Incredible Jeopardy Buzz

I'm a huge Jeopardy fan. I guess I'm not alone, but certainly among the people I associate with at work, I am oddly unique. They couldn't care less. So the fact that a soft-spoken graduate student from the University of California at Berkley has got the Jeopardy world buzzing is quite exciting to me!

Her name is Larissa Kelly. She's won four games, has earned over $140,000 and is now the top-winning woman in the history of the show. People are already referring to her as the next Ken Jennings, who won an incredible 74 contests. Yes, she does have a way to go.

Amazingly, both her sister and husband have appeared on the show. Neither won. Ironically her husband, Jeff Hoppes, competed against Jennings during his amazing run of victories.

I missed the show on Friday, so thank goodness there is a vast network of Jeopardy fanatics on the Internet who blog and report about the show. In fact, there is something called the j-archive where they actually log the answers given by each contestant, chart their money and show what the recommended wager should have been based upon the situation. At first I thought this is really going a bit far...people with way too much time on their hands. But I found myself strangely attracted to it and analyzing a few shows. Scary. But thanks to these kinds of obsessive fans, I was able to immediately learn that Kelly won yet again and will be back on Monday. I'll be watching.

On a side note, these shows were taped back in February. I guess they do a good job of keeping the results a secret until the shows actually air. That only makes sense. Still, there are people out there who know how well Kelly ultimately did on the show. Or for that matter that she is sill winning and still taping new shows. Kind of bugs me. Sort of like when you can't watch the Super Bowl or last game of the Word Series and then tape it. You know the world knows the outcome, but you don't.

Anyway, I hope Larissa Kelly does extremely well and is on the show for a long time. She is so much fun to watch with her slight Boston accent, meek, quite voice - and incredible confidence when it comes to daily doubles and final wagers. Good luck!