Why would you go on television and subject yourself to armchair contestants who mock your ignorance of English monarchs? What quixotic souls spend their free time combing through the infinite body of human knowledge, driven by the desire to know everything?

15 seconds on the clock. Your time starts now.

Sorry, time is up. The answers I was looking for: 1) a cocktail of masochism and delusions of grandeur; 2) weirdos like me.

Final question: Have the countless hours I’ve dedicated to memorizing territorial capitals, making flashcards on Nobel laureates, and reading books on Latin American revolutions paid off?

You’re going to have to wait until the last episode of this series for that answer. 

My pursuit of game show glory began twenty years ago when my friend Ruchi cornered me in the halls of Central Dauphin High School. “Do you want to take my spot on the quiz bowl team?” she asked. “They need someone who knows art and Shakespeare.”

I had recently created a short film retelling Ophelia’s story. I kept an art journal where I interpreted the Patriot Act and Tori Amos lyrics. I could do this. And so began my foray into the strange world of quizzing.

Clearly drawn by someone who knows about Caravaggio and Titus Andronicus.

By all accounts, I was a bad quiz bowler. I was hopeless at questions on science and geography, and timid on the buzzer even when I did know a topic. I lacked my teammates’ confidence and didn’t want to disappoint them by negging.

And it didn’t take long to see why Ruchi had abandoned her post as the token female player.

An opponent once gave me an unsolicited back rub, while another told me I would “look good as a pregnant woman.” Teammates opined that the Seven Sisters college I was touring “sounded like a third-tier school,” and my PSAT scores were “cute.” (I was a National Merit semifinalist.) There were criticisms of my wardrobe: My outfits looked like “Helen Keller put them together.” When the buttons of my shirt came undone during a match, my coach called me a floozy. Another time, she said my Victorian prom dress looked like “something Jack the Ripper would murder.”

I could brush off the insults from male peers—I was no stranger to boys belittling my academic achievements or scrutinizing my appearance—but my coach’s comments stung. These days, I’ve adopted a charitable read: as a rare female coach, she too had been worn down by the quiz bowl circuit. She left at the end of my junior year.

But I stuck with it through my senior year, making me eligible for Brain Busters, a quiz show for high school students in Central Pennsylvania. Winning teams received college scholarships and Turkey Hill ice cream. And who would pass up the opportunity for free ice cream?

The top three scorers—Sumeet, Ben, and Vishal—automatically qualified to represent Central Dauphin, but I would have to prove my bona fides by going up against Keegan, the fifth senior on the team. Leading up to our face-off, I came up with songs to remember the periodic table and U.S. presidents (songs I still sing to myself at pub trivia). I pored over old NAQT packets to learn the quiz canon. Otto von Bismarck was known as the Iron Chancellor. Nunavut is the largest of Canada’s ten provinces and territories. Jellyfish belong to the phylum Cnidaria.

My studying paid off: Keegan and I were neck and neck throughout our face-off. It all came down to the final question: “Created in 1999, this large Canadian territory—”

“NUNAVUT!” I screamed. The coach, who had never witnessed me answer a geography question, triple-checked the answer.

“Yes, that’s correct. Welcome to the team.” And with the prospect of free ice cream dangling over my head, I hit the books. This time, instead of studying broadly, I doubled down as the resident Shakespeare and art expert. I bought an atlas of Western painting, learning to distinguish Monet from Manet, and studied the plots of every Shakespeare play I hadn’t read. 

The big day arrived. After following tutorials on makeup for TV and raiding my twin sister’s closet, I felt like a million bucks. 

When I arrived on the Brain Busters stage for rehearsals, I was so nervous I could barely breathe.

By the end of the first round, my teammates had picked up points for knowing the Battle of Hastings, 2 to the power of 10, Thomas Jefferson, Beethoven, and tadpoles. But our opponents, Cedar Cliff, were faster and led 70-50.

I did not buzz in a single time. 

I was the first contestant selected for the one-on-one round, where each team pitted a player against an opponent for a rapid series of three questions. No one had high hopes for me. The host read the first question: “His first play was probably King Henry VI, Part One, and his last—”

I had never buzzed in so fast. “Shakespeare!” After my opponent got a question on melanin, I sealed the deal for knowing Dan Quayle wrote Standing Firm. 

We then wagered 40 on a geography question, while Cedar Cliff wagered 50. The question: “Located in southern Florida on the northern edge of the Everglades, it is the largest lake in the southern United States.” Correct responses of Okeechobee from both teams tied up the score, so we were just twenty questions away from free Turkey Hill ice cream.

The other team destroyed us.

In the final buzzer round, my teammates negged repeatedly, and faced with a brutal set of literature questions (Michel de Montaigne, State of Fear, “Barbara Frietchie”), I had nothing to contribute. And with that, my first shot at game show glory came to an unceremonious end.

But it would not be my last, and the Turkey Hill ice cream my parents bought for me that night more than made up for the sting of defeat.