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Ken Jennings keeps his Jeopardy record, barely

James Holzhauer came within about $60,000 of Ken Jennings' Jeopardy winnings before his streak ended. Ken gets to keep the crown, and he has a few things to say about the man who nearly took it. more

Ken is still the winningest player in regular-season Jeopardy games, and one of very few people who know how James feels after winning more than $2 million. As his interviewer puts it, 15 minutes of fame doesn't usually turn into 15 years.

Not long before, Ken went to a Jeopardy taping in April, the last one before the show's break, because he wanted to see Alex Trebek. "I wanted to see how he was doing and say hi." Alex was in good spirits, and he showed Ken some of the hundreds of thousands of letters he had been getting. Ken says "it was touching how much it meant to him."

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James Holzhauer came within about $60,000 of Ken Jennings' Jeopardy winnings before his streak ended.

A lot of people want Ken and James to go head-to-head. Ken points out that Jeopardy only holds those special tournaments every so often, and he can't bring back "29-year-old Ken" with his "sleek 29-year-old brain." It would have to be the Ken of today.

Asked whether James would be easier to play than Watson, the computer he once faced, Ken isn't so sure. James is "as close to Watson as you can get and still have, you know, a pulse." His accuracy, Ken says, "is just unbelievable."

Ken has advice for James, too. Take some time to think about what you want, he told him, "cuz you do have a window." James could write a book, start a podcast or give a TED Talk, and "now's the time."

Ken knows about windows. He's a full-time author now, and he calls the whole thing "such a weird accident." He "could have had a midlife crisis," and instead he went on a game show, got to write the books and got more time with his kids. "I'm Ken Jennings, drop the mic."

He will be back on TV as a resident expert on the Best Ever Trivia Show, an old-school quiz show like the ones he watched as a kid. The experts play against the contestants, but Ken says "we're really rooting for the contestants to win some money."

Champions like these practice for years, even if only in the living room. Ken watched Jeopardy religiously as a kid, James worked on his buzzer moves at home, and the librarian who beat Ken wrote her master's thesis on the game. Ken calls it an obsession, and he would play for free. What he enjoys most, though, is being a dad.