Tufts student to appear on Jeopardy tonight

Patrick Antle, a chemistry graduate student at Tufts, will appear as a contestant on tonight's episode of the television quiz show Jeopardy.

After taking a preliminary online test of 50 eight-second questions last year, Antle was selected to audition in Boston four weeks later. Over the following four weeks, he studied every trivia book he could find, creating hundreds of flashcards covering decades' worth of cultural, historical, literary and religious information.

During his four-day Boston audition, Patrick competed against forty other trivia fanatics per day for a spot on the show.

"When the test was going on - the 50 questions - you could hear a pin drop in that room," he said. "It was serious."

Following the written test, Patrick completed a mock game with other contestants and a personality interview. Six weeks later, Patrick was selected to fly to Los Angeles to compete on the show on November 30.

Prior to auditioning, Antle played trivia at pub nights. His high school friend recommended he audition for the show, and after some consideration he decided the audition would at least provide for a funny story, if not an opportunity to learn from the experience and try again later.

When asked about his decision to apply last summer, Patrick admitted that he is "kind of good at trivia."

In seventh grade, he won his school's geography bee and was interviewed for the local paper.

"I ended up just talking about Jeopardy, and half the article was about Jeopardy," he said. "It made it sound like I was some obsessed Jeopardy fan. The reporter predicted I would end up on the show."

Antle described his training experience like that of a Rocky training montage. Every day after work he would study until one or two in the morning, and then wake up at 6 a.m. the next day to return to the lab. He estimates he created three or four thousand flashcards in preparation - "enough to kill a tree," he said.

Using the Jeopardy archive and online forums, he searched for the key words and phrases frequently given in each clue. He explained that, while there is an entire subculture dedicated to analyzing the game, it ultimately comes down to knowing the information within a fraction of a second.

"If I see it, it just sticks," he said. "You just have to have the sharpest memory of anyone you know."