By October, the news was out: Seth Wilson had won $267,000 during 13 quiz show episodes on “Jeopardy!” His record earned him fifth place in the “Jeopardy!” Hall of Fame for an impressive number of consecutive wins, securing Wilson a place in the annual Tournament of Champions. Wilson now ranks seventh for contestant earnings.

News of his impressive run on the quiz show even made the Chicago Tribune twice as he continued to advance. He had been a “North Sider” resident while living in Illinois. Like Katie
Pieper, on page 4, Wilson is a UGA doctoral student. His graduate work is in theater and performance.

“My dissertation is on British theater in the 18th century. It did help me compete on ‘Jeopardy!’ Even more specifically, I was helped by the film classes that I taught. I got a couple of film and theater categories and also in British history.” Wilson will graduate in May 2018 with a PhD from UGA’s Department of Theatre and Film Studies.

In a stranger-than-fiction development, he had watched fellow Bulldog Katie Pieper’s “Jeopardy!” performances just before he travelled to compete on the show this past summer. (The two graduate students have not met.)

“They tell you the best way to study is to watch the show as much as possible,” said Wilson in a phone interview. “That had always been a part of my routine and it became a more important part. Her episode aired the week as I left for California.”

Wilson also shared Pieper’s desire to be on “Jeopardy!” from a young age. “I remember when I was really young, four or five, my parents would watch the show every day. I was intrigued by it although I didn’t get a whole lot of questions right. I got my first question right about the Kennedy Space Center, because we had been studying it in school. I liked the feeling of getting a question right, and that set it in motion. If you are interested in quiz shows or trivia, ‘Jeopardy!’ is sort of the brass ring, the ultimate example of that kind of thing.”

For over a week in July, Wilson taped 13 episodes that aired through October of 2016.

“Jeopardy!” fired his youthful curiosity. Now his show winnings will provide a nest egg and a rare vacation trek to Britain. But Wilson is annoyed that he couldn’t answer a pop culture “Jeopardy!” question.

“Oh,” he sighs. “The final ‘Jeopardy!’ category was 21st Century Pop Music—a pretty big wheelhouse. The question was one concerning the Coldplay song, ‘Viva la Vida.’ I couldn’t believe I didn’t know.”

But there was also one Wilson couldn’t believe he did know. It was one from the category “Historic Homes,” he recalls. “I had no idea what that would be about.”

He paraphrases the question: “It was something like, ‘This person lived in the home of his excellency from 1939 to 1945,’ and I was able to figure it out because of the years.” The answer, which popped into his head, was “a gift from the Gods,” Wilson marvels. “Haile Selassie—the king of Ethiopia displaced by Benito Mussolini—was the answer.”

Wilson found his liberal arts background provided a range of exposures and served him well. Plus, he credits devoted observation of the show and the strategies of successful participants.

Back to business now, Wilson is currently teaching freshman English at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and completing his doctoral work. He grew up in Chattanooga, TN and completed his undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt before earning a master’s at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Wilson chose Georgia’s doctoral program given a variety of factors. For one thing, his sister graduated from UGA and had a good experience.

“Georgia’s program was one that had been the most appealing to me because in addition to the scholarly work, there are students who are doing creative work. So, I’ve been able to do technical theater and different stuff which was important to me. My family have been big Georgia football fans for a 100 million years!”

Post his winning run, he returned to UGA in November, 2016 with his entire family for the Georgia game with historic rivals Georgia Tech.

As for decimating rivals on a gameshow, Wilson agrees with Pieper. Manipulating the buzzer is a difficult aspect of being a contestant. “I was talking to another contestant last night while I was doing a webcast for the ‘Jeopardy!’ contestants. The buzzer system is difficult. You can know all kinds of stuff, but if you are not the first to buzz in you don’t get any points.”

How will he reward himself for his amazing winning streak? “I’m not 100 percent sure,” Wilson replies. “A lot of it will go to practical things, alleviating a lot of student debt. The bulk of it will go somewhere safe, because the academic environment is volatile. I had planned to go to England and Europe and do research for my PhD. That trip now, instead of just being research, will be a vacation. Taking a vacation will be the luxury item.”

Katie Pieper, a doctoral student in genetics, is involved with campus organizations such as UGA Women in Science and the Athens Science Cafe. But nothing quite compares with her turn on the game show “Jeopardy!” – when a dream came true.

