Emma Boettcher, author of a 70-page master's paper on Jeopardy!, seemed best prepared to take down James Holzhauer

The New York Times

The 27-year-old Boettcher had never heard of Holzhauer when she competed against him on March 12 -- his 32-game winning streak began airing on April 4. “It was weird to be a daily watcher of Jeopardy! and somehow there’s this phenomenon that I’d never heard of,” she tells The New York Times. Boettcher, who first tried out for Jeopardy! in high school, had been preparing for her time behind the buzzer for years. While at graduate school at the University of North Carolina, she wrote her 70-page final paper on Jeopardy!, titled: "Predicting the Difficulty of Trivia Questions Using Text Features." "In her 70-page final paper, Boettcher explored whether certain characteristics of a Jeopardy! clue could predict its difficulty level," reports Julia Jacobs. "She said she wanted to determine if a computer could predict whether a clue was easy or difficult based on the words it was using or the length of the clue. In essence, she was asking if there was a material difference between a $200 clue and a $1,000 clue. Boettcher included nearly 22,000 different Jeopardy! clues in the analysis. She concluded, among other things, that the number of component phrases in a clue could help a computer predict its difficulty level. She said the paper helped her understand what makes people perceive language as easy to read, a concept that applies to her current job, where she tries to ensure that the library’s website and catalog are user-friendly for university students and faculty." In a separate interview with Vulture, Boettcher says: "When I got the call to be on the show, I really wanted to hold my own. I wanted to be able to say I got onstage and I was able to put this lifelong love of trivia to good use. It didn’t necessarily mean I would win — there’s skill and luck involved in every game...For strategies, I’ve been watching the show for a while, and there have been some competitive champions over the years. They go hunting for Daily Doubles or they bet big in categories they’re really comfortable in. I wouldn’t say I executed this perfectly, but the Daily Double hunting was something I thought of before taping the show. When I watch the show, I often make a little grid of the board on a piece of paper and mark off what clues I got right and wrong. So when I got the call, I had all of this data in front of me, so I could be like, When it turns out the Daily Double is in this row, I have such-and-such chance of getting it correct, as opposed to this row. I was pretty well informed of my own abilities and knew where I could be confident and where I could be cautious. I also simulated the experience of playing on the show as close as I could from home. I put my television in one corner and stood as far away from it as possible. Sometimes I used a pen as a makeshift buzzer, and sometimes I used a toilet-paper holder. It’s not a close representation, but it’s the best I could do in anticipation."