If you’re a fan of the TV game show Jeopardy!, you know that Goshen’s own trivia buff, Ben Ganger, has won the episodes that aired Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. Ganger will appear on the show again tonight.
Ganger, a 30-year-old data analyst who sings opera in his free time, says the Jeopardy! episodes he’s appeared in this week were all taped on March 5 in Los Angeles.
Ganger’s total winnings for the three shows exceeded $76,000. He couldn’t disclose his total winnings because that would reveal whether he wins on Friday’s show.
He says it was surreal stepping onto the Alex Trebek Stage.
"I've grown up seeing it on television and now it's real in front of my eyes," he said. "It almost feels a little bit like hallowed ground."
Ganger says his wife Alexandria and his parents, Rob and Andrea Ganger, also got to attend the show’s taping in Los Angeles. He said it wasn’t easy to honor the secrecy requirements in his contract.
"The four of us have been sitting on the information of this win streak for about a month and half since we got back from L.A. and it's very exciting to share it with everybody."
Ganger works as a data analyst at Viewrail, a Goshen manufacturer, where he manages their product database. He says he hasn’t received any of his prize money yet.
"One of the things I kept telling myself in preparation and while I was playing is it's just points until Sony mails you a check, and that's important because wagering 10 mortgage payments on a trivia question doesn't feel great, but wagering 10,000 points on a trivia question, well it's just points, that's fine. But currently as it stands, they're still just points."
But when he does get the check, Ganger and his wife Alexandria plan to splurge a bit more on a trip to Greece that they’d already been saving for to celebrate their 10th anniversary.
"We might stay in a little nicer hotel or go out to a fancy dinner in Athens or something like that," he said.
As a big motor sports fan, he says a fun day in a fast car at the driving school at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway would be another dream come true. Ganger said he’ll save and invest the bulk of his winnings, but the opera singer says he’ll also donate to area nonprofits he’s passionate about and involved with, like South Bend Lyric Opera, Opera on Tap South Bend and Theater’s Edge.
To get on the show, Ganger says he first took an online test, then moved on to timed tests with other applicants on Zoom, and then did well enough there to move on to a third Zoom call with producers.
"That Zoom call acts as a screen test for the TV show," he said. "This is what they used to do an in-person audition for, but it's like, can you have a normal conversation with the host of the show? Can you keep the game moving once you get called on, things like that, is what they're checking for. And then after that, you wait and see if you get the call."
Those who know Ganger shouldn’t be too surprised by how well he’s done on the show.
"I'm definitely a trivia junkie," he said. "My wife and I love writing rounds of trivia. We hosted the occasional trivia night at the Constant Spring here in town when it was open. I've been to a bunch of the bar trivia in particular, its a great time, I really enjoy playing that."
He credited Alexandria and his mom for helping him practice on topics he’s not as strong in, like literature.
"Which can be difficult to study. U.S. presidents, there's only so many of them, but literature, how am I supposed to narrow that down to the things I'm supposed to know? So helping me figure some of those study patterns out has been very helpful."
I asked Ganger whether he performed as well as he thought he might. He said he’d given this a lot of thought going into the taping. He says he didn’t want to set a goal for winning the show because there’s a lot of luck involved in not only getting on at least one show, but winning too.
"What categories come up, who you're drawn against, do you find a good rhythm on the buzzer or not? So my goals were to keep my silly guesses to a minimum, put into practice the strategies for good buzzer timing that I had developed, and to put into practices the strategies for board control and wagering. And I think I succeeded in all of those goals, which felt great, but genuinely everything after that first win has felt like a whole bunch of icing on an already fantastic cake."
