Jeopardy! is a 22-minute, five-day-a-week game of questions, with 230 new episodes every year. (They record five episodes in a day.) Every response, if you’re lucky enough to buzz first, must be in the form of a question; before long, everything around you becomes a question.

There are easy ones: When did you tape? (I taped twice: once in May 2023, and again last January for the Champions Wildcard tournament.) What’s Ken Jennings like? (Lovely man, humble and quite excited to be around the contestants.) Were you scared of saying something stupid on national television? (Every time I spoke.) How did you handle being on camera? (You’d be surprised how you snap into focus once you hear the theme song.) What’s the buzzer like? (Like something an alien would use to beam you up.) What were the other contestants like? (My new best friends are fantastic.)

There are cutting ones: How come you didn’t know that Final Jeopardy question? (Thirty seconds goes quicker than you think.) Why did you make that wager? (I’m not good at math!) What’s with how you held the buzzer? (I practiced a lot … maybe too much.)

After three episodes (183 questions) on the Alex Trebek Stage, I was able to answer the game’s biggest question, the one everybody eventually asks: How much did you win? There’s a simple response measured in games, “Coryat score” (a way to gauge your at-home performance), and dollars. But there’s a deeper response that didn’t really hit until weeks after my second appearance.

I won a community. For a show that feels at times like a secret society, you never realize how many people love Jeopardy! until you appear behind a podium. I won the gift of seeing my friends cry and my parents forever proud. I won the chance to hear my son yell “My dad won Jeopardy!” among the audience in those blurry minutes between my first game and having to go right back up and defend my crown. (A little TV magic: If you win a game, you have barely 10 minutes to change your shirt, use the bathroom, and get your makeup retouched and another mic pack secured to your belt.)

I won the support of people I never even knew watched, from colleagues at work to happy hour pals and guys from my fantasy league. Our son’s school, the hair salon, the local pizzeria that has my number saved as “Jeopardy James”—wherever I go, there’s a pleasing bonhomie that arrives without warning and never disappoints.

Had I stopped taking the test to get on the show, believing in myself, and trying to get on that stage, it would have been a much harder loss than the two I suffered on that stage. (There’s a joke among former contestants that everyone leaves that stage a loser regardless of how many games they won.) So, if you’ve ever thought about it, I say to you: Take the test, too. That way you’ll never have to ask yourself life’s most difficult question: What if?  

James Tyler won one game of Jeopardy!, earning $10,200, and played in the Champions Wildcard postseason tournament. He is a deputy editor at ESPN.