJLA, Channel 7.