EVERETT — Julie Sisson was a superstar on Tuesday’s episode of “Jeopardy!”
She won the game and collected $11,210.
But on Wednesday’s show, the Everett Public Library circulation assistant’s flash of fame ended.
Sisson, 49, brought a Scrabble tile that belonged to her wordsmith grandmother as her good luck charm.
It worked on Tuesday, when she beat a psychologist resident from Portland, Oregon with a long tongue (he demonstrated by licking his elbow) and the returning two-day champ, a Maryland marketing director who’d won $31,800.
She finished third in Wednesday’s match against a California policy analyst and a Las Vegas school counselor.
Sisson told The Daily Herald last week that she wasn’t nervous on the shows, which were taped on the same day in May.
“I felt like I’d read every library book that I could and I either knew it or I didn’t,” she said.
She studied for “Jeopardy!” by reading kids’ reference books.
On Wednesday, she did well in the “Crooks” category in the first round, but with $2,800 she was behind the other two players. She never caught up.
She was docked $2,000 for mispronouncing “Nikkei,” the answer to the “Japan’s equivalent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average” clue, but went into the final round with $3,200 to gamble on “Opera Source Material.” She bet $390 on her correct answer of “La bohème.” The Vegas school counselor handily won the game with $20,100, betting nothing on his correct guess.
Tuesday’s show had twists and turns. Sisson started gingerly, the last player to take a stab at an answer and the only one with no winnings seven questions in. Her first attempt after the other two answered incorrectly was also wrong, putting her $200 in the red. She then scored $600 with “Young Frankenstein” and $800 for a sea lions answer. At the end of the round, she was in third place with $3,000.
In Tuesday’s Double Jeopardy round, she’d amassed $4,200 when she got a Daily Double question in the “Somebody Wrote That” category. She wagered $4,000 — and lost, plunging to a mere $200. The correct answer for the author of the novel “Invisible Man” was Ralph Ellison, not her guess of Richard Wright.
She made a comeback Tuesday, thanks in big part to the “The Idioms Go Thataway” category. In the final round, she was in second place with $8,200. The category was “Compound Word Origins.” She wagered $3,010.
The answer was “Superstar” and she nailed it. The reigning champ in first place missed it. The guy with the long tongue didn’t wager enough to win.
“Your lucky tile worked,” host Ken Jennings told Sisson after Tuesday’s show.
“I’m shocked. I’m in shock,” she said about the win.
Sisson stayed calm and poised throughout both shows. Her only moment of grimace was Tuesday’s Daily Double loss, but it was fleeting.
She had insomnia last fall when she took the online 50-question “Jeopardy! Anytime Test” in the middle of the night. It was her third time testing for the show over 10 years. Applicants can test once a year.
“It is harder to get on ‘Jeopardy!’ than it is to get into Harvard,” she told The Herald.
High school student Daily Herald intern Emily Chu contributed to this story.
Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.
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