Way battles through three days against strong competition
If this was a Jeopardy! episode, it might be worded something
like:
Category: Celebrities for $600.
Clue: The champion from Aromas.
Answer: Who is Rich Way?
Way battles through three days against strong competition
If this was a Jeopardy! episode, it might be worded something like:
Category: Celebrities for $600.
Clue: The champion from Aromas.
Answer: Who is Rich Way?
Way, a manager for Diversified Software in Morgan Hill, spent two days this week as the reigning Jeopardy! champion and earned himself a nice little payday of $36,600.
But while the loot could go a long way toward a needed new car, it was the thrill of competition that motivated Way – a Jeopardy! fan since the 49-year-old was a child in Massachusetts.
“I used to watch the Art Fleming and don Pardo version as a kid,” Way said.
Way, who competed on the show on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week (the shows were taped in September), is nonchalant about his back-to-back championships, and talks about the competition like a professional athlete would discuss the play-by-play of a football game, including what amounted to tryouts.
“It’s really quite a process,” he said. “[The show] advertised it was going to hold a contestant search in San Francisco, so I registered on line and they invited me to try out.”
But when he checked the date, Way recalled he was scheduled to be out of town on a business trip. When he informed the show of the conflict, he figured he would never hear back from them. Instead, they invited him to drive up the following day for a tryout.
When he arrived at the audition location, he joined roughly 150 people trying out. That was whittled down quickly when they were handed a 50-question written test and allowed eight seconds to answer each question. A minimum of 35 correct answers were required to move on in the casting. At the end of the test, six contestants were left standing.
The half-dozen survivors were ushered into a mock game, in which the contestants were evaluated to see whether they could “actually talk, and whether they had some kind of personality,” Way said.
“After that they dropped us into a contestant pool and told us that if they needed you in the next year they would call you,” he said.
This past August Way was in a hotel room in Boston when he got the call to come to Los Angeles for a September taping. But Way got off to a bumpy start. While the computer programmer possessed a superb attention to detail, he was going up against an imposing pair of contestants. Bryn Upton is a college professor from Westminster, Maryland, and Elaine Henderson is a children’s encyclopedia editor from New Milford, Conn.
At the beginning of the first commercial break, he was down $200 while Upton and Henderson had accumulated more than $2,000 apiece. One of the questions that tripped Way was more of memory lapse. Under the category of TV show theme songs, the contestants were given a clue of “Those were the days.” All that would come to mind for Way was “Archie Bunker,” but the name of the show, “All in the Family,” eluded him.
But he wouldn’t be down for long. The final Jeopardy! clue was in the category of “19th Century literature,” and the clue was “Man is not truly one, but truly two, I learned to recognize the permanent duality of man.”
Thinking perhaps Darwin? So was Upton, but Way nailed the answer to become the new champion Monday night. “What was “Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde”?
The next night the game came down to Final Jeopardy! question. The clue was he was the only 20th Century president to have served as House Minority Leader. Upton and Henderson guessed Nixon and Johnson, but Way recalled the correct president – Gerald Ford.
The third night Way returned as a two-time champion, and like the previous game, the contest came down to the Final Jeopardy! question: “It’s the only surname ever shared by a U.S. president and a British prime minister.”
OK, in all likelihood it was a highly Anglo name, but that just about covers all U.S. presidents. Way went with Bush. But wait, no, he scratched off Bush. Adams, yeah, that was a reasonable choice. Wrong, but reasonable.
Bill Crowley, a hotel employee from Goderich, Ontario, Canada, scooped the two yanks with the correct answer.
But now Way has a story to tell about his three days on Jeopardy! And the story should probably begin something like:
Category: Surnames
Clue: “It’s the only surname ever shared by a U.S. president and a British prime minister.”
Answer: “How I was undone by Woodrow Wilson.”
