1 of 2
Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Jake Garrett, a physical education teacher at Cahaba Elementary, at the front of the elementary school gym March 8.
2 of 2
Photo courtesy of Jake Garrett.
“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings, left, and Jake Garrett on the show’s set of in November 2023. Garrett’s episodes aired in March and December 2023.
Jake Garrett’s path to competing on “Jeopardy” twice started with a Google search.
Garrett, an assistant football coach for Hewitt-Trussville High School and the physical education teacher at Cahaba Elementary School, simply Googled, “How do you get on ‘Jeopardy’?”
He found the Anytime Test and took the 15-minute exam immediately. No studying, no special time set aside after feverishly flipping through encyclopedias. He passed.
Garrett first competed on “Jeopardy” on March 20, 2023, finishing $1 behind episode champion Melissa Klapper, a professor from Pennsylvania. Garrett held $12,400 entering “Final Jeopardy,” behind Klapper’s $24,400. Both answered the final question correctly. Garrett wagered all his game earnings, leading him to a $24,800 finish. Klapper wagered $401 and finished with $24,801.
Garrett was again chosen to compete on “Jeopardy” in the “Second Chance” competition, on Dec. 20, 2023. At the end of the “Double Jeopardy” round, Garrett was in third place with $17,900. Juveria Zaheer, a psychiatrist from Canada, led with $32,400 and Sam Claussen, a history professor from California, had $18,000.
Again in “Final Jeopardy,” Garrett wagered all his in-game earnings, finishing with $35,800. Claussen did the same, finishing with $36,000. Zaheer wagered only $4,000, but it was enough to finish with a game-high $36,400. Garrett can’t remember seeing a third-place finisher with that much money.
“After that second game, one of the producers came up to me and was basically just like, ‘That was one of the best games of ‘Jeopardy’ I’ve ever seen,” Garrett said.
Photo courtesy of Jake Garrett.
“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings, left, and Jake Garrett on the show’s set of in November 2023. Garrett’s episodes aired in March and December 2023.
There were a combined four wrong answers in the entire second game. Garrett answered 13 questions right and none wrong. In the March 2023 episode, he answered 21 right and just three wrong.
So, what’s his secret? Well, it’s complicated.
There’s about a month between the time a prospective contestant finds out they will be on the show and the taping date. How do you learn everything you need to know about the cultural heritage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization or every English word that includes the letters “i” and “c” consecutively in 30 days?
“There are some people that say, ‘OK, you need to study your weaknesses,’” Garrett said. “And other people are like, ‘Well, study your strengths.’ And kind of my mindset was more of like, ‘OK, there’s absolutely nothing I can do in a month to learn any of these science categories, or to get anything more than a surface level of Shakespeare, or to dive into Baroque painters, or something like that when I’ve got life going on.”
Garrett proceeded to study the subjects he knew about already, to deepen his knowledge of already-familiar topics. Even then, where do you start? He spent a lot of time on Sporcle, a website dedicated to providing quizzes on a wide range of topics.
He learned to identify every country in the world on a map. He perused previous “Jeopardy” questions on the fan-created J-Archive, a treasure trove of historical show information. Some contestants take job sabbaticals to study. Others form study boards or have their relatives quiz them on the history of opera.
Where was Garrett four days before the taping of his second episode? On the field at Warrior Stadium in Alabaster for the Class 7A playoff game against Thompson.
“I wasn’t doing much preparing for anything other than the past four years,” he said. “So, you know, I think that in some ways that could have put me at a disadvantage because they had stuff they were going over. And then in some ways, that could have put me at an advantage because I wasn’t. I didn’t have paralysis by analysis, like overthink stuff, and whatever. It was just kind of like, ‘All right, well, we’ll see how it goes.’”
Garrett had wanted to go on the show since high school, when Ken Jennings went on his historic “Jeopardy” run. In college, Garrett, a history major, used TiVo to record episodes while he was in class. He tested himself against the questions and stored trivia answers in his mind.
One of the questions Garrett correctly answered in December was the following: “In a 1594 play he tells his brother Marcus Andronicus that a woman’s tears are like ‘honey-dew upon a gather’d lily.’” How did he know the answer?
“I’ve never read ‘Titus Andronicus,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you anything about it. But I’ve heard the name of a play called ‘Titus Andronicus.’”
Another example: In the March 2023 episode, the clue was, “Castells, or human towers, are created by amateur groups at festivals in this Spanish region that includes Barcelona and Tarragona.” Garrett correctly answered, “Catalonia.”
“So, it says there’s something in that question about a region space,” Garrett said. “That includes Barcelona and Tarragona. So, I guess Barcelona told me it was Spain. I’ve never heard of any region of Spain, other than Catalonia. So, let’s take a flyer on Catalonia. You can say it’s a pure guess, you can say it’s an educated guess. I don’t really know. A lot of times the questions will give you enough of a hint.”
History, for Garrett, was always like reading a story, like flipping pages of a novel. It’s what has strengthened his recall since high school.
“It’s still kind of surreal,” Garrett said. “Twice in one year, I was flown out to California to go on this show that I’ve been watching since I was in high school. And then to compete with the chance to win both games, really. It really was just kind of one of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do.”
For Christmas, Garrett received a “Jeopardy” shirt made by a woman who creates season-specific shirts. It has his name, along with the names of other competitors from his season, on the back. He will likely not wear it in public, but it’s a tangible reminder of a twice-in-a-lifetime goal reached.
“It’s weird to me, people want to talk to me about ‘Jeopardy,’” Garrett said. “And I’m just like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I’m kind of shocked that there’s enough people that are interested in it. It’s very flattering. And it’s been really cool to kind of see a hometown kind of be like, ‘Hey, you’re the ‘Jeopardy’ guy.’”
