[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the June 24 episode of Jeopardy!]
It’s during the break in the first round of Jeopardy! that host Ken Jennings has the contestants share something about themselves, and for new player Graham Hicks, a lighting designer from Ottawa, Ontario, in the June 24 episode, it was his history with the game show’s late host, Alex Trebek.
“I had the opportunity a few years ago to light a charity fundraiser for the University of Ottawa, and one of the more famous alumni from University of Ottawa is a man named Alex Trebek. When Alex Trebek walked into the room, it was like you could hear a pin drop. Everybody just [went], ‘Oh, hello. It’s him,’” Hicks recalled.
“That’s a whole other level,” Jennings agreed.
“Just a really charming guy. Really friendly, really charismatic. It was a really great event,” shared Hicks.
Jennings then remembered his own experience with Trebek. “I remember the first time I saw him walk out at the top of my first show, I was like, ‘I can’t believe it. He’s real. That’s Alex Trebek.’ Very exciting,” he shared. Jennings’ first show was June 2, 2004. Watch the intro and Trebek walking out below:
Hicks faced off against returning champion Drew Basile, a graduate student from Birmingham, Michigan with a three-day total of $53,282, and Erin Buker, a stay-at-home mom from San Pedro, California. Buker had a negative score (the second lowest in the show’s history) at the end of Double Jeopardy! and therefore did not continue, leaving Basile and Hicks to face off in the final round. With $26,400, it was a runaway game for Basile at that point. Both players got Final Jeopardy! wrong, however. (In Names in the Heavens, the clue read, “When this body was discovered in 1978, Persephone was suggested as its name,” and the correct answer was “What is Charon?”)
Following the episode, Hicks posted about his experience on the show on the Reddit thread for the game. “Thanks for the kind words, folks. This was an incredible experience for me, and if I had to get beat, I’m glad it was by a giant-slayer with ToC written all over him. He’s frighteningly quick on the buzzer, and clearly well-prepared, and I look forward to seeing how far he can go!” he wrote.
“Huge respect to Erin, that’s a tough situation to be in and a lot of people would have let it knock them down. Instead she dug in and kept swinging like a tough competitor should,” he continued. “Last, a huge thanks to John Barra and the whole studio team, they take incredible care of their contestants in a really stressful situation. I’ve worked in the broadcast world for a long time, and that team is on the top of their game. I’m thoroughly glad I got the opportunity to play a true Daily Double, let alone get one right!”
One fan complimented Hicks’ gameplay but noted, “he erred strategically in not hunting Daily Doubles during his rare opportunities to do so, for example in selecting Presidential Nicknames, a category Drew obviously knew well, instead of taking a stab at other categories in the prime DD values. At the moment Graham only had 9,000, but had he found the DD and doubled it, he might have cut into Drew’s unstoppable tear.”
In response, Hicks admitted, “I’d love to tell you I was running a strategy there… I had to re-learn my buzzer timing during morning rehearsal, and I felt like I was barely keeping up with the choice of next questions when I got them. Watching the game, there are whole categories I don’t even remember seeing, let alone answering correctly! Just goes to show – the ability to step back and see the whole board is one of the things that makes a champion, and Drew definitely has it!”
Jeopardy!, Weekdays, check your local listings