The Fool-Proof Solution For Becoming a Jeopardy Champion — Good News for Slow Thinkers

A change in format to accommodate diminishing retrieval skills

I am writing a formal letter of protest to the producers of the popular game show, Jeopardy!, for their blatant discrimination practices and biases against people with slow recall skills.

Although it’s well known that word and information retrieval slow considerably with age, I am not necessarily accusing them of age bias because many of their older (age 50+) contestants have lightning-fast recall skills, as evidenced by the 2022 Tournament of Champion contestant, Sam Buttrey, age 61.

Conversely, I have seen younger contestants go down in flames when trying to quickly bring forth an answer from the recesses of their brains.

However, I consider it grossly unfair that in their contestant selection process Jeopardy! producers give exceptional advantage to people who can sift through the library of knowledge in their brains and find an answer within one second.

What about those of us who need an hour or two to sweep through ancient boxes of disorganized files in our brains to find the answers?

Why should we be excluded? I know lots of stuff. Although math, science, geography, opera, and rivers, are not my strong subjects (Actually, they’re not even in my database), give me literature, grammar, Elvis, and vintage TV shows, and I am an encyclopedia of knowledge. I’m just a bit slow at retrieving it.

When answers in my subject areas are revealed in those boxes on the Jeopardy! board, I immediately scream, “I know that!” I can’t spit out the answer in that split second, but I DO know it.

When a quick-thinking contestant gives a correct answer in less than two seconds, I yell at the TV — “Yeah, that! I knew that.”

When I lived with my sister and brother-in-law last year, Jeopardy! came on at 3:30 in the afternoon. My sister(age 67), my brother-in-law (age 68), and I (age 74), would settle in religiously every day to watch and display our brilliance to each other.

During dinner, which was usually at 5:30 pm, one of us would invariably shout, “Marie Curie, Venice, Italy, Timbuktu, or any number of correct answers our brains had just retrieved for a question asked on a show that aired two hours previously.

High fives all around. Yeah, that’s it! That’s the answer.

Why should we be penalized for a few minutes of lag time? Or a couple of hours’ lag time? We knew the answers, didn’t we?

My Solution:

Jeopardy! could exercise a little creativity and come up with a whole new format — an alternate show for slow retrievers. A show in which, after the question is revealed, contestants are given extra time to retrieve the answers from the massive amount of material that has accumulated in their brains through the years.

They would use that time to do something fun, physical, and interactive — like taking turns leading the audience in five minutes of simple stretching exercises. Research shows that a little physical activity aids in recalling information. That’s five more minutes of allowing their brains the chance to sift through the reams of material stored in them.

Following the five minutes of entertaining exercising, the host could then say — “If you know the answer, you may press your buttons NOW.”

Although slower retrieval skills are quite common in older folks, this also applies to anyone of any age who needs time to THINK and comb through information in their brain before they can find answers.

Don’t we of the Slow Retrieval Skill Club deserve to win a million dollars on Jeopardy? It’s not as if we don’t know the answers.

What do you think? Are any of you victims of diminishing retrieval skills? How do you deal with it?

©Joan Gershman 2023

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