Did you know that Jeopardy! star Amy Schneider had difficulty balancing her engineering job
while appearing on the show?
So, was the 40-day champion able to keep her gig?
Keep watching to find out.
In watching Amy Schneider fly through clues and remain calm and cool under pressure on
Jeopardy!, it almost seems as though she was destined to be on the show.
It turns out that in a way, she was, seeing as the champion had dreams of competing on
Jeopardy! since she was a child.
Schneider told NPR:
"I can't ever remember not watching 'Jeopardy!' It was one of the things that was just on
every night, and I would watch with my parents."
The 42-year-old earned a reputation as a Jeopardy! buff before she was even old enough to apply
for the show.
According to NPR, Schneider's 8th-grade classmates voted her most likely to compete on Jeopardy!,
so it seems she was impressing people with her knowledge long before she experienced
game show success.
The record-breaking winner also attributes much of her success to her parents' support.
She opened up about her childhood in a piece she wrote for Defector, writing,
"My parents believed in the value of knowledge as its own reward."
Like most Jeopardy! contestants, Amy Schneider spent hours preparing for the show.
She developed a strategy to help her win big.
In an interview with GLAAD, the winner explained she used a website with a database of Jeopardy!
questions and answers to study.
She mentioned that watching the show also helped.
Schneider's swiftness with the buzzer may be explained by her practice methods as well.
She shared that she held a pen to mimic the Jeopardy! buzzer.
This way, she was able to practice ringing in as fast as possible.
"She's lightning quick on the buzzer."
Although the Jeopardy! victor went through rounds of preparation, it seems that there
were still a few surprises waiting for her when she actually played the game on set.
Schneider told Katie Couric in an interview:
"Actually, in my first game, the strategy I had gone in with of sort of focusing on
it and kind of anticipating the last syllable [...] it just felt like it wasn't working
for the first half of the game or so."
In speaking with Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings, the champion explained how she used her quick
smarts to draft a new game plan.
Schneider explained to Jennings:
"I got good at it when I stopped thinking about it.
Like, my rational mind would always be a little bit early or late.
And when I just go by feel, it's, it's a lot better."
She said this new method worked amazingly well, so Schneider may have cracked the code
to winning Jeopardy!
Amy Schneider has inspired transgender women who hope to one day become Jeopardy! contestants,
and she's been vocal about the positive impact she has had on her community.
Schneider told People,
"To be giving something back without trying, with just doing something I was planning to
do anyway, is really great."
Although Schneider has broken barriers, she has said that she wants to be known for more
than her identity.
The trivia connoisseur took to Twitter to share,
"I didn't want to make too much about being trans, at least in the context of the show.
I am a trans woman, and I'm proud of that fact, but I'm a lot of other things, too!"
Still, she seems to be touched by the support she has received from other transgender Jeopardy!
fans and their families.
Schneider revealed that parents and grandparents have sent her heartwarming messages about
their transgender family members.
Schneider told People:
"I think a lot of the most meaningful, to me, have been actually from parents and grandparents
of trans people, saying that it's made them feel better about the life that their loved
ones are going to have.
That makes me really happy."
Record breaker
Amy Schneider has broken so many Jeopardy! records that the show's website features a
lengthy list of her accomplishments.
By January 24, 2022, she had reached 39 consecutive wins.
This placed her above the previous record holder, Matt Amodio.
In February of 2022, the site updated this list to show Schneider's 40 consecutive wins,
making her the longest-winning female contestant in the show's history.
Schneider's record-breaking Jeopardy! run came to an end when she struggled to respond
to the clue:
"The only nation in the world whose name in English ends in an H, it's also one of the
10 most populous."
Contestant Rhone Talsma was able to correctly respond with "What is Bangladesh?"
and end Schneider's winning streak.
Nonetheless, the Oakland-based contestant seems to be grateful for the experience.
Schneider told NPR:
"It's really been an honor.
To know that I'm one of the most successful people at a game I've loved since I was a
kid and to know that I'm a part of its history now, I just don't know how to process it."
Although the contestant's winning streak came to a halt, she did earn the opportunity for
another victory at the show's Tournament of Champions in the fall of 2022.
Jeopardy! sets itself apart from other game shows with what Schneider described as a "central
gimmick."
As viewers of the show know, contestants answer clues in the form of a question.
"What is steel?"
"That's right."
According to the Jeopardy! website, the program's signature schtick was developed in the 1960s
by producer Merv Griffin and his wife.
They aimed to add a twist to the show to set it apart from the many other trivia programs
on-air at the time.
While it may seem that this is just a quirk to make the show more engaging, Amy Schneider
shared that the "central gimmick" challenges contestants in a way the show's audience might
not expect.
Schneider wrote in her piece for Defector:
"I've come to see that this gimmick, perhaps inadvertently, teaches an underrated skill,
which is simply understanding what you're being asked."
She also explained how this creates an added obstacle.
Schneider wrote:
"The gimmick of the show forces a weird kind of syntax on the clues, so that, oftentimes,
you have to untangle the question before you can even begin to find the answer."
Difficult work balance
Most fans of Amy Schneider know that she was introduced on the show as an engineering manager.
Given her Jeopardy! success has resulted in quite a bit of fame, it seems it would be
difficult for her to maintain that job.
"Everything has changed for you, hasn't it?"
"Yeah, it really has."
After all, Schneider is now a star — she's done numerous interviews and talk show appearances
that likely take up the majority of her time.
How does Schneider balance her job as an engineering manager with her hectic schedule?
Well, she doesn't.
In an interview with The Ringer, the former contestant revealed that she stepped away
from her management role early in the filming of her episodes, admitting,
"I actually after a bit stopped being a manager just because ['Jeopardy!'] was taking up so
much of my time that I couldn't give my team the attention they needed."
Schneider's boss didn't understand why she had to leave town each week.
Schneider told The Ringer:
"It's funny because my boss and the vice president, who are the two people who really knew that
I was missing so much time — neither of them really watches 'Jeopardy!' and had no
real conception of what it meant that I had to keep going down."
The New York Times reported that Schneider had to go to extreme lengths to remain at
her company.
She accepted a demotion and exhausted all of her paid time off.
As of February 2022, the Jeopardy! victor hasn't announced she's departed from her company
entirely.
Amy Schneider made it clear that she doesn't want her identity as a transgender woman to
overshadow her victory, but that doesn't mean she isn't proud of who she is.
The Jeopardy! history maker spoke to Good Morning America about representing the transgender
community.
Schneider said:
"I think that the best part for me has been being on TV as my true self, expressing myself
and representing the entire community of trans people."
In her interview with Katie Couric, Schneider opened up about receiving messages from transgender
fans who were impacted by her success.
She explained she understands the importance of representation for those supporters.
She said her impact on the transgender community and how people view their transgender family
members was something she was very much aware of.
Schneider told Couric:
"I really needed to be putting my best foot forward the whole time because I was representing
a lot of people."
Amy Schneider has not been shy about her love for her girlfriend, Genevieve Davis.
According to the former Jeopardy! contestant's Twitter, the two met in the summer of 2020,
when Schneider's friend invited her boyfriend's sister over to her apartment.
According to Schneider's tweet, the woman turned out to be Genevieve.
She described their first meet-up as similar to love at first sight.
The game show victor also shared that she began dating Davis after divorcing her ex-wife,
with whom she is still on good terms.
Although Schneider has been married in the past, it seems she and Davis may be a better
fit.
Schneider told USA Today that the shiny pearl necklace she wears on the show was a gift
from Davis, who told her:
"Every lady should have a string of pearls."
The necklace kept the couple close while Schneider was off filming Jeopardy!
The former contestant said,
"It was the first significant time I'd spent apart from her since we'd started dating.
And so having that was just a nice, just sort of comforting reminder that [...] she was
at home waiting for me."
So, who is this Genevieve Davis that has Amy Schneider smitten?
She seems to be a relatively private person, but she does have a public Facebook account
where she shared that she is in a relationship with Schneider.
According to The New York Times, the 25-year-old Oakland, California, native works as a nanny.
Many Jeopardy! viewers might not know that Amy Schneider has a bold tattoo on her arm.
That's because it was intentionally covered up due to copyright reasons.
The trivia champion first unveiled her arm tattoo on Twitter.
Her approach was subtle, but followers quickly flooded her replies with questions about the
ink.
She shared that she drew inspiration from her transition, writing,
"My tattoo is indeed of Ozma of Oz . For those who don't know, L. Frank Baum wrote many sequels
to The Wizard of Oz, and in all of them the ruler of Oz was Princess Ozma."
She explained that the character was kidnapped as a baby by a sorceress who enchanted her
to become a boy.
Later, after the spell is lifted, Ozma is revealed to be the beautiful princess she
always was.
In an interview with Newsweek, the Ozma of Oz fan explained why covering the tattoo was
a hassle, telling the outlet:
"And I also generally don't wear long sleeves, but I had a tattoo that had to be covered
up because if it wasn't they'd have to get clearance from the artist and that's sort
of a copyright issue.
So I had to wear long sleeves every day, which was unusual for me."
Amy Schneider was robbed in the midst of her Jeopardy! fame.
She sustained no physical injuries following the incident, but the experience was likely
terrifying nonetheless.
On January 3, 2022, she told her Twitter followers that she was all right, but lost her phone
and credit cards during the attack.
The robber even snagged her ID.
Schneider shared she had to go get all of these items replaced.
This must have been incredibly frustrating, given her already busy schedule.
Schneider later told the New York Times that it was, quote, "slightly unsettling" when
she realized that people who knew her were learning about the robbery via the media.
According to the AP, Jeopardy! lent its support to the record-breaking contestant following
the incident.
The show shared,
"We were deeply saddened to hear about this incident, and we reached out to Amy privately
to offer our help in any capacity."
As fans now know, this traumatic setback did not prevent Schneider from earning $1.4 million
dollars during her 40-game winning streak.
"I just had, you know, a great, a great run on 'Jeopardy!' That's all."
In an interview with Extra, she shared her plans to spend her winnings on some well-deserved
splurges, including a vacation in Ireland and a shopping spree for designer clothing.
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