Amy Schneider’s Groundbreaking Jeopardy! Run
As the weather drops to temperatures-way-too-cold-for-me, stress for the upcoming semester starts kicking in, and the pandemic continues to shake the world outside my two thousand square foot apartment, my 7 p.m. rendez-vous with Jeopardy! has become my daily dose of serotonin.
Amy Schneider, an engineering manager from Oakland, California, recently made history by becoming the first-ever woman to win over 1 million dollars on the show. Night after night, her bubbly personality won over the admiration of many– and her smarts, well, outsmarted eighty other contestants. With her debut appearance in the Alex Trebek Studios dating to November 17th, 2021, Schneider started applying to be on the show about a decade ago, telling Vogue that “she’s loved [the game] ever since she was a child”. “I’ve always had things stick in my mind…so Jeopardy! always seemed like something I might be good at,” she added. When filming began, Amy revealed that she “texted about Jeopardy! advice with her ex-wife’s brother, who was a contestant a few years ago and won three games”. Having set her goal to beat that streak and win four games, Schneider went on to surpass her expectations by correctly answering over thirteen hundred clues and winning four-TY games.
In a world that doesn’t make being yourself easy, trivia powerhouse Amy rose to the challenge. Along with her wit, her uncanny facility for the game, and her down-to-earth character, Schneider quickly became the portrait of media representation for women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. With Jeopardy! now being television’s top-rated non-sports program with over 11 million viewers, some have said Amy’s time on the show has helped people they know become more accepting of diversity. In an article on January 27th, Monica Hess, a columnist from The Washington Post who frequently writes about gender and its impact on society, comments on the matter, stating: “To the viewing public of a country that still regularly dehumanizes transgender individuals — via humiliating bathroom bills, harmful stereotypes, disgraceful statistics related to homelessness, poverty, sexual assault — Schneider was relentlessly human”. What I (and so many others) saw and grew to admire was an unstoppable middle-aged woman on the show I watch with my family over dinner, correctly answering clues about the Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and talking about her stuffed animal Penny…and we loved it.
From Schneider’s lighthearted daily fun facts to her incredibly rapid buzzer speed and iconic pearl necklace, this trivia role model says that “the main secret is just being curious and spending my life learning a lot of stuff”. When asked by Vogue if anything had prepared her for this endeavor, Amy noted: “Part of it is luck of the draw of retentive memory, naturally. But, beyond that, it was the environment I was raised in, where [education] was valued and encouraged. My mom was a math professor, and when she was in graduate school, she would often be one of the very few women in the spaces she was in. Our society sends all kinds of messages that this sort of thing isn’t done…you may have emotional intelligence or something like that, but facts and figures [aren’t] for [women]. Because I grew up with my mother, I still had those messages coming at me, but I was inoculated a bit from them”. The Washington Post mentions that Schneider credits her parents, who encouraged her to not just study the facts, but the stories about them: Where does this word come from? What’s the etymology of that phrase? She even recalls “not being allowed to leave the dinner table during the meal unless something came up in the middle of a discussion that she didn’t recognize, and she had to look it up in the dictionary or encyclopedia”.
All in all, it’s clear that Amy Schneider’s time on Jeopardy! was nothing less than groundbreaking. From filming five episodes per day to winning a whopping 1 382 800$, this legend’s 40-game streak came to an end on January 26th when she lost to Rhone Talsma, a librarian from Chicago. Having secured her place in the Tournament of Champions, a yearly tournament that features fifteen players with historic runs, Schneider says she’ll practice writing down her “Final Jeopardy!” answer while watching the show at home.
Having served as an inspiration for many, livened up family evenings, shattered glass ceilings, and carved her name in history, Amy Schneider is now the second-all time winner, placing herself right behind Ken Jennings, the current host who, since day one, has watched her shine firsthand. So, in his words, I conclude by saying: “Being a ‘nerd’ really pays off sometimes”.
