Q & A: How do 3 Guelph trivia buffs end up on a Jeopardy spin-off show?
There will be a special screening for family and friends next Wednesday at a local theatre in Guelph
There's a new spin off of Jeopardy called Pop Culture Jeopardy! — and a trio of trivia buffs from Guelph have made the cut.
Pop Culture Jeopardy! launched back in December on Prime Video. The newest episode will feature Tom Minard, Eric Sipkens and George Hutchinson who are part of the team The Bullpen from Guelph. It will be streaming on Wednesday, Jan. 29 on Amazon Prime.
The three participants joined CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition with host Craig Norris to talk about how they prepared for the competition.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
CRAIG NORRIS: So how do three guys from Guelph... end up on an on a Jeopardy spin off?
TOM MINARD: I have a friend who knows that I love trivia and Jeopardy. They sent me the posting looking for teams. I quickly grabbed George and Eric and we did an online test, made it through a couple audition steps, including a mock game on Zoom with some interview questions. And I guess they liked us so we made it on.
CRAIG NORRIS: Eric, this is a different than regular Jeopardy because you are answering as a team, right? So how does that work?
ERIC SIPKENS: I guess the same in the sense that we're all just trying to buzz in if we have the answer. But when we practiced learning and building our our knowledge base, we kind of divvied up topics so that we had a wider coverage between the three of us.
CRAIG NORRIS: How do you prep to be on Pop Culture Jeopardy!?
GEORGE HUTCHINSON: You don't really want to have any area that you don't know about. So beforehand, we figured out topics that we know absolutely nothing about, divvied it up, and then every day you're drilling yourself on the most famous things in that topic. You want to have a very wide breadth. You don't need deep knowledge.
CRAIG NORRIS: Did someone read a book about using the Jeopardy buzzer?
TOM MINARD: Yes, there is a former Jeopardy champion who wrote a very short novella about the art of the Jeopardy buzzer, going over all sorts of different techniques. I actually have a colleague and a friend at work who, completely independently of all this, brought up that he had 3D-printed and programmed his own version of the Jeopardy buzzer to practice on. It would pull up old questions and you would be able to lockout, buzz in. So we ended up using that to practice a lot and using some of those techniques from that book.
CRAIG NORRIS: Eric, you were partly chosen because you're a Gen Z-er. What do you think you brought to the team?
ERIC SIPKENS: These guys are both ancient in their mid 30s, so they needed some young blood. Somebody that knows Zoomer memes and stuff like that. So they brought me along.
CRAIG NORRIS: George, Tom, what did you guys specialize in? Besides ancient history, I guess.
GEORGE HUTCHINSON: Well, it's kind of ancient history in the sense that, for me, it was primarily films that came out before 1980. I was trying to really perfect my knowledge of the classic black-and-white movies and stars and stuff like that.
TOM MINARD: I've got more of the modern film knowledge than George. That was some good coverage there. And then TV and music from the last 20-30 years.
CRAIG NORRIS: Is this is shoot in L.A.?
TOM MINARD: Yes.
CRAIG NORRIS: So walk us through that. Take us up to the days leading up to actually getting there and being on the show. What was it like?
TOM MINARD: So we had about a month in advance to prepare for this. And then they flew us down there. I think we had one day before we had to to go on set. So we got there in the morning, kind of toured around L.A. a little bit, went to some different museums, one of which inadvertently helped us answer a question that showed up. Then we showed up on the studio lot in the afternoon on the tape day. And for me at least, it was the most stressed and anxious and nervous I've ever been in my life. And it started as soon as we drove on to the lot. It was almost instantaneous.
CRAIG NORRIS: [Host] Colin Jost seems like a pretty straight ahead nice guy on Saturday Night Live. Is he nice in person?
ERIC SIPKENS: He's funny. I guess he fits like the pop culture mold more than Ken Jennings or Alex [Trebek]. But yeah, I mean, it was exciting to see him and I think he did a really good job hosting and making us feel comfortable.
CRAIG NORRIS: How are you gonna celebrate the episode being on?
GEORGE HUTCHINSON: We actually rented a local theatre in Guelph and we are having family and friends come for a special screening. We're going to play a little trivia game beforehand and then show the episode.
CRAIG NORRIS: Eric, are you going to be continuing to compete in trivia after this?
ERIC SIPKENS: That remains to be seen. I'm more interested now than I used to be, for sure, but we'll see. I applied for regular Jeopardy, they haven't called me back so I don't have my hopes up.
Listen | Guelph trio 'The Bullpen' compete on Jeopardy spin-off:
