Oak Ridge Woman to Appear on Jeopardy on Monday Night

“This is Jeopardy.” Fans of the iconic television quiz show have heard those words countless evenings at 7 p.m. Oak Ridge resident Denise O’Connor heard them in the show’s Los Angeles studios when she became a Jeopardy contestant.

“I’ve been a fan of the show since I was a teenager,” said O’Connor, a lawyer. “I still watch with my family all the time, and I do pretty well when I play at home. One day my family said I should try out, so I did.”

O’Connor started by taking an online test in January 2010.

“You have to type in your answer very quickly,” she said of the testing process. “There’s really no time to look answers up online.”

In April 2010, she received an email from the show’s producers, inviting her to come to New York for an in-person interview.

“I did the interview, then they have you play a fake game where you answer about 20 questions,” she said. “I also had to come up with five stories to tell, so they could decide which ones they would use at the break in the first round, if I was chosen.

“They told us we may or may not hear back sometime in the next 18 months.”

O’Connor was out of town for a day in October when the producers called and invited her to come to California to tape the show.

“I had about three weeks notice,” she said. “I had to pay my own way, so my husband Bill and I went. I figured if I placed third I’d be guaranteed $1,000 and if I was in second I’d get $2,000, so that would be enough to cover our trip.”

Once the taping began, O’Connor described the process as somewhat overwhelming, but a lot of fun.

“First they bring you in and tell you the rules, and then they give you some strategies and let you play with the buzzer so you get used to the feel of it,” she explained. “They tape five shows a day, and the order for new contestants is chosen randomly. And they tell you to bring three changes of clothes, in case you’re on for more than one game,” she said. “I brought five. I was optimistic.”

O’Connor was part of the third show taped the day she went. A lunch break comes after that game, but the contestants are kept in a room by themselves.

“I wasn’t allowed to see Bill,” she said. “I would have liked to see him, just for a little moral support.”

O’Connor described the show’s host, Alex Trebek, as being “a little quirky and goofy, but gracious.

“You don’t really see him much,” she said. “He doesn’t visit with the contestants before the taping starts. He just comes out for the taping.”

O’Connor said that participating in the studio is immensely different from playing at home.

“When you watch the show on t.v., each answer fills the whole screen,” she explained. “In the studio, you can see the answer on a screen, but it’s much smaller, and there’s a lot of other stuff going on, camera crews and noise; it got distracting.”

And how did O’Connor fare? As per Jeopardy’s rules, contestants are not allowed to divulge the outcome until the show has aired. Therefore, like us, you’ll have to watch on March 28 at 7 p.m. to see her fate.