Eddie Timanus

Last updated

Eddie Timanus
Born (1968-08-09) August 9, 1968 (age 55)
St. Joseph, Missouri, US
Alma mater Wake Forest University
OccupationSportswriter
Employer USA Today
Known forFirst blind Jeopardy! contestant

Eddie Timanus (born August 9, 1968) is a USA Today sportswriter and game show contestant who grew up in Reston, Virginia, then graduated from Wake Forest University. Timanus has been blind since he was a toddler due to retinoblastoma. He is best known for his five-game winning streak on the game show Jeopardy! and for being the first blind contestant to appear on the show.

Contents

Early life

Timanus was born on August 9, 1968, in St. Joseph, Missouri.[ citation needed ] At age three, Timanus had an operation to remove tumors from his eyes, leading to his blindness. Following his Jeopardy! success, Timanus related a story from his childhood that his mother told him: "I came home and said, 'Turn on the lights.' And she said, 'They're on and you won't see them.' And I said, 'Well, OK' and went on." [1]

Timanus' father, Chuck, was a play-by-play announcer. Eddie began attending sporting events with his father at the age of six, and he started keeping statistics at the age of eleven. Timanus graduated from Wake Forest University in 1990 with a degree in economics. In 1991, The Washington Post reported that Eddie worked alongside Chuck as a statkeeper for American University's basketball games, using pegboards and abaci, compiling statistical information for WINX-AM radio. [2] His mother, Terri Timanus, was also a Jeopardy! contestant, appearing in 1991 and losing her only game. [3]

Jeopardy!

Timanus was a contestant on Jeopardy! ; his games aired in October 1999. He was the first blind contestant to compete on the show. [4] There were a few changes made to accommodate Timanus: the first was that he received a card with the category names printed in Braille before each round, and a Braille keyboard to type out his name on the podium's computer and his response and wager for Final Jeopardy!. [4] There were also no video-based clues during his appearances. [4] Also, beginning with his appearances, contestants started out the show already at their podiums, instead of the old practice of walking up to them as they were being introduced. (The practice became permanent starting in September 2000.) Timanus refused further accommodations. [3]

Timanus won five consecutive games and then, in accordance with the rules in effect at that time, retired undefeated. His winnings totaled US$69,700 plus two new cars (Chevrolet Camaros in his case), and he was invited back for the 2000 Tournament of Champions in Atlanta, Georgia, where he reached the semifinals and won $5,000 there. The story became a minor media sensation, with Jeopardy!'s Nielsen ratings rising 15 percent for Timanus's fourth and fifth games. [5] Host Alex Trebek received one of six Access Awards from the American Foundation for the Blind in 2001 for his role in accommodating Timanus.

Timanus was a contestant on the Jeopardy! Million Dollar Masters Tournament in New York City which aired in May 2002, but did not advance beyond the first round and took home $10,000.

Timanus also appeared in the Jeopardy! Ultimate Tournament of Champions on March 16, 2005, in a first-round game. He finished in second place, taking home $5,000. In addition to the Braille cards and computer keyboard provided on his earlier appearances, an audible tone that was in sync with the game board's lights was added in order to give him an indication of when he could begin buzzing in to respond.

Timanus participated in the March 3, 2014 episode of the Jeopardy! Battle of the Decades tournament. While he had the most money going into Final Jeopardy! round in which every contestant answered incorrectly, he lost by a margin of $200 finishing in second place behind Rachael Schwartz. As with his Ultimate Tournament of Champions appearance, he was given Braille cards, a computer keyboard, and an audible buzz-in indicator.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

In 2000 he acted as a lifeline on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire . [6] On November 26, 2004, Timanus appeared again on Millionaire, this time as a contestant, and won $50,000 in prize money. When he used the phone-a-friend lifeline, host Meredith Vieira would read the question and the four choices to the friend that he chose to call and would also remind him how much time was remaining on the 30 seconds used for that lifeline. [7]

Sportswriting

Timanus is a staff sportswriter for USA Today . His articles appear frequently in the publication. In addition to general reporting, he is responsible for compiling the weekly USA Today Coaches' Poll. He also writes the preview section for college football games. [4]

Personal life

He met his wife through a Yahoo! Groups discussion group on game shows; the couple now has a son. [3]

Related Research Articles

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is an international television game show franchise of British origin, created by David Briggs, Mike Whitehill and Steven Knight. In its format, currently owned and licensed by Sony Pictures Television, contestants tackle a series of multiple-choice questions to win large cash prizes in a format that twists on many game show genre conventions – only one contestant plays at a time, similar to radio quizzes; contestants are given the question before deciding whether to answer, and have no time limit to answer questions; and the amount offered increases as they tackle questions that become increasingly difficult. The maximum cash prize offered in most versions of the format is an aspirational value in local currency, such as one million pounds in the UK or 75 million rupees in India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Jennings</span> American game show contestant, host, and writer (born 1974)

Kenneth Wayne Jennings III is an American game show host, author, and former game show contestant. He is the highest-earning American game show contestant, having won money on five different game shows, including $4,522,700 on the U.S. game show Jeopardy! From 2021 to 2023, Jennings and Mayim Bialik alternated as hosts of that show, as well as Celebrity Jeopardy! In 2023, Jennings received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Game Show. In December 2023, Jennings was announced as Jeopardy's permanent main host.

Thom McKee is a former United States Navy officer and 1977 graduate of the Naval Academy, who was a long-running contestant on Tic-Tac-Dough, an American game show, in 1980. He set a number of game show records for the time, appearing on 46 episodes of the series and winning $312,700 in cash and prizes. This total made him the biggest winner in the history of television game shows at the time.

Bob Harris is an American radio commentator, writer, comedian, and former Jeopardy! champion.

John Carpenter is an American game show contestant and Internal Revenue Service agent. He is the twelfth highest-earning American game show contestant of all time. Carpenter is best known for becoming the first top-prize winner on the American version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and the first ever top-prize winner in the entire Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? franchise. He held the record for the largest single win in United States game show history, until it was broken by Rahim Oberholtzer who won $1.12 million on another U.S. quiz show, Twenty One.

Jerome Vered is a Studio City, California writer, publicly known for his record-setting success as a contestant on the U.S. television game show Jeopardy!

Bradford Gates Rutter is an American game show contestant, TV host, producer, and actor. With over $5.1 million in winnings, he is currently the second-highest-earning American game show contestant of all time, behind Ken Jennings, and still the highest-earning contestant on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy!.

<i>Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?</i> (British game show) British television quiz show

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a British television quiz show, created by David Briggs, Steven Knight and Mike Whitehill for the ITV network. The programme's format has contestants taking on multiple-choice questions based upon general knowledge, winning a cash prize for each question they answer correctly, with the amount offered increasing as they take on more difficult questions. If an incorrect answer is given, the contestant will leave with whatever cash prize is guaranteed by the last safety net they have passed, unless they opt to walk away before answering the next question with the money they had managed to reach. To assist in the quiz, contestants are given a series of "lifelines" to help answer questions.

<i>Who Wants to Be a Millionaire</i> (American game show) American television game show

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is an American television game show based on the format of the same-titled British program created by David Briggs, Steven Knight and Mike Whitehill and developed in the United States by Michael Davies. The show features a quiz competition with contestants attempting to win a top prize of $1,000,000 by answering a series of multiple-choice questions, usually of increasing difficulty. The program has endured as one of the longest-running and most successful international variants in the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? franchise.

A game show is a type of radio, television, or internet program in which contestants, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering trivia questions or solving puzzles, usually for prizes. Game shows are usually distinguishable from reality television competition shows, in which the competition consumes an entire season of episodes; in a game show, prizes can typically be won in a single match. Beginning with the first five-figure and six-figure game show jackpots in the mid-1950s, a succession of contestants on various quiz shows of the era each set records. Teddy Nadler of The $64,000 Challenge, the highest-scoring contestant of the 1950s era, was not surpassed until 1980, when Thom McKee won $312,700 on Tic-Tac-Dough. Between 1999 and 2001, during a brief boom in high-stakes game shows, the record was broken six times. Both the 1955–1958 and 1999–2001 eras of rapidly set and broken records were driven primarily by one-upmanship between the networks each trying to secure bragging rights and ratings by inflating their prize offerings, rather than the merits of the contestants themselves. American daytime television has historically had smaller prize budgets for game shows that air in that daypart.

<i>Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?</i> (Australian game show) Australian game show

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is an Australian television game show which would offer a maximum cash prize of $1,000,000 for answering 15 successive multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The show was based on and follows the same general format of the original version of the show from the United Kingdom, and is part of the international Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? franchise.

<i>Millionaire Hot Seat</i> Australian television quiz show

Millionaire Hot Seat, also known as Hot Seat, was an Australian television quiz show. The show was a spin-off of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and began airing on the Nine Network on 20 April 2009. As with the original Australian version of the show, it was hosted by Eddie McGuire and follows a similar format.

Jeopardy! is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given general knowledge clues in the form of answers and they must identify the person, place, thing, or idea that the clue describes, phrasing each response in the form of a question.

Austin David "Buzzy" Cohen is a recording music industry executive and trivia enthusiast from Los Angeles, California, best known for his association with the game show Jeopardy!. Cohen was the winner of the 2017 Tournament of Champions and later appeared in the All-Star Games in 2019 and as a guest host for the show's 2021 Tournament of Champions following longtime host Alