By Bill Nutt
Special to Inside Warren

The answer is: “What was Alex Trebek really like?”

The question is: What is the most-asked question of Jeopardy contestants?

Perhaps that’s not true of all contestants.  But it’s certainly the case for this writer, who appeared on the show in April 1995.  Whenever my Jeopardy experience crops up, I’m almost invariably asked about Alex – no surname needed.

The answer to that question?  It’s difficult to say.  Contact between Alex and contestants is minimal.  Other than the on-screen Q&A session and the briefest of chats as the end credits rolled—that was it.

On set, Trebek was a reassuring presence for contestants intimidated by lights and cameras.  His way of reading clues was particularly calming.  Though brisk, his pace was measured enough for someone to read the question on his own and formulate a response (in the form of a question) in time to buzz in promptly.

Trebek’s death from cancer at age 80 has led to an outpouring of grief that is rare even for the most famous celebrities.  In a year that has seen the passing of, among too many others, Little Richard, Olivia de Havilland, and Sean Connery, the loss of Alex Trebek truly feels like the end of an era.

He was the face of a program that has become a cultural touchstone, lauded in film and song.  The show represents the pinnacle of trivia, with categories that run the gamut from science and geography to culture both high and low.  Jeopardy may be the only game in which a clue about Homer could refer to the blind poet who wrote The Iliad or to the patriarch of The Simpsons—or both.

Trebek navigated these topics and more with aplomb.  He didn’t write the clues (though he had a say in the final wording), but he made it seem as if he did.

You periodically saw flashes of something prickly under the polished surface.  My lovely wife, Debbie Lockwood, sat in the audience for the taping of my appearances, and she recounted hearing Trebek utter a snarky comment or two.  Sometimes his reactions to an incorrect response carried a whiff of condescension.

But that was only 11 years into a 36-year tenure.  In the quarter-century since, Trebek’s humor grew more endearingly self-deprecating, tempered by flashes of genuine emotion—the break in his voice when he acknowledged his mother’s 95th birthday, the quiet determination with which he announced his cancer diagnosis, the choked-back tears in reaction to Dhruv Gaur’s written “We love you, Alex” during one Final Jeopardy last November.

We have a strange relationship with education in the U.S.  We urge children to study and get good grades, but at the same time, we are quick to mock or outright dismiss anyone for being “too” educated.  Labels like “nerd” or “geek” or “wonk” are used as put-downs.  In TV shows and movies, intelligent people are often presented as emotionally remote, socially inept, or sartorially impaired.  Even those who should know better sneer at “experts,” as if that word were a pejorative.

Trebek put the lie to that image.  He was handsome and urbane but warm enough to converse comfortably with kids, teens, and contestants on the shady side of 50.  He conveyed a sense, not just of knowledge, but of curiosity about facts and people.  For 30 minutes a day, five days a week, he made it cool to be smart.

Jeopardy will go on.  A new host will be tapped, perhaps from the pool of past contestants like Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, or loose cannon Austin Rogers.

But Alex Trebek represented something else.  With style, he let us know that there were always answers, even in a world that leaves us with more questions.

The answer is “irreplaceable.”

Bill Nutt is a teacher at the Great Meadows Regional School District.  He was the Jeopardy champion for April 18, 1995, but he finished third on April 19.  Please don’t ask him about the Boer War.