Jan 28, 2022 4 min read

Watching “Jeopardy” can make you feel smart, as I infrequently do; or watching “Jeopardy” can make you see the gaping holes in your education, as I always did when watching Amy Schneider play.

By now we know she ended her winning streak at 40 games on Wednesday. I caught the last 10 minutes of the show, and even at the start of the second round, I had the feeling the bespectacled librarian might be getting the best of Amy.

Plenty of chatter on social media is suggesting that Amy didn’t so much succumb to a better player, but rather tanked on purpose. Was she tired? Did the producers pressure her to end a run that showed no signs of stopping?

Given the ratings bonanza Amy provided – and the requirement that a popular show avoid fraud – I doubt it was the latter. But tired I would buy. It had to be exhausting to be away from home for weeks on end. Although she made it look easy, doing that show several times a day had to have depleted her energy, even as it bolstered her bank account.

At some point, who wouldn’t want to get back to their job and their life?

As the days went on, I found myself feeling sorry for the players who’d spent years auditioning for the show, only to get the call in the middle of Amy’s run. And each time, I’d look at the competitors and think, you haven’t got a chance.

Amy was humble, but she needn’t have been. Her knowledge was not just horizontal but also vertical. Most days I knew the answers (questions) at the top of each category. But get down near the bottom and it would have taken me two minutes to find the answer – if I found it at all.

Which brings me to the gap in my education. How does a person get to be this many years old and not know anything about Greek mythology? Except for Medusa and few others, I am a blank slate,

Amy Schneider, though. Greek gods, sports, world history, U.S. history, science, politics, art, music, literature, television, military history, pop culture – she knows it all. And has a quick draw on the buzzer, too. During one of the contestant chats, Amy acknowledged that she got a perfect score on her SAT. As someone who scored in the merely respectable low 1,100s despite very good grades in school, I can tell you Amy has a different kind of intelligence – like a farm combine that scoops up and stores facts so they can be retrieved instantly.

And as one who tends to root for the underdog, I was glad someone finally ended the streak. Some days, when Amy pulled far ahead in the first round, I began to think she might never lose and her reign would go on forever, the way the Sunday school nuns would describe eternity. I got anxious just thinking about it.

It’s been reported that Thursday’s show was taped back in early November. If that’s true, Amy walked around keeping a big secret for almost three months. That had to have been stressful, too. Now, maybe she can enjoy the money she made, and the glory.

I left out one category from my list: geography. And that’s the one that finally got her. What country among the 10 most populous is the only one that ends in an “h”? The librarian knew it was Bangladesh. Amy did not. Or at least she didn’t write it down.

And if that was a fatigue lapse – or even on purpose – who could blame her? She had a brilliant run.