Last night I had the pleasure of chatting with 4-time Jeopardy! champ Buddy Wright. He has won his matches since the last Tournament of Champions, so he is eligible to be in the next one! With more than $89,000 in regular-season winnings, he is second to Terry Linwood as the winningest Texan on Jeopardy!
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| Courtesy Buddy Wright, via Jeopardy! |
Buddy had an early start on the road to Jeopardy! glory: By second grade he was reading at the level of a senior in high school. Buddy tells me he and his mom Margaret played Scrabble together when he was growing up, which probably helped! Buddy thinks he has only beaten her at Scrabble twice in his life! He and his mom also used to watch Jeopardy! together, and they’d keep track of their scores with a calculator. I asked Buddy if his mom ever took the Jeopardy! test. He said, “[S]he didn’t even fly out to watch me film, because she said it would be too nerve-wracking for her….I don’t think she’ll ever try out, though she’s every bit as good at this as I am, if not better.”
Buddy’s father John, who died when Buddy was 16, also contributed to the foundation on which Buddy built his winning ways: He helped Buddy with homework as a boy. At the time of his death, John was nine credit hours away from completing a degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas – Arlington. The university set up a scholarship in John’s honor, which ended due to lack of funding. Buddy says his father was a big influence on him, and adds, “I always remember him studying, working hard at the books. If I win big in the tournament, I’m going to reestablish a scholarship in my dad’s memory, to help people in the EE department who have returned to school after a long absence.”
Today, Buddy’s wife Jill keeps track of his score via the Coryat method so he knows what his weaker subjects are as he is preparing for the possibility of appearing on the Tournament of Champions. Says Buddy, “There’s a quarter of a million dollars at stake – I think I would be remiss if I did not try to prepare in some way.” I asked Buddy if Jill hoped to be on Jeopardy! He said, “My wife is a great inspiration, and a great coach, but she doesn’t have any aspirations to be on Jeopardy!” Buddy’s wife helped him keep track of his score as he was taking the online test before he first appeared on the show. (Incidentally, it was the first/only time he took the test!) She also reads Trivial Pursuit questions to him when they are on road trips together!
I had read that Buddy had felt a sense of relief when he lost his fifth game. This surprised me, but I’ve read that Ken Jennings had similar feelings, and Stephen Weingarten told me he did as well. I asked Buddy about that. He said, “Jeopardy! is the most stressful thing I have ever done. So when I did lose, there absolutely was a sense of relief. If I had lost the first game, I think I would’ve felt differently. 🙂 But I really don’t know how David Madden and Ken Jennings managed to win as many as they did in a row.”
Buddy taped his five episodes in two separate trips to Los Angeles. This added to the stress: “We flew back to DFW, I went to work the next day and had to immediately ask for more time off. Then I had to arrange for someone to watch my son again while we traveled back to LA. Then there’s just the logistics of booking Jill’s flight, unpacking, repacking, doing laundry, all of that stuff. By the time I got back to LA, I was a wreck :)”
Come back tomorrow to find out about Buddy’s quiz bowl past and about his experience volunteering at the National History Bee and Bowl.