January 12, 2004

Longtime fan gets her chance at last on Jeopardy

By Louise Donahue

A recent appearance on the TV game show Jeopardy really added up for mathematics undergraduate adviser Naomi Brokaw.

Not only did she win $1,000, “I just had a lot of fun.”

“I’d been wanting to do it for several years,” Brokaw said, explaining that she set up an audition in southern California in August.

Auditions are done in two parts, with a written test being the first hurdle. “That went very well,” she said, noting that just 14 members out of the 60 in her audition pool advanced to play a mock game.

Brokaw said the mock game is designed to see how contestants will project on TV, adding that one participant did not speak up enough to compete. “You have to be able to look good to the TV audience.”

In September, she was called back to tape a show in October, which aired on Monday, January 5. The entire experience was a treat, Brokaw said, from the helpful Jeopardy staff to the camaraderie of competing against other diehard Jeopardy fans. “Even just being in the green room is great. It felt so good just to be there.”

The 1986 Porter graduate, who began her college career as a math major but got her degree in women’s studies, fielded questions on subjects ranging from trigonometry to movies and mixed drinks.

She hung on through two rounds, but got her final Jeopardy answer wrong. The question was “On April 25, 1792, Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier became the first person in history to have a bad encounter with this.” Brokaw and one other contestant answered “electricity,” while the third contestant correctly answered “the guillotine.”

In addition to her cash prize, Brokaw was also given a keepsake framed photo of herself with host Alex Trebek, a travel mug, a brilliant-colored Jeopardy pen—and one regret: she can’t go on the show again. “You can only be on once unless you keep winning.”

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