For William Unterborn '84, graduating from Union paid off in just thirty
seconds.
Unterborn was a recent contestant on
the wildly-popular television show,
“Jeopardy!,” where he faced the following final
answer:
Answer: A tributary of the Hudson River
that is also the name of a hairstyle.
Unterborn's question: … What is the
MOHAWK?
(For anyone who doesn't know, the game
involves coming up with appropriate questions for answers
supplied by the host.)
The answer stumped the other two
contestants — one of whom had been leading the
competition — and Unterborn went on to become a
three-time champion during first few days of January. His
total winnings were $31,899 (he also won a trip to Mexico
for coming in second on the fourth show).
“Being a contestant on 'Jeopardy!'
is something I've always wanted to do,” Unterborn
says. Finally, after years of shouting out the answers at
his television, he decided to try the real thing. The
show's web site was soliciting applicants, and he
applied. Randomly selected from the applicant pool, he
was invited to join 1,000 potential contestants for a
testing session in New York City. All took a written
test, and Unterborn was one of nineteen in his session of
one hundred who “passed” the test and joined
the list of potential contestants.
“I took the test around Memorial
Day but didn't hear from them until the end of October,
when they told me that I'd be on a show taped in
November,” he continues. To prepare, Unterborn
bought a CD Rom version of “Jeopardy!” and
played the game several times a day. An English major at
Union and now the merchandising coordinator for World of
Science, Inc., he says that he reads a lot and is a
“news junkie,” so the game came naturally to
him.
After that first game, when Unterborn
won with his question “What is the Mohawk?”, he
won two more close games. Finishing the double jeopardy
round in second place each time before the final jeopardy
round, Unterborn says that winning was always a surprise.
“In the second game, I knew that I had had fun, and
I was sure that the other guy had the question right. But
then out of the corner of my eye I saw him shaking his
head, and this wave of emotion came over me,” he
explains.
Unterborn plans to use his winnings to
help turn the 150-year old Victorian home he and his
wife, Irene, own in Palmyra, N.Y., into a bed and
breakfast.
So are there any secrets to winning
“Jeopardy!?”
Unterborn says that probably the most
difficult part of playing the game is the timing of the
buzzers. “By the time you reach that level, all of
the contestants know probably ninety percent of the
material. The trick is buzzing in on time,” he says,
explaining that if you hit your buzzer before Alex Trebek
has finished reading the questions, you suffer a one-half
second lockout.
Unterborn says that “the
luster” of being a “Jeopardy!” champion is
beginning to wear off after several days of being
something of a star in his small town. He even admits
that he isn't watching “Jeopardy!” much these
days as he spends his early evenings with his
three-year-old son, Jeremy.