Brett Kirwan Wins Big on Jeopardy!
Brett Kirwan, a Navy Lieutenant stationed in Lemoore, California, recently took home $36,600 in winnings from the TV quiz show Jeopardy!. Brett studied Politics and East Asian Studies at Washington & Lee University. His diverse interests paid off when he won two shows and led the third show going into the Final Jeopardy round.
Though Kirwan has always been a Jeopardy! fan, he didn’t start watching regularly until fall of 2006. “That’s when I got a DVR,” Brett said. “Who’s at home watching TV at 7:30 anyway? After I took the contestant exam, I made a concerted effort to watch every episode just in case I got ‘The Call.’”
Getting on Jeopardy! required smarts as well as a little luck. “I started by taking the online contestant exam in January 2007,” shared Brett, “which I’ve read that about 200,000 people took. In October, I unexpectedly received an e-mail inviting me to audition for the show and again, I was lucky enough to get ‘The Call’ inviting me to appear on the show. There are only 400 spots a year for new contestants, but they audition thousands. The producers said they were looking for an interesting, diverse pool of contestants, so the fact that I was a 25-year-old Naval Officer from Cleveland must have helped.”
Brett remained poised and confident in his Navy uniform throughout the shows. But was there anything Brett was embarrassed to know? “A lot of people have given me a hard time for knowing the answers in the Fashion category. But being in the Navy, I’m also embarrassed to have missed the question about the USS Constitution. That, and the last Final Jeopardy question I missed.”