What is 'Games and Fun'?

Ten seconds.

 

Five seconds.

 

Time’s up.

 

Don’t know, do you?

 

Pasha Paterson does.

 

That’s the clue for which the 1997 Collegiate graduate provided the correct question to take a lead, albeit short-lived, on the September 27 airing of the popular game show Jeopardy!

The situation was a Daily Double late in the Double Jeopardy round. The category was “New to the OED” (meaning Oxford English Dictionary). Paterson had $7,600 on his ledger. His wager was $2,500.

 

When host Alex Trebek read the clue, Paterson winced momentarily. He put his hands to his head as if to coax the response from deep within his well of accumulated knowledge. Then, a few seconds before the buzzer, he uttered “What is DEFCON?”

 

The audience applauded. He breathed a sigh of relief. He smiled.

 

“It (the answer) was right on the tip of my tongue for 10 of the 15 seconds that they let you stand there,” Paterson said the day after the show appeared. “Finally, I pulled it out. But of all the strategic decisions, this is the one I’d like to take back. Man, I wish I’d bet it all.”

 

Then he laughed. He laughs often, actually. He was reveling in the joy of the experience, you see. He was having the time of his life. He was living a dream.

 

“I remember the premiere episode (in 1984),” he said. “I was five years old, sitting on the floor in the den, watching on TV with my parents, dazzled by it all. There were a bunch of smart people having fun playing a game. I wanted to be one of those smart people. It’s been a goal since I was a kid. Since then, I’ve been Hoovering up knowledge wherever I could find it.”

 

After graduating from Collegiate (where he got his first taste of the quiz-show dynamic as a Battle of the Brains team member), he earned a double major in English and computer science from University of Richmond.

 

Over the years, he worked a series of technology jobs and for the past three has served as a senior computer science researcher IST Research based in Fredericksburg.

 

Since 2009, he’s been one of 40,000 who annually completed online Jeopardy! tests. Twice, he was among 4,000 selected for an audition. The second time, in 2015, he was among 400 selected to appear on a show this season. His episode was taped this past April in Los Angeles.

 

“I’m the one percent,” he said, again with a hearty laugh.

 

Paterson’s full-time job and family responsibilities – he and Jill, his wife of 10 years, have two children, Eva, 6, and Tommy, 3 – prevented him from doing any full-scale studying for his moment before the camera.

 

“I’ll admit to some cramming on the plane ride over,” he said. “I made some flash cards about things to memorize: state and world capitals, that kind of stuff. Really, you have to prepare by just being a curious person. It’s learning a lot of stuff and retaining it. If trivia is your thing, that would help.”

 

Paterson was pitted against Austin Rogers, a bartender from New York and the previous day’s winner, and Jennie Floyd, a retired management consultant from Tucson.

 

“Austin was actually still on stage when my name was called,” Paterson said. “I’d just watched him have a complete runaway victory. When I heard my name, I thought, Oh, no…really!”

 

Paterson got off to a slow start. He missed his first question and fell $600 in the hole.

 

“I was still kind of struggling with the unreality of it all,” he said. “It surprised me from the beginning when the lights went low and Johnny Gilbert went, ‘This is Jeopardy!’ and started mentioning everybody’s names, and they got to me and the camera’s on me and I’m like, Oh, wow! This is really happening!”

 

Then came the question he’d been waiting most of his life to answer: Trent Reznor was basically a one-man band under this name.

He immediately rung in. He answered "Who is Nine Inch Nails?"

 

“I’d been a huge fan of his work and Nine Inch Nails since I was in high school,” Paterson said. “I was so thrilled to have the chance to ring in on Jeopardy! and say ‘Nine Inch Nails’ not just because I was about to get a question right but because it was that question. Oh, man, that was the best thing ever. To answer a question about the band and get out of the red was cool.”

 

A few moments later, Paterson rung in when a question from the OED category regarding a new word for the possibility of Greece exiting the European Union as Great Britain had done.

 

“What is Grexit?” he said, then added incredulously and with a grin, “Really…?”

 

Paterson’s alacrity with the buzzer and quick recall enabled him to find a rhythm in Double Jeopardy and have a real chance to unseat the champ. As time expired, though, Rogers nailed a Daily Double answer on which he’d wagered $5,700 to drop Paterson into second.

 

The Final Jeopardy question came from the category American Women: “A collection of her writings includes letters to her famous husband and articles like ‘Eulogy on the Flapper.’”

 

Paterson’s response was Eleanor Roosevelt.

 

“Purely a wild guess,” he said. “Famous husband. Someone who was known at least in part for letters and writing. She was well-read and well-spoken.”

 

Rogers, well ahead, was the only contestant to answer Zelda Fitzgerald correctly.

 

The audience applauded. Trebek shook everyone’s hand as the credits rolled, and Paterson had the memory of a lifetime, even if he had to keep the outcome secret until the show aired, which was no small task.

 

“Getting on the stage was a huge deal,” he said. “If I’d won a boatload of money, that would have been obviously great. But it was a game. I was there to play it and have fun with it, and I did.”

           -- Weldon Bradshaw