Kirsten Anderson - Who Is Ken Jennings?

Ken Jennings wrote three words on his digital screen: Who is Jones?

Were those the right words? If that was the correct answer, hed be a Jeopardy! winner, something hed dreamed about all his life. If it wasnt, well... at least he had gotten to be on the game show hed loved since he was ten years old.

It was February 24, 2004. Ken had led for most of the game, but Julia Lazarus, one of the other contestants, was close behind. If he answered wrong and she answered right, he would lose.

Jeopardy! is a quiz show that asks questions about trivia. The twist is that the questions are statements, and the answers must be phrased in the form of a question. This Jeopardy! question was Shes the first female track & field athlete to win medals in five different events at a single Olympics.

Ken hadnt watched any of the last Summer Olympics, in Sydney, Australia, in 2000. But he remembered hearing that Marion Jones, the American track star, had won a lot of events at Sydney. He was almost sure that she must be the correct answer. Just to be careful, he only wrote down her last name. Ken had played in a lot of trivia tournaments in college and knew that the safe thing to do was to write only a persons last name. He wouldnt want to lose because he made a mistake on a first name when he had the correct last name.

It was time to show his answer. The blue screen on his podium lit up with the words he had scrawled, Who is Jones? Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy! at the time, looked over at the table of judges who watch each game and make decisions if theres a question about a contestants answer. Ken suddenly realized what was going onJones is a very, very common last name. His answer looked like it might be just a guess. The judges could decide he hadnt been clear enough. Then, all would be lost because hed played it too safe.

After a pause that seemed to last forever, Trebek announced, Well accept that. Youve got $17,000 more for a $37,201 total, and you become the Jeopardy! champion! Ken had won his first game.

At the end of the next game, Ken won again. And again. And again. Americans tuned in every night, waiting to see if anyone or anything could trip up this master of trivia. Ken won seventy-four straight games in a row! After game seventy-five, he was sure of one thing: the answer to He holds the longest winning streak in Jeopardy! history was Who is Ken Jennings?

Kenneth Wayne Jennings III was born on May 23, 1974, in Edmonds, Washington. His parents are Catherine and Kenneth Jr. For as long as he can remember, Ken liked to learn things and weird facts. His mother recalled bringing him to the University of Washington to be tested for a gifted and talented program. She overheard the testers ask him where the Wright brothers first flight took place. Ken correctly answered, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. He was just four years old!

Ken was fascinated by books of trivia like the Guinness Book of World Records and Ripleys Believe It or Not! He memorized long lists of facts and recited them to anyone who would listen. When it was time for him to start school, he was upset because that meant he would miss the daytime game shows that were another great source of oddball information.

When Ken was seven years old, his father, a lawyer, got a job in Seoul, South Korea. In Seoul, Ken attended a school for American children. The only American television shows available were on the Armed Forces Korea Network (AFKN). In 1984, when Ken was ten, AFKN began to run a quiz show called Jeopardy! on weekday afternoons. Soon it was the talk of Kens school. Kids got together each day to go over the questions theyd seen on the show the day before. Ken dreamed that maybe someday he could be on Jeopardy!

But in middle school and high school, something became clear to Ken: Reeling off lists of facts and trivia made him seem like a know-it-all. He stopped buying trivia books and threw out the notebooks hed filled with questions and answers hed seen on old game shows. By the time he was a freshman in college at the University of Washington, he didnt even watch Jeopardy! regularly anymore.

As a member of the Mormon church, Ken was sent on a two-year mission to do volunteer work in Madrid, Spain. Ken then returned to the United States to finish college at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. At BYU, he discovered a place where his love for trivia and being a know-it-all was actually useful: the college quiz bowl team. The quiz bowl team traveled to tournaments once or twice a month. In between, they prepped themselves by studying topics like lists of French kings or names of opera characters.

A BYU student won the Jeopardy! college tournament in 1994, and Ken got to meet him. The idea of actually being on Jeopardy! had always seemed so out of reach to him back when he was a fifth-grader in South Korea. But now here was someone who had really done it. Could he maybe, possibly, someday do it, too?

Jeopardy! has three rounds: Jeopardy!, Double Jeopardy!, and Final Jeopardy! There are six subject categories in each of the first two rounds. Each category has five clues, or questions. In the Jeopardy! round, clues are worth $200 to $1,000. In Double Jeopardy!, clues are worth $400 to $2,000. One of the twists of the game is that the clues are given in the form of statements, and contestants must give a reply in the form of a questionor it doesnt count.