WORCESTER – He’s not sure at what age his love of trivia kicked into overdrive, but Brendan Sargent says he does remember that growing up, “Jeopardy!” was considered “appointment TV” in his house.
“We would watch it every single night, and at some point – probably around high school or earlier – we started keeping track of how each person in the house was faring in each episode,” says Sargent, who grew up in Worcester near the Holden line, attending Nelson Place for Elementary School, Forest Grove for Middle School and St. John’s in Shrewsbury for High School. “Little by little, over the years, I would start to be able to compete with my parents, and eventually (and I hope they’re okay with me saying this) surpass them.”
Sargent puts his thumb on the buzzer again as a “Champions Wildcard” on “Jeopardy!,” airing Thursday, Oct. 5, at 7:30 p.m. on CBS-Channel 4 (in the Worcester area). Sargent first appeared on the legendary quiz show in March of 2021, earning $9,600 over two appearances. He also battled it out on the Game Show Network’s “Master Minds” in August, 2023, winning two games to earn the “Master Mind” distinction.
Sargent started his quest to land a spot on “Jeopardy!” In 2012, taking online quizzes and even auditioning in person several times. He finally got the call in November of 2020, surprising his parents on their 40th wedding anniversary with the big news.
“I had been quarantining for a week in preparation for seeing them, “ he says, “and when I got the actual call from “Jeopardy!,” I was in the car, driving up my childhood street, with my sister driving. It was like a dream.”
For this Wildcard series, “‘Jeopardy!’ brought back a handful of one-, two-, or three-day champions from Season 37 to have another bite at the apple,” explains Sargent, “with the winner of this tournament advancing to the Tournament of Champions. My first time around I did pretty well – I won my first game and then had the lead going into Final ‘Jeopardy!’ in my second game, but was only able to come up with 1 of the 2 correct answers for Final ‘Jeopardy!,’ so my humble streak ended at one.”
This time, he says he had a better sense of what he needed to study to be better prepared. He saved the flashcards from his first appearance, and created another 200 or so in addition to quiz himself.
“Most of my studying time went toward very study-able things (capitals, lakes and rivers, presidents and their numbers, best picture winning films, etc.),” Sargent says. “I also tried to focus extra on stuff that wasn’t already sort of in my wheelhouse, such as science, classical music, government and politics.”
Plus, add that Sargent has watched hundreds of “Jeopardy!” games, tracking his own progress and success in a Google sheet. He also uses a website called J!Archive that has every game ever played available for viewing.
“That can be really helpful when you run out of free streaming episodes of ‘Jeopardy!,’ of which there are a lot,” says Sargent.
So, do quiz show contestants prepare, say, as athletes do, studying their would-be opponents’ strategies, tendencies and moves? Are there any “game day tricks?”
“There were so many possible opponents to choose from during my season that studying all of them beforehand would have been impossible for me,” he explains, “but I wouldn’t put it past some of my fellow contestants! There were some diehards there. Very intimidating.
“I’m a very competitive person naturally, so I feel like I kind of kick into a different gear when I’m actually competing on the show. I did read a book called ‘Secrets of the Buzzer’ by Fritz Holznagel that came highly recommended from a number of very impressive ‘Jeopardy!’ folks. I had heard about it forever and was sort of like, ‘How helpful can this be?’ But I read it and I learned from it and I really can’t recommend it highly enough.”
Sargent now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, heading west in 2016 to pursue a career in writing or comedy.
“It felt like L.A. was the best place to do that,” he says. “Also, we started to discuss moving out of the Northeast in 2014, and that winter was, like, the worst winter in 100 years or something, so it really tipped the scale. No more shoveling for me.
“Another fun part this time around [to prepare for ‘Jeopardy!’] was that for the last two and a half years (since my first ‘Jeopardy!’ appearance) I have been operating a pub trivia company called Lucky Guess Trivia out here in LA. I’ve written literally about 2,500 trivia questions in a wide variety of categories since that first appearance. So my mind has never really left the triviasphere.”
Contact Charlene Arsenault at carsenault@theworcesterguardian.org
