Answers in the Form of Questions by Claire McNear

Author:Claire McNear
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

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At Trivia Nationals, Holznagel has become something of a celebrity. In 2019, he went so far as to host what he called a “buzzinar”: part breakdown of Secrets of the Buzzer, part Q&A, and part real-time buzzer trial.

Before Holzhauer’s winning streak, Holznagel’s book had been something less than a bestseller. “I published it in 2015 and kind of forgot about it,” he says. “I put it on Amazon and it sold seventy or eighty copies over the next few years.”

But then Jeopardy! James happened—Holznagel calls him “the big dog”—and went around telling journalists that Holznagel’s book had helped him win. Suddenly everyone wanted to know the Secrets of the Buzzer—so much so that Holznagel put out a second edition with a brand-new foreword by the big dog himself.

At the buzzinar, Holznagel enlists a guinea pig—a Jeopardy! and buzzer novice named Carlo—to try a few rounds of ringing in on his homemade buzzer system. Carlo’s speed is so-so: about 313 milliseconds. Holznagel hands him an enormous cup of lukewarm coffee—the better for chugging, though it does not look, based on Carlo’s facial expressions, particularly appetizing—and tells him to drink. Consuming caffeine, says Holznagel, is one of the very best things a contestant can do to speed up their buzzer timing. In his book, he credits it with shaving five one-thousandths of a second off his reaction time, a razor-thin margin as dazzling here as it might be at an Olympic trial.

“Any particular blend, like Sumatran, or…?” someone asks.

A semicircle of Jeopardy! hopefuls surrounds Holznagel and Carlo, and they want specifics. What about freeze-dried coffee? Iced? Does tea work? Holznagel fields the questions as best he can—caffeine, any caffeine, should do the trick, though espresso is actually less effective, and tea should work, though he can’t say for sure—as people across the room furiously take notes. “Can you do crack?” another person asks, and laughs break out; “There actually is a section on amphetamines,” Holznagel replies, sheepishly. (He does not recommend them.)

Holznagel lists attributes that he claims, with the hearty asterisk that he does not have a medical background, slow reaction time down. Most of these, alas, cannot be helped: being under twenty, over fifty, drunk, an introvert, or right-handed. Female, too, makes the list, and Holznagel is apologetic as he says so: The studies he’s gleaned all this from aren’t his, they’re old and not Jeopardy!-specific, and things are slowly getting better—he does not say how—but, well, he can only share what he has read. “You said the buzzer is our friend,” one woman calls out, sounding betrayed. “The buzzer is sexist.”

No less than Maggie Speak sat in on the buzzinar, seemingly bemused by the militancy of her future contestants. “I think people are afraid of the buzzer,” she says. “It’s a common thing we hear: This is not working. They psych themselves out.”

Toward the end, Holznagel’s guinea pig reapproaches the buzzer. This time, giant cup drained, he was down to 197 milliseconds—a spectacular reduction that impresses even Holznagel. The room launches into a round of applause.

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