It doesn’t matter to Katie Pieper that she came in second on a “Jeopardy!” segment that aired this past July. She won, she says, with a genial grin and a shake of her dark brown hair.

What matters, Pieper says, is that she got to check something off her bucket list. A big something. And her parents were with her, sitting in the Culver City, CA studio audience to watch as she was filmed alongside fellow contestants responding to show host Alex Trebek. (Trebek ad libs, she confides, unscripted except for the posed questions. “He is actually smart.”)

Since her youth, Pieper has corralled her parents to watch a game popular among lovers of trivia and information. “I had been watching ‘Jeopardy!’ since I can remember,” she says. That is, until the last five years while a doctoral student, given she doesn’t have access to cable television in Athens.

Fortunately, too, Pieper is about to check another bucket list item off: earning a doctorate in genetics. Fruit flies are the basis of her research.

Pieper is, after all, a scientist, a woman with a mind for facts, and she has enjoyed trivia all her life. Fortunately, she also possesses an excellent memory. “I used to play Brain Quest on road trips,” Pieper says of her younger years. “I was on the Academic quiz bowl team at my school.” Games are a form of relaxation for her.

“Jeopardy!”, however, was the ultimate experience. “I felt it was an experience I had to have,” she confesses, her eyes lighting.

She explains the mechanics of becoming a game show contestant. First, Pieper took the online prequalifying tests in order to become selected as a potential “Jeopardy!” contestant. “It’s something like, oh, 50 questions. If you do well enough, they invite you in for a personal audition.” Pieper did well enough, although she says, “I actually did not prepare at all.”

In the scheme of things, “Jeopardy’s!” premise seemed simple enough to her. She recognized a certain pattern to the questions posed whenever Pieper watched the weekly program. “I knew what it was going to be like…I was, like, “I’ll go see what happens- because the thing with Jeopardy is, the answer is usually the most obvious thing.”

Long after taking the pre-qualifying online “Jeopardy!” exam, Pieper received a call to audition in June 2015. It was, unfortunately, just as she and her family were enjoying a rare vacation on Tybee Island outside Savannah, Ga. But Pieper determinedly hopped in her car and made the Atlanta audition. This was not Pieper’s first experience auditioning for the game show- she had previously attempted to make the cut for the collegiate version and it had not gone as well. “I had previously auditioned for ‘College Jeopardy!’, and did not feel good about it.”

She recalls leaving her Ohio family for the hurried trip and finding plenty of Jeopardy hopefuls upon arrival. “There were probably 40 people auditioning in Atlanta on that Wednesday. After the audition, I felt good.”

She returned to Tybee where her family awaited- and this time, Pieper felt positive about her audition performance as she reviewed the day’s events. She doesn’t recall specific questions from the audition, apart from a question about the 19th Amendment. She describes the experience. “With the audition, they have everyone in a conference room. They have a big screen and project a ‘Jeopardy!’ board. You do another written test and you practice questions. And then, they call people up by threes and you play a ‘Jeopardy!’ game.”

Pieper realized that most importantly they sought contestants with the aplomb to compete. “They want to know that you are good at the game.”

In the interim following the Atlanta audition, Pieper didn’t even watch the game show but burrowed into her graduate research. The months flew by, she explains tongue-in-cheek, pun intended. “The overall goal of my research with flies is to investigate how genetic conflict affects sex chromosome evolution,” she says.

Fruit flies are the basis of her genetics research. After completing her doctorate, Pieper wants to work in professional grant writing and science writing.

‘Specifically, I study a selfi sh X-chromosome found in a North American species called Drosophila neotestacea. The selfish X promotes its own transmission to the next generation by killing the Y-bearing sperm in the testes of male flies that carry it. These males then only have daughters which also carry the selfish X. I look at how this selfish behavior has affected the molecular evolution of the X-chromosome in this species.”

Almost an entire year passed before she heard anything further from the show executives concerning her audition. The call came finally on April 10th last year, as Pieper was working in a windowless lab room on campus. She learned she had made the cut- she was going to become a “Jeopardy!” contestant. “It was a little surreal,” she says. So were the terms- Pieper would have to be in California within two weeks if she was to compete.

”They asked if I could come to Los Angeles April 25-26.” But there was never a question she would accept if selected- it took her less than a second to say yes. Pieper immediately called her family and asked if her parents wanted to come and see her compete. They did.

Given her lack of cable access she had to be resourceful. “I watched all the episodes I could watch on YouTube.” And, Pieper adds, “I actually did study this time.” Her boyfriend would review potential questions with her.

The competitive Pieper actually relished the challenge, says she couldn’t wait for her turn on the stage. “I wasn’t super worried about it; I wasn’t nervous until Sunday night and the taping was on Monday.” She had visited some tourist sites and enjoyed a celebratory dinner on the town with her folks. Then, indigestion struck. She had an uncomfortable night’s rest before her day of taping on April 25th.

Early that Monday morning, Pieper awaited the “Jeopardy!” shuttle at her hotel, which delivered her to the studio, one abutting the “Wheel of Fortune” game show studio. By 8:00 a.m. she was ready for two hours of rehearsals and prepping on the soundstage.

“Walking out there onto the stage for the first time was really cool,” she says. She swiftly forgot her upset stomach.

If Pieper had butterflies, they were now flying in formation.

She felt oddly calm—even excited. Pieper doesn’t know if qualified contestants ever back out due to jangled nerves or stage fright. She soon learned how experienced “Jeopardy!” staffers keep the contestants busy and distracted, as they discussed buzzing-in strategies (contestants must be the first to hit a buzzer before answering a question framed as a question in the specific style that “Jeopardy!” requires) and gave rousing pep talks. Studio wranglers had instructed Pieper on what to wear in advance of the day (they were advised to bring two changes of clothing—business or business casual—in solid colors and no prints) and others readied the 15 awaiting contestants by applying makeup.

“You show up prepared for taping back-to-back shows if you keep winning,” Pieper explains. There was the possibility of five shows being taped that day. The wranglers discussed camera positions, emphasized the vitally important buzzer, and covered all other details with the waiting contestants throughout the morning. “You rehearse; you play a little game of ‘Jeopardy!’ It was really fun—that’s how I would describe it.”

As they were doing this, the audience began arriving and filling the seat. Pieper spied her parents. The sight of their smiling faces gave her an immediate sense of comfort. She was jitters-free and ready to compete.

The crew recorded promotional commercials and announcements, and offered further counseling of the contestants.

“The contestant people come out and give you some advice; it honestly was a blur!” Thereon, Pieper describes how things suddenly moved with greater momentum. Soon, they were filming the first show of the day. She faced off with competitors Pam Platt and Jason George. Platt is a former newspaper editorial editor, and George is a business consultant.

“I ended up being in the first game. I was taken by surprise…it was go, go go! I was nervous…not fearful, but full of adrenalin. My heart was racing.”

As things proceeded Pieper experienced a blur of adrenalin-laced mental focus upon the questions posed. Yet, she found herself not paying close attention to the scores.

“We had had categories; one was ‘facts about roads in America’. Another was ‘stuff from Connecticut’, then another was about spelling things with periodic elements—like, for example, sodium potassium—and the answer would be a combination of the abbreviation of two elements.”

She nearly swept the category of “things that rhyme with red.” Then, Pieper found the category “roads scholar” difficult.

It was also stressful to deal with the buzzer. When Pieper scored a bonus “Daily Double” she was elated. “I wanted to make it to ‘Final Jeopardy’—that’s all I wanted. I wanted to make people proud.”

As she faced the final question, known as “Final Jeopardy!”, the Shakespeare-related clue was: “This comedy whose title aims to please says, ‘I charge you, o men … that between you
and the women the play may please.’”

Each of the contestants answered the question correctly— “What is ‘As You Like It’?”

Pieper had very nearly won, ending in a very respectable second place, in addition to increasing her bank account with two thousand dollars of winnings!

Only afterward, re-watching her “Jeopardy!” performance, did she realize how difficult some of the categories actually were. Seeing herself on screen, and the hype leading up to the competition, seemed especially odd.

On review, it was just good fun. She is no stranger to the fact that most people are too intimidated to ever consider entering a game show competition, especially a televised one. When her segment aired this past summer, she viewed it with friends in Athens, and realized how well she had performed.

Pieper says she was interested in psychology when an undergraduate, and feels she gained self-knowledge thanks to the experience. She says on reflection, “I don’t think that being on ‘Jeopardy!’ is a measure of intelligence. I think there are many measures.” She adds later, “That’s what I think about IQ—that your ability to perform on a test is not a good measure of your intelligence.”

In the months since her bucket list experience, Pieper talks about the value of not just being productive but enjoying life. That is her wisdom, her final answer, she says with a gentle smile. “I was really happy with how I did.”