What Is Jeopardy!'?

"How can I help?"

"Tell me the name of the royal house to which James I of England belonged."

"What is the House of Stuart?"

"Damn it, I knew you'd know."

GAME OBSESSIVES FOR $1,000: O.K., I'll come right out and admit it. I have a Jeopardy! problem. I find the show painful to watch. It reminds me too much of my formal education.

My teachers presumed I should be filled with facts, much like a well-stuffed cabbage ready to be consumed by the cold, cruel world of experience that lay beyond my educational life. My system of note-taking was a testament to this cabbage stuffing. It was roughly based on the cuneiform writing of the ancient Sumerians. The notes were congeries of eel-like figures surrounded by mounds of interlocking ovals. I could always gauge my interest in a class by the intricacy of my drawings. If the cabbage stuffer was engaging, the accompanying artwork was generally sketchy. But if she was boring, the pages of my notebook would be filled with minutely detailed vistas. It took the Sumerians generations to develop their style. Mine took just 12 years of schooling. When I felt I couldn't decipher them, I called a Sumerian.

So it was with some apprehension that I agreed to try out for Jeopardy! last December. A line of 50 would-be contestants stretched up Sunset Boulevard. Some were riffling through a world almanac, others the Guinness Book of Essential Facts. Slung over one sailor's shoulder was a five-volume set on the British monarchs. I thought I recognized him from my 11th-grade chemistry class. He was the geek who used to raise his hand to say, "Weren't we supposed to have a quiz today?"

I sidled up beside a tall, droopy-looking guy whose sepulchral appearance reminded me of Floyd the Barber on the old Andy Griffith Show. He had a sparse mustache bristling across his upper lip, a Bob Dylan songbook under his arm and a T-shirt that said KLAATU BARADA NIKTO. "The phrase is from The Day the Earth Stood Still," he kindly explained. "It stopped the robot Gort from destroying our planet."

He asked if he could zap me with his best stuff. "Sure," I said. He reminded me to frame my answers in the form of questions.

"Geronimo's name meant this in Apache."