Calgarian's 'Jeopardy!' appearance to air Wednesday, halting Canadian contestant drought

The potential payoff from hundreds of hours of buzzer practice and textbook review will be on full display Wednesday night when Calgarian Ujal Thakor's appearance on the hit game show Jeopardy! airs.

Thakor's path to Jeopardy!, which ended a nearly two-year long streak without any Canadian contestants, began with him watching the show at his grandparents' home and culminated in the surreal moment of stepping onto the stage.

"I watched Jeopardy!, like a lot people, from a young age," Thakor told CTV Morning Live Calgary in an interview conducted ahead of the airing of his debut episode. "From the floor of my grandparents' house, through growing up. What I found is at the end of every show, if I was watching with my parents, my dad would turn to me and say 'Why don't you just go on the show if you know so many of the answers?'

"About five years ago, I wrote the online test and heard nothing. Right now, the number's around 300,000 people per year who write the test. The second time I wrote it, about two years ago, I did get an email saying we want you to read the second test, which is on Zoom and it's a test that's about 50 questions, 15 seconds a piece,  where you just have to type in your answer as quickly as possible and, with a passing score on that, a certain subset of those people are invited for a Zoom audition."

The pre-show jitters arrived well before the filming date and made for a stressful holiday season after months of radio silence regarding his status as a potential contestant came to an end.

"I'd say all the nerves just came from preparation, from the initial call, the interviews and auditions that we go through over about 18 months, up until the call I got right before Christmas, which gave me four weeks (of preparation) before the tape date."

Thakor said he altered his tactics and approach to training several times.

"Once I got the call, I bought about 30 textbooks from junior high to university level on all the topics I felt I needed strengthening — geography, U.S. presidents, the industry revolution, Shakespeare, Greek mythology, you name it — all the categories that over time as you watch you realize where your strengths or weaknesses are."

He later embraced a website that archives Jeopardy! answers from more than 8,000 episodes and, after running through hundreds of examples, patterns began to emerge.

"Rather than needing to know really in depth about every single president or every Shakespeare play, you look for keywords and trigger words," explained Thakor. "Any time you see a certain character in a play, you know that that's The Tempest by Shakespeare, or a certain state capital has keywords that trigger it.

"What I did is focus my studying on trying to find those trends and keywords and really just getting those as mental flashcards in my brain."

Thakor says he also spent dozens, if not hundreds, of hours practicing buzzing in, a skill he considers "absolutely make-or-break" when competing against others who also likely know the correct response. He says he managed to bring his buzzer time down to a mere 0.2 seconds.

"But being on the set the day of was actually pretty calm. The contestants were great to hang out with for the day, the crew and the staff were really supportive and I think they treated us well as people who aren't always that familiar with being in front of several million people on an evening."

Jeopardy! legend Ken Jennings, who had 74 consecutive Jeopardy! wins and earned more than US$4.5 million on the show, was, to the relief of the contestant, the host for Thakor's debut episode

"It's been an interesting year as a contestant because with the passing of Alex Trebek and the series of different co-hosts that they tried out afterwards, you definitely develop preferences because the host is integral to the game in terms of how they read the question, how they follow up. Occasionally they may give you that kind of (makes guttural noise of encouragement) response, prompting you to fill in that blank and get those dollars.

"So being able to watch Ken both as he was a contestant years ago, but as he was hosting really helped because I prepared a lot based on his voice. And it was a relief to know that he was the host for the day that we were filming."

How did Thakor fare in his Jeopardy! debut? He wouldn't divulge to CTV Morning Live if his time on the game show was limited to a single episode or if he proved victorious and appeared in additional episodes.