SwanShadow Thinks Out Loud

Over at the Jeopardy! message boards, the 2009 Summer Hiatus Challenge begins today.

The SHC is an annual online trivia tournament designed to keep hardcore Jeopardy! fanatics occupied during the six midsummer weeks when the show is in reruns. Compiled by board regular “DadOfTwins,” the SHC always offers excellent mental exercise, with two full Jeopardy!-style categories of five answers each, posted daily Monday through Friday. It also invariably engenders impassioned, often humorous discussion and debate about the questions themselves.

The SHC is especially cool for me because it presents a rare opportunity to cross swords with other former Jeopardy! champions. In last year’s SHC, your Uncle Swan finished in a surprising fifth place, while two legends of the game — Steve Chernicoff (board ID “OldSchoolChamp”) and Eugene Finerman (board ID “EugeneF”) — were second and fourth, respectively.

I’ve come to know both of these stalwart gentlemen over the years. Steve, a semifinalist in the 1994 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions and quarterfinalist in the 2005 Ultimate Tournament of Champions, was the alternate in the 1998 Jeopardy! Battle of the Bay Area Brains in which I participated, and was the captain and organizer of the Ruttersnipes, a pub trivia team featuring a collection of local Jeopardy! veterans plus San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll. Eugene, a finalist in the 1987 Tournament of Champions and member of the Ultimate Tournament field, writes one of my favorite blogs, Your RDA of Irony, and is a frequent correspondent.

(You newbies who aren’t familiar with my experiences as a Jeopardy! champion can catch up with the rest of the class here.)

If you’re up for a bit of serious quiz mastery, drop over to the Jeopardy! forum and join the fun during the Summer Hiatus Challenge. You have nothing to lose but your dignity.

This entry was posted on July 27, 2009 at 11:11 am and is filed under Jeopardy!, My Home Town, Reminiscing, SwanStuff, That's Cool!. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.