Connellsville native, CMU grad to face James Holzhauer in 'Jeopardy!' champs tourney

Connellsville native and Carnegie Mellon University graduate Lindsey Shultz will face record-setter James Holzhauer in the “Jeopardy!” game show’s Tournament of Champions next week.

Earlier this year, Shultz was a four-time winner on the top-rated trivia-based game show, earning $101,002, placing her in the top 10 for the year. She is matched against Holzhauer and one other contestant in the quarterfinals to be broadcast Nov. 6. The episode can be seen locally at 7 p.m. on WPXI.

The 10-day tournament telecasts start Nov. 4 and have already been taped at the “Jeopardy!” studios in Culver City, Calif.

Shultz is a 2000 graduate of Connellsville Area High School. She graduated from CMU in 2004, earned a medical degree from Cornell University and underwent training in public health from Columbia University. Shultz currently works as a physician and health care analyst in Pittsburgh.

The process of getting on “Jeopardy!” begins with an online test that anyone can sign up for. Shultz said she took the test “on a whim with no expectations that it would ever have turned into all this.”

She did well enough on the test that she was selected for an in person audition. After passing the audition, she went into a contestant pool and was told she could be called at any time and invited to Los Angeles to appear on the show.

“They called almost a year and a half after my audition, in December of 2018, invited me out for the end of January 2019, and the rest is game show history,” said Shultz.

Holzhauer became famous earlier this year during a 32-game “Jeopardy!” winning streak from April to June, during which he set multiple single-game records for dollar amounts won.

Holzhauer earned almost $2.5 million in his 33 appearances, making him the third-highest overall winning “Jeopardy!” contestant behind Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, and the second-highest winner in non-tournament winnings and number of games won, behind only Jennings. Jennings won more than $2.5 million in 75 episodes in 2004.

“Jeopardy!” contestants select “answers” by dollar amounts from a series of categories. Once the answer is revealed, the contestant must respond correctly in the form of a question. If the contestant is right, that dollar amount is added to their score. If they are incorrect, the amount is subtracted.

The semifinals of the tournament air Nov. 11 through Nov. 13 and the two-day finals air Nov. 14 and Nov. 15. The winner will claim the $250,000 grand prize while the second-place finisher earns $100,000, and the third-place finisher takes home $50,000.

“Jeopardy!” has been hosted for all 36 years of its syndicated run by Emmy Award-winning host Alex Trebek. Shultz called Trebek a consummate professional with a “pretty wicked, dry sense of humor conveyed in that same carefully calibrated, well-timed delivery he uses to keep the show running.”

Trebek was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer last March. But Shultz said Trebek was in good spirits the week the Tournament of Champions shows were recorded, even with the news that he had to restart his chemotherapy regimen that week.

“The only difference I noticed from my first run in January was him being even more precise in his enunciation, even though his delivery was totally spot on,” she said. “Sometimes chemotherapy can come with the side effects that can affect speech, like a dry mouth or erosion of the mucosal linings. Maybe it’s something that was on his mind.”