Succeeding on Jeopardy! goes beyond innate intellectual capacity. What separates the one-day champs from the esteemed super-champions is an extensive mental exercise that trains the mind to obtain information and recall said information in a matter of seconds after clicking the buzzer. Plenty of insightful testimony has been documented concerning the art of mastering the Jeopardy! buzzer and the recent trend of contestants making big wagers on Daily Doubles, with these factors accounting for the boom of super-champs in a post-James Holzhauer world. As long as you rake in cash and extend your stay on the Alex Trebek stage, there’s no such thing as a poor preparation strategy, but the science of memory recollection, as studied by former winner Dr. Monica Thieu, should not be overlooked.
In 2012, Monica Thieu, PhD, represented the University of North Texas in the Jeopardy! College Championship and went home with $100,000 and a first-place trophy. As a tournament winner, she was invited back on the stage to compete in the 2013 edition of Tournament of Champions, where she couldn’t achieve the same heights, losing in the first round of the gauntlet of players. Thieu, a psychology researcher at Emory University, has remained a frequent member of the Jeopardy! family, appearing in 2019’s All-Star Games and the 2024 Invitational Tournament. With her background and expertise, Thieu had the upper hand regarding her understanding of the psychological condition, but her research shows that her strategies apply to everyone.
Former Contestant Monica Thieu Discovered Memory Recollection is the Key to ‘Jeopardy!’ Success
Thieu discussed her recent studies, which were published in the journal, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, on the podcast, Science Friday. Her studies originated from her various interactions with fellow contestants in 2019, as they all identified that the process of learning facts was more vital than the information obtained itself. Thieu and her research partner, Mariam Ali, instructed an experiment group to study curated museums of information, with each museum containing exhibit pages depicting an item with an accompanying factoid and picture. Thieu and Ali would test the group on their memory, but they would present two different pictures, one being a copy printed on the exhibit page, and the other having slight variations. Their studies showed that trivia experts “remembered a new fact, they were also more likely to remember multiple features about how they learned it,” notably the specific museum from which they learned this information. The experiment also indicated that trivia experts were better at retaining brand-new, novel facts.
In short, the study shows that those who can precisely recall how they obtained information are best suited for a trivia game show like Jeopardy!, and that the memory process is more valuable than the information itself. For example, the ability to instantly recall that the capital of Belarus is Minsk becomes much easier and adhesive to the brain when you remember how you learned that piece of trivial knowledge, whether it was learned from reading a book, listening to a podcast, or consuming any form of education or media. Expanding your memory strength, layering each piece of information with supplemental details, refines one’s capability to answer trivia questions.
How Previous ‘Jeopardy!’ Champions Prepared For Their Matches
Because Jeopardy! is a one-of-a-kind experience, a hopeful contestant must adopt unorthodox methods of practice and preparation. The game is not just a simple measure of knowledge, as the competitive aspect of the show comes into the fold when mastering the buzzer and calculating wagers. James Holzhauer, the self-proclaimed game show villain who changed Jeopardy! forever with his high-roller wages, accrued knowledge by scrolling through the children’s section at libraries to obtain the gist of various subjects. For the record holder for consecutive days won and current host Ken Jennings, he followed a more literal approach to preparing for the show by modeling his living room like a Jeopardy! podium, and using his 18-month-old son’s plastic toy as a makeshift buzzer while his wife kept the score. “It was kind of a Rocky training montage,” Jennings quipped, who also began watching the show “intensely” before filming his episodes. Amy Schneider wrote in an op-ed that logistical matters, such as finding the right comfortable wardrobe, are essential to one’s composure on the stage.
With such a mentally taxing and multi-faced competition as Jeopardy!, it’s the little tricks that put you over the top against the field of challengers. The study, researched by former Jeopardy! champion Monica Thieu, spotlights that learning information in a vacuum pales in comparison to one’s ability to recall the memory of learning specific pieces of trivial knowledge.
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