Who is Louis Bayard?

It's an entirely American contradiction. A show that celebrates the intellect ("You don't have to eat bugs here," one of the contestant coordinators reassured us) really comes down to speed and muscular coordination. Brain to thumb to mouth. From that neural pathway, Jennings cleared every last obstruction and became virtually unstoppable. He is well aware that he benefited from the producers' decision to eliminate the five-day limit on champions. ("Jeopardy" freaks like to ponder how long the great victors of yore might have lasted under the new rules, which were established in 2003 to commemorate the show's 20th season.) A long-running champion, it turned out, had advantages that nobody bargained for: "well-honed buzzer timing, comfort behind the lectern, intimidation of the two challengers. By the law of averages, I'm sure that over the last few months I've defeated quite a few players who knew more answers than I did, but just lacked game-day experience."

"Jeopardy" rewards knowledge, yes, but good American show that it is, it rewards winning even more -- and all the skills and cunning and drive that go into winning. By that yardstick, Jennings surpassed all expectation. He parlayed his game-show run into multimillion-dollar endorsements, a stint on "Sesame Street," even a berth in Barbara Walters' Ten Most Fascinating People of 2004. (Not everyone was enraptured. The New York Times called him "the most annoying man in game show history.") Today, we find him inventing trivia games ("Quizzology," "Can You Beat Ken?"), lecturing at college campuses and corporate events, and penning a column for Mental Floss magazine in which readers challenge him to "link two virtually unrelated people, places, or things via a chain of six odd trivia factoids." He is, in short, extending the franchise that "Jeopardy" began -- and, in the course of "Brainiac," trying to reposition his once and future career as a philanthropic gateway to a more civic society.

Jennings is properly cautious in the claims he makes on trivia's behalf. He recognizes that the ability to recall facts is not the same as intelligence. (Albert Einstein failed the trivia examination that Thomas Edison used to administer to job applicants.) But in the framework of Jennings' salvation theology, brainiacs become something more than smart people. They become repositories for the common cultural heritage that modern technology is eroding. "Facts about history, geography, books, movies, music," Jennings writes, "this is the stuff that used to be called good old-fashioned 'general knowledge' ... If more of us enjoyed 'trivia' -- that is, knowing a little bit about everything -- we would know more about one another, and therefore might get along better."

Even as utopian visions go, that's awfully mushy, and in fact, Jennings' own experiences give it the lie. Real trivia mavens don't want to "know more about one another," they want to know more than anyone else. Their very sense of themselves depends on being a minority of one. (I once shared a North Side Chicago sublet with one such man. His compulsive need to unspool every last thread of knowledge from his mind's bobbin literally drove me to another apartment. Within two years, he was a five-time 'Jeopardy' champion.)

If these mandarins of trivia are, in Jennings' formulation, "America's last meritocracy," then it's a decidedly curious republic they've built. One that treats the human brain as a Google search engine, that privileges "Sid Caesar over Julius Caesar, and Doctor Kildare over Doctor Faustus." Or, at the very least, equates them -- which, in effect, renders any differences between them null and void.

The content of any given piece of knowledge is not necessarily what drives your average brainiac. He doesn't learn the name of Superman's father or the capital of Somalia or the author of "Daniel Deronda" because he wants to read George Eliot or fly to Mogadishu or ponder the implications of extraterrestrial life. He is acquiring facts in roughly the same way that Wilt Chamberlain acquired sex partners -- and from roughly the same pleasure principle. Jennings speaks of "the endorphin rush, the I'm-smart feeling we get from unexpectedly producing an answer we had no idea we knew." I remember the giddiness that shook my frame when I dredged up the name "Olof Palme" from deep in the well of my cultural memory. In moments like these, the knowledge is nowhere near as important as the sensation of knowing: the buzzing of axons and dendrites as they carry their precious cargo to its docking station.

That's what makes "Jeopardy" so seductive to many of us (even when it's kicking our ass). Not because it makes us better citizens but because, even within the constraints imposed by our culture, it affords our play the purest possible form. For someone like me, who had memorized every major-category Oscar winner by the age of 8, who had transcribed the lyrics of two dozen Broadway shows by the age of 10, who had passed my loneliest hours reading the World Book, "Jeopardy" was sport. And, yes, salvation -- but of a uniquely personal nature. One day, I would stand before my fellow countrymen and, in the glow of the TV lights, all the freakish knowledge amassed over my many years would magically find its proper channel.

When I flew out to Sony Pictures Studios last August for my taping, I told virtually no one. (One of the friends I did tell asked me why I didn't just apply for an NEA grant.) My only goal, I vowed, was to reach the Final Jeopardy round. I didn't want to be one of the wretches who have to be ushered off before the last question because they've finished in the red.

But after winning my first game -- and $17,800 -- I realized pretty quickly that I wanted more. And just as quickly, I learned there would be no more. "You only get one shot at 'Jeopardy'," says Ken Jennings. And when the end comes -- as it did for me after two games, as it did for him after 74 -- it comes summarily. You sign papers. You are gently asked if you want a cab. You quit the refrigerated bubble of Sony Pictures Studios for the filtered sunshine of Culver City. You phone the news home. You pack your bags.

You raise not a word of protest the whole time -- you're a good sport -- but something rankles. Not the money lost: That was never a consideration. Not the fame forfeited. You're sad because the game has ended, because something that formerly had no real-life value once again has no real-life value. You are a museum that no one will visit anymore. And no amount of wishful thinking by you or Ken Jennings can change it.

I won. I lost. And in the end, all that mattered was that I couldn't stay in the game. "Not yet," I remember thinking. "I want to keep playing."

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