This is 'Jeopardy!'

Bryan Middle School teacher Andrew Fuller is great at keeping secrets, but by 4 p.m. this afternoon, all will be known. The questions will be answered, and the answers will be given in the form of a question.

Did Fuller win it all on Jeopardy? Did he win enough to pay for his trip to Los Angeles? What did he talk about during the quirky-anecdote spot after the first commercial break? What categories did he know the most about? What were his answers, which really were questions?

Fuller himself will have to watch the show at 3:30 this afternoon to find out the answer to that last one.

“By the time I was done (filming), I couldn’t remember most of the questions I was asked,” he said. “It was a blur.”

Fuller’s appearance on the game show was filmed back in January. He was selected as a contestant after taking an on-line test, then passing an audition in Chicago.

He’s a pretty laid-back guy.

“I wasn’t nervous at all,” he said of the Chicago audition. “It was really enjoyable.”

He got a call in December from a Jeopardy! casting director, who told him to pack his bags for L.A.

Jeopardy! was just coming off of its “Watson shows” when Fuller got there. Tournaments had just wrapped up, in which top Jeopardy! champions played against Watson, a super-computer.

The champions lost.

“I’m very glad I wasn’t playing against Watson,” Fuller said. “But the people I was playing against (a graduate student from San Francisco and a homemaker from New York) were very, very strong. Both of them were really intelligent."

Just like in Chicago, Fuller wasn’t nervous, even though he had never been on a closed set before, or been to L.A. before, or worn makeup before. Even though there’s a timing trick to buzzing in to answer (in the form of a question), and the studio was freezing cold, and his segment filmed last. And even though Alex Trebek, himself—he’s very nice to everybody, by the way, and has old dogs—was revealing the clues.

All in a day’s work.

“The people there really make you feel at ease,” he said, adding contestants bonded with one another. 

“We all stayed in the same hotel, we all kind of talked and felt like we were on the same playing field,” he said. “They were engineers, chemists, college professors—from all different walks of life.”

He knows a little about college professors. He’s married to one. To prepare, he’s played against her, but he won’t say who wins.

“I’m better than that,” he said of not disclosing who’s smarter.

Other than playing with his wife, he didn’t do much to prepare; he just played along with the show and played Jeopardy! for Wii.

So, did his laid-back demeanor pay off big? Tune in to ABC 7 Chicago today (Monday) at 3:30 p.m. to find out. We’ll post a follow-up right here on Patch. 

Want to be a contestant? 

“If you’re fairly well-rounded, it’s an awesome experience. It really is,” Fuller said.