Hosted by Mayim Bialik, the @Jeopardy! National College Championship Primetime Event starts Tuesday, Feb 8 on ABC and Stream on Hulu! See who will win as 36 undergrads compete for $250,000! @missmayim #JeopardyCollegeChampionship pic.twitter.com/XReRgTriki
— Sony Pictures Television 📺 (@SPTV) January 10, 2022
Megan Sullivan will appear on the tournament Wednesday evening in a special broadcast at 8 p.m. on ABC. She appears in this promotional video around the 14-second mark.
Q. How did you prepare for the show?
A. I basically dropped all my responsibilities to study. I watched multiple episodes of “Jeopardy!” each day (and practiced my buzzer stance and clear speaking while watching), memorized lists of things like state capitals and presidents, read up on wagering strategy and especially focused on the categories that I felt weak at.
I even practiced trivial things like watching games with all the lights on and wearing formal shoes to mimic the stage experience or saying big bets aloud so that I wouldn’t freeze up on the show if I had to do that.
Q. What are the rules of the buzzer and did you get practice rounds to get your rhythm going?
A. The buzzer is one of the most important and underrated parts of gameplay. You could know every single answer, but not win a dollar if you don’t have buzzer skills. I figured that since I’d been chosen for the show, I and all the other contestants had a decent amount of trivia knowledge, but that none of our buzzer skills were guaranteed, so I should work on those. I bought the “Jeopardy!” community favorite book “Secrets of the Buzzer” for research-based buzzer methods.
My biggest takeaways were to hold the buzzer in a relaxed position at my waist, to buzz with my thumb, to practice visual reaction speed with online tests and to watch the lights that signal to contestants to buzz rather than to buzz by ear.
You can’t buzz in until the host has finished reading the entire clue or else you’ll be locked out for a quarter of a second, so you need to be incredibly precise with your timing. We got practice rounds before taping, but I wish they’d been longer – I was glad to have practiced buzzing so much at home so that it wasn’t novel to me.
Q How did you become a fan of the show? Did you watch it with family growing up? Something else?
A. My first exposure to trivia games was in elementary school. I’d transferred schools quite unwillingly for a magnet program, and one thing that sweetened the transition was a “Jeopardy!”-style game called “It’s Comprehensive,” run by my fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Weiner. Everyone in his class got to play a different role in the game, like tallying the score or presenting comedic commercials, but I got to play as a contestant. I still remember years later how proud I was when I nearly swept a category on state nicknames, and that joy of learning got me to pursue more trivia games.