Local Jeopardy champion shares her experience, weighs in on ‘Greatest of All Time’ series

SOUTH BEND, Ind.—Local Jeopardy! champion Jennifer Quail shared her thoughts on the upcoming Jeopardy! Greatest of All Time tournament that will air on ABC starting Tuesday, January 7.

Quail, who is from Dowagiac, recently won eight consecutive games and took home more than $200,000.

“It’s kind of surreal,” Quail said. “I didn’t know in my first game how far ahead I was until we got to final, I looked at the scores and Alex was like ‘it’s a runaway.”

Quail is a wine-tasting consultant, cook, public historian and writer who applied through the game show’s online test.

“It takes fifteen minutes tops and then you wait. This last time I took the test four times,” Quail said.

She was then asked to do an audition in Chicago where she was asked questions similar to how it goes on the actual show.

“Two weeks later, I was on vacation and I had a phone message to call the producers and they said we want you to be out here the first week of October to shoot Jeopardy,” Quail said.

Quail said that it was “very weird” seeing Alex Trebek for the first time after watching the show for so many years.

“When he came out, it was kind of like we all know that Alex has been ill and when I was there in October, he seemed to be doing very well. He knows you’re excited, you’re nervous,” Quail said. “He’s so nice to you. He really seems to want everybody to do really well.”

Quail is hoping that she will be invited back for a future champions tournament.

Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time brings together the three highest money winders in the long-running game show’s history: Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer.

Some contestants have said in the past that knowledge can only take contestants so far and when they get to that point, it becomes about how quickly they can hit the buzzer.

“I’m dying of curiosity. The guys on tonight for the Greatest of All Time are so fast. There’s a series of lights that you can’t see on TV that tell you when you can hit [the buzzer] so you kind of have to get into a rhythm,” Quail said. “I want to see who is the fastest.”

The first two win three of the matches in the series will win $1 million and the two runners up will each receive $250,000.

“You want to have a very broad knowledge base,” Quail said.

The Greatest of All Time tournament will air starting January 7 at 8 p.m. on ABC57.