October 13, 2022 · 0 Comments
By Brian Lockhart
“For me, it wasn’t really nerves – it was more of a feeling of ‘oh my gosh, this is actually happening,” said Tottenham resident, Francis Gomes, of when he found himself on stage as a contestant for the popular game show Jeopardy.
Fans of the show know what an accomplishment it is just to be selected to compete. Contestants are chosen from thousands of people who try out for the show each year.
A long-time trivia buff, Francis has always enjoyed quiz type games and competed in several while in school, including Reach for the Top, in high school. He even competed in the Tottenham Trivia TakeDown that happens during Tottenham Community Week.
Francis said no one was more surprised than him when he got the call that he was going to be on the show. The audition started with an online application followed by a zoom-call when he made the first cut.
“It was a real shock,” he said. “Especially since it happened so fast. There were three steps involved in the process. The first one was back in March. They have what they call the ‘anytime test’ – you do about 50 questions in 15 minutes. If you do well enough on that, they send you an e-mail asking you to repeat the exercise except it’s over Zoom. The third step is kind of an audition, still over Zoom, where you kind of play a fake game, along with a mock interview, like they do on the show. Then you’re put in the contestant pool for a period of around 18 months.”
It was only a couple of weeks after he did the Zoom audition that he got the call. He said he was shocked when they asked him to be on the show.
He did the actual taping of his episode of the show in early August. His episode did not air until Oct. 5, 2022.
Jeopardy typically tapes several shows in a single day and banks them for later broadcast. Contestants are also not supposed to talk about an episode before it airs. That way, when a person is on a winning streak, the show doesn’t want it leaked out ahead of time how long they lasted as a champion.
After arriving in Los Angeles where the show is filmed, he was given his day to arrive at the studio in Culver City.
Francis, said he waited in a room backstage with other contestants.
“You really only know which episode you’re on, just before you go. I thought, ‘this is really happening for me, I’m on the stage I’ve dreamed of being on. I’ve watched Jeopardy on TV for as long as I can remember.’ It was a little overwhelming really.”
Francis said that once the game started, he was focused on the task at hand.
He did very well in the game, answering ten of eleven questions correctly, or in Jeopardy terms, providing the questions to 11 answers, correctly. His final tally was $5,800.
In Final Jeopardy, he bet all but $1. The final question was “The 1948 edition of this publication said, ‘there will be a day… in the near future when this guide will not have to be published.’”
The answer was, “What is the Green Book.” Francis failed to get the final question, but left the show with dignity intact after a terrific showing.
Francis admitted he was a little ‘star struck’ when meeting the host of the show, Ken Jennings. Jennings holds the record for the most wins in Jeopardy and is the greatest all-time champion.