Prizes For $40K: Who Is Matthew Amodio?

The nation Wednesday evening watched New Haven’s Matthew Amodio win $40,000 on a taped episode of Jeopardy!. Amodio, who in his day job studies neural networks as a Yale computer science PhD student, watched it, too, with family and friends. He won the competition, and returns to the air Thursday night. Meanwhile, he kept a diary of what his moment of fame felt like Wednesday; his notes follow:

I’ve been watching the show since before I can remember, being a little kid with my parents watching it everyday. It’s been a regular staple of my day for my whole life, and it was a dream come true to get to go on. I took the online test and auditioned at the behest of my parents, actually, because I did not think I was good enough to get on the show, but they were prodding me to do it so I did as a sop to them.

As it turns out, I did get picked to be on the show, so I am immensely grateful for them encouraging me to do it!

I was watching it in the main room of the house I grew up in, which was a nice touch that made it feel like home. I was thinking about the thousands and thousands of times I have watched this show in the same exact seat … but this time I was there on the TV!

The guests my family and I invited over to watch with us had gradually started to arrive by 5:30 p.m., and I greeted them as they came. This was helpful, because I could socialize with everybody and take my mind off the rest of the day for a moment.

At 7 p.m. we tuned the channel to the correct station. No offense to Pat Sajak, but none of us were really watching Wheel of Fortune. Tonight, that was not our main focus :)

At 7:30, I felt very nervous. Surprisingly, I was more nervous during this than I was during the taping of the show, though I have no idea why. I relived the roller coaster of both the highs and the lows, but for me I was really fixating on the ones I missed.

All in all, despite that, I let myself soak up the moment and enjoy it as best as possible, though.

We had about 15 people crowded into a room that comfortably sits eight. While there were cheers every time I got a question right, there were more subdued reactions than I expected for my down moments (when I got things wrong). Everybody was seemingly impressed with the things I knew’ they weren’t focused too much on the ones I didn’t.

One of my friends who is a doctor gave me a hard time for missing a question about the various stages of medical school, saying ​“If you listened to me better you would’ve gotten that one!”

Another ribbed me about missing a pop music question about Ed Sheeran, knowing that pop music is not something I like very much.

Overall, I got a large number of ​“Wow, how did you know that?” reactions that made me very proud.

The final jeopardy category was ​“African Monarchs.” While most people rolled their eyes in dismay, I was very excited, because history is one of my favorite subjects.

The final clue was: ​“Some devotees of this emperor who died in 1975 trace his lineage to King Solomon & the Queen of Sheba.” My response was:“Who is Selassie?” referring to Hailie Selassie.

When I ultimately answered the question correctly, we had to pause the TV to let the cheers die down so we could hear the rest … It was a noisy room at that point!

At 8 p.m., picked up my phone and started the busy work of responding to all of the texts and emails I got during the show. There were many people I haven’t heard from in awhile, and it was great getting this opportunity to reconnect with old friends.

In the end, I won my game, and it felt like a true fairy tale ending. Although it was a close match, and even though I knew the result already, I went through the stress and drama of it as if it were new!