Perryville native to compete on 'Jeopardy!' on Tuesday

When Londyn Lorenz was 4 years old, her father would tune the television to a familiar game show, if just to keep her occupied so she wouldn’t ask him incessant questions.

That game show was “Jeopardy!”, now in its 36th season, and the College Championship tournament is underway.

And today, Perryville, Missouri, native Lorenz will compete as a semifinalist.

“I didn’t know what to expect, going in,” Lorenz said. “It was a bucket-list item, so I was glad to check that off.”

Lorenz is a sophomore at the University of Mississippi in Oxford — Ole Miss — majoring in Arabic and international studies. She plans to attend law school after graduation.

Perryville, Missouri, native Londyn Lorenz, bottom left, appeared as a contestant in the "Jeopardy!" College Champions tournament. Her semifinalist appearance will air Tuesday.Photo courtesy of Jeopardy Productions Inc.

Lorenz, a Saxony Lutheran High School graduate, took the Teen Tournament test when she was in eighth grade, but didn’t qualify.

“But, you make more money in the college tournament, so I’m OK with it,” she quipped.

Since she’d taken the test previously, her father was still getting the email reminders about upcoming tests. He forwarded one to her last fall, she said, and she and a student she was tutoring in calculus both signed up to take it — and it turned out to be a heated test. Five minutes to answer 50 questions. She said 18,000 people took it online, and 30 were selected for in-person interviews.

“It was kind of based on how many questions you’d get right, but also kind of random,” Lorenz said. “I’m lucky I got it.”

Of the 30 interviewed in person, 15 contestants and one alternate were selected, Lorenz said.

Londyn Lorenz, a Perryville, Missouri, native who studies at the University of Mississippi, appears on "Jeopardy!"Photo courtesy of Jeopardy Productions Inc.

“It was the first Sunday in November [at my interview], and they said they’d call a month before the show taped, so, January 3 or 4,” Lorenz said. “Hopefully, before Christmas.”

But that didn’t happen.

In fact, Lorenz waited for a call. And waited. And waited.

By mid-January, she said, “Dad had decided to tell people I hadn’t made it, and that was OK.”

Lorenz was waiting at the airport for her father to pick her up. She was on a return flight from California, where she’d been visiting her brother, she said.

She was watching videos on her phone when a call came in from Culver City, California.

“I’d been in Anaheim,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d left anything. I was confused until I realized, wait, ‘Jeopardy!’ films in Culver City.”

She sat up straight immediately, so she could feel formal for the phone call, she said.

“Obviously, they can tell what I’m doing on the phone,” she joked, and she talked with the person on the other end for what felt like 10 minutes “but was probably only one,” before he told her, yes, she’d been selected to appear on the show.

“I was so excited,” she said.

She went back to California for taping in February, and said she was surprised when she watched the episode air last week.

“It’s just as quick as on TV,” she said. “I guess I was living in slow motion, and now I’m watching it, nervous.”

Some of the questions she answered, she doesn’t even remember, Lorenz said.

The game is played tournament style, with a winner each day and the four top-scoring nonwinners, Lorenz said, and the week was filmed in one day. For that entire day, contestants were sequestered in the green room.

“We couldn’t know how others performed. It could affect our strategy,” Lorenz said. So, when they weren’t on camera, contestants were playing Jumbling Towers (off-brand Jenga) and watching movies to drown out the sound of taping nearby.

Semifinals taping was the second day, she said.

The producers were so nice, she added, and the entire “Jeopardy!” community was welcoming and fun.

And host Alex Trebek?

“Alex is so much nicer in person than on television,” Lorenz said. “He’s like America’s fun uncle. He’s great.”

Lorenz said that during taping, Trebek was waiting on test results amid his battle with pancreatic cancer, but he didn’t let that overshadow the event.

“There is a huge ‘Jeopardy!’ community online,” Lorenz said. Facebook groups, Twitter mentions, Instagram accounts, are all filled with people excited to be part of the “Jeopardy!” experience.

Lorenz said she prepared by studying trivia in as wide-ranging a fashion as she could manage.

“I didn’t know presidents as well as I wanted to, so I practiced with the [cartoon show] ‘Animaniacs’ presidents song,” she said, laughing. “I tweeted about that, and [current champion] Felicity Flesher said she used ‘Animaniacs,’ too!”

Lorenz said Flesher mentioned one of the show’s voice actors in the tweet, and he replied.

“I guess that’s what being an R-list celebrity will do,” she joked.

But that wasn’t her entire strategy. She was also quick.

Lorenz didn’t catch a single Daily Double during the show, which could have helped her boost her score, so instead, she had to be fast.

“I read online that [former champion] James Holzhauer played [video game] ‘Guitar Hero’ to practice reaction time,” Lorenz said. “I’ve played that forever.”

Lorenz, whose father owns and operates Lorenz Shoes in Perryville, said the store has been in the family since 1911.

“There’s a big history with that,” she said. “If there was a shoe category to come up, I’d feel pretty strong with it.”

Lorenz qualified as a semifinalist last week, and she competes next today, on WPSD Local 6, at 3:30 p.m. in the Cape Girardeau area.