What better person to take advice from on how to win Jeopardy! than one of the show’s most familiar contestants of recent times? Drew Goins is sharing on-set secrets and how to win the game.
Goins, from Washington D.C., first competed on Jeopardy! in September 2024. He actually lost his first game, but was invited back for the Second Chance Tournament after answering 22 clues correctly in his original game.
The journalist won the Second Chance Tournament and advanced to the Champions Wildcard Tournament. Goins was the first runner-up in the competition and advanced to the Tournament of Champions after Celebrity Jeopardy! champion Lisa Ann Walter dropped out.
There, he made it to the semifinals, where he lost to Neilesh Vinjamuri. Goins also played in the 2026 Invitational Tournament, where he made it to the semifinal but lost against Long Nguyen. He is currently on Season 2 of Pop Culture Jeopardy! with his brother, Zach.
Goins, who is a senior editor and writer for The Atlantic, shared a lengthy post for the outlet’s June issue titled “The Secret to Winning on Jeopardy!.”
He recounted his time on the show, including the check-in spot at the back of the Sony lot in the back of a “dim parking garage.” “You will wonder whether this is actually some sort of hostage situation that is going to end with you at the bottom of a tar pit or, worse, on Wheel of Fortune,” he joked.
The next thing contestants see is the greenroom, where there is a door marked “Jeopardy! Champion,” which leaves the contestants wondering how to get in there.
Other on-set secrets that the game show contestant shared were about the winner’s dressing room. “The champion’s room, by the way, isn’t much. It’s about six feet by six feet, and it contains a chair and a rack of shirts. The winner uses it to put on their outfit for the next game. The walls don’t even go to the ceiling,” Goins said.
“When you get in there, you will almost immediately want to get out, to rejoin the greenroom chatter. Everyone’s discussing Slovakia, and you want to share the one thing you know about it: Bratislava is the only world capital that borders two other countries.”
He didn’t stop there. Goins went on to share tidbits about the buzzer and stage lights. “You’ve probably heard that the buzzer is fickle. This is true. You are instructed to watch for indicators on the game board to illuminate at the end of a clue, but if you wait to react to them—rather than anticipating the host’s final syllable—you will be on the back foot. Even then, an opponent might be infinitesimally more precise. Buzzer Zen is elusive.”
“The stage lights are bright, and information will fly out of your brain at just the wrong moment. Frances Cleveland was the first First Lady to host the Easter egg roll at the White House. Wait! You meant Lucy Hayes, but it is too late, and you are $1,600 poorer.”
Getting down to how to win, Goins said that it is important to know what Jeopardy! “likes.” Some of those things are pico de gallo, Lucy Hayes, as mentioned above, Nebraska’s Platte River, which has been on the show 44 times, as well as Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, Iowa painter Grant Wood, European duchy Luxembourg, and the Zoroastrian singer Freddie Mercury, boiling down to “knowledge for the sake of knowledge.”
“To win on Jeopardy, you don’t need to learn everything. You just need to learn one thing about everything,” Goins said. The best to do that, according to the champion, is to be curious as a child.
“Luck will desert you, and it will return. What you really hold on to is knowing one thing about everything,” he ended.
Jeopardy!, weekdays, check local listings, stream next day on Hulu and Peacock
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