A former Winona Lake and current Kansas City, Mo., resident is appearing on “Jeopardy!” this week.
Bryce Wargin, the son of Robert and Susan Durgin, appeared on “Jeopardy!” Monday and Tuesday but didn’t want to reveal the results of Tuesday’s episode because it had not aired in Kosciusko County yet as of the interview. However, according to thejeopardyfan.com, Wargin won Tuesday’s episode with a two-day total win of $39,200 and moved on to the next day’s competition.
Wargin said he filmed the “Jeopardy!” episodes in February, noting it’s very rare for someone to be on the show. About 400 people appear on the show in a year with about 50 people winning.
Competing on the game show has always been something Wargin wanted to do.
He said he’s been blessed to be able to absorb information well, noting he finds competition fun and he does have a competitive drive.
Wargin went to Warsaw Community Schools from third to ninth grade before transferring to Culver Academies because he had exhausted all available math courses at WCS.
While at Culver, he was on the quiz bowl team. He also won the Kosciusko County spelling bee in 2003.
He then went to the University of Notre Dame and majored in political science and mathematics. He earned a master’s degree from Texas A & M in statistics.
In order to be on the show, Wargin said he had to take a 50-question test online. If someone does well enough on the test, “Jeopardy!” staff call the person and audition them. The person has to take a second test to verify they hadn’t cheated the first time.
After the audition, people are told they may get a call within a two-year span after their audition to be on the show. After those two years pass, and if they don’t get a call, they’re told to try again. Wargin said it had been about two years since he auditioned when he got his call to be on the show and he was excited about it.
He then looked into what he needed to do to prepare for the show. The first piece of advice he was able to find was not to try to learn new things, noting if you were able to get on the show, you’re smart enough to win. Instead, he found advice to practice being on the show by trying to answer questions in the form of a question and practice buzzing in to answer a question.
While on the show, Wargin and his competitors had questions in various topics, such as country music, geography and Constitutional amendments. He said contestants are asked about everything on “Jeopardy!”, so while his knowledge from his degrees did help him, if that’s all he knew, he wasn’t going that far.
Some of the categories came easier for him such as geography, but he has a hard time in other topics, such as country music, actors/actresses, chemistry and British history. He said what’s helped him is he’s been able to acquire a little bit of knowledge about a lot of different things over time.
On Tuesday, he and wife Jennifer did host some watch parties in Kansas City. He didn’t think there would be anyone show up because he’s only lived in Kansas City for a year, but noted about 30 people did show up.
Wargin’s experience on “Jeopardy!” was incredible, allowing him to meet a lot of nice and smart people. The experience has allowed him and his parents to get back in touch with so many people, he stated.