Every night at 7 p.m., thousands of families in the U.S. gather around the TV for a battle of speedy trivia recall, also known as the game show “Jeopardy!” But very few people can say that they’ve had actually had the chance to appear on the show.
Los Gatos High School teacher Anne Martyn was scheduled to appear on “Jeopardy!” on Dec. 2. Making it onto the show was a watershed moment for her, marking her family’s enjoyment of the show. She said she and her husband would come together with their two sons to watch the show every weekday.
Martyn first took the “Jeopardy!” Anytime Test in the ’90s when she was 21 while she was in college and dating her husband. He had taken the test before at a convention and wanted to drive to the “Jeopardy!” studio to take it again, and Martyn accompanied him.
The Anytime Test is the qualifying test for people interested in competing on the game show. Getting at least 35 correct answers out of 50 can get the attention of a showrunner. Martyn said she has taken the test a few times over the years.
In 2018, she received a call from “Jeopardy!” to go to a hotel in San Francisco and take another 50-question written exam with 30 or 40 other people. After that, the potential contestants competed in a mock game where they stood in front of the others and clicked a branded pen to mimic a buzzer. She recalled that she had to answer interview questions and fill out a questionnaire about herself.
While she didn’t make it on to the show that time, Martyn took the Anytime Test again late in 2024, and they called her back again to take an additional test that would be proctored over Zoom. They then held a mock competition on Zoom and followed it up with more interviews.
After that, Martyn said, it was “just quiet, and so you go on with your life because you can’t just sit there like Rosie Perez in ‘White Men Can’t Jump,’ saying, ‘Jeopardy’s going to call any second now!’”
Martyn got the call in the middle of the school day on Sept. 18 from a “Jeopardy!” employee, who asked her some background questions, Martyn didn’t hear anything from the show for another week, then they asked her to come to Culver City for three days at the end of October.
“That’s when I went downstairs to my principal and said, ‘Oh my god, it’s real, it’s really happening,’” Martyn said.
Between getting the call and taping her episode, Martyn had five weeks to prepare. She drilled herself on capital cities of foreign countries, the periodic table of elements, major wars and treaties and minutia regarding presidents and vice presidents and first ladies. She practiced clicking the same branded pen she received in 2018 to get the timing of the buzzer right and even went out to a few trivia nights with the Jeopardy! Bar League in San Jose. But ultimately, it was like preparing for a test without a study guide.
“It’s the craziest thing to walk into a test where you have no idea what the question is going to be on the test and just hope that you know it,” Martyn said.
Martyn’s husband and sons flew down to watch her compete. The show films five episodes a day with a couple of alternates in a contestant has to bow out last minute. Martyn said she saw 15 other competitors of different ages and from various locales as well as the returning champion from the day before. She said she expected the other contestants to be more serious, but found that they were warm, light-hearted and collegiate and cheered for each other during the taping. They ended the experience by sharing email addresses to keep in touch.
“It was like (a) breath of just relief. I’m with my people. I’m with people that are here for the right positive reasons, and it made me think the show does a neat job of finding people that are going to do well on the show,” Martyn said.
Martyn referred to a quote by the widow of “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, who said of her late husband, “Perhaps it’s being consistently authentic, showing up with a good attitude, staying present and curious, earnestly contributing to the well-being of others, and appreciating the simple pleasures in life that make someone both ordinary and extraordinary all at the same time.”
She said she felt that quote applied to the people who work on the show and all of the contestants she had met, and that’s the kind of person she hopes to be as well.
“There’s nothing like it,” Martyn said of her experience on “Jeopardy!” “If there is any heartache for me, it’s the fact that once you’re on the show, I don’t know if you ever do get to go back.”