James Holzauer

[Robert Mugabe]

Heard the buzz first,and then watched this guy. How can he know so much arcane and varied info? I get some answers he gets. I get some he doesn't. But most of the time I find his ability baffling.
I guess I will have to get Ken Jennings's brainiac book.

 

[oldjones]

The first thing i noted was how expert his player skills are. He's fast at everything, pushing the buzzer, speaking the answer, selecting the next clue, calculating his bets. So with his first right answer he controls the board longer, gets more questions in that time, and makes more high-return — really high — Daily Double and Final bets. As for those answers, clearly he has a better memory recall than most of us, and has read, watched and listened widely.

But very few Clues in the game are really outside an ordinary person's common range of exposure. Apart from all pop-culture and sports, when I'm stumped and he isn't, mostly I kinda think I sorta knew that once upon a time, just not now. But always, he has the thing spoken before I even realize, "Hey, that I know".

 

[malata]

he has pornographic memory

 

[John Henry]

He's very fast with the buzzer . I've been watching him for a while now . Can't believe some of the answers that he knows . It's like what , are you kidding me . I did see that when the show had the teachers on the questions weren't as hard . I got many of the answers . He said that he had to wait 2 years to get on the show . Can you imagine going through all of the qualifications , waiting 2 years to get on the show and finding out that you have to go up against this guy. What a bummer that would be .

He says that he found a new job . Being a Jeopardy contestant .

 

[Robert Mugabe]

The first thing i noted was how expert his player skills are. He's fast at everything, pushing the buzzer, speaking the answer, selecting the next clue, calculating his bets. So with his first right answer he controls the board longer, gets more questions in that time, and makes more high-return — really high — Daily Double and Final bets. As for those answers, clearly he has a better memory recall than most of us, and has read, watched and listened widely.

But very few Clues in the game are really outside an ordinary person's common range of exposure. Apart from all pop-culture and sports, when I'm stumped and he isn't, mostly I kinda think I sorta knew that once upon a time, just not now. But always, he has the thing spoken before I even realize, "Hey, that I know".

no matter how fast your buzzer hitting speed is, once hit, you still have to come up with the answers. Some of the questions involving stuff like "words that have these two letters so find another word with this obscure reference having the same letters" and other completely obscure shit simply doesn't come under the range of my common exposure. The guy is a freak of nature. wonder what his IQ is.

 

[oldjones]

no matter how fast your buzzer hitting speed is, once hit, you still have to come up with the answers. Some of the questions involving stuff like "words that have these two letters so find another word with this obscure reference having the same letters" and other completely obscure shit simply doesn't come under the range of my common exposure. The guy is a freak of nature. wonder what his IQ is.

Of course he has to come up with the answers; that's recall. But in your example, building a large vocabulary so the the word is in memory to be recalled isn't unusual. But the player skill of swiftly sorting out what matches the clue certainly is, and I'd count that among his player-skills. Certainly not a skill of mine, even though I knew and use all the words.

What opened the gap between his performance and say, a Ken Jennings, is the speed he does all that stuff. That, and the very large bets he confidently makes.

 

[unassuming]

Just started checking him out, he is an enigma, it seems that he is the only one that chooses the Daily Doubles yet he doesn't buzz in on some of the common knowledge/simpler answers. Apparently he is a professional gambler in Las Vegas, I guess he is "card counting" so to speak on Jeopardy.

 

[luvyeah]

He got one response wrong today and Alex told him to get the fuck off the show.

Heard he reads a lot of childrens books which is more than likely responsible for his wide range of knowledge, I'm curious what he actually knows in depth - besides gambling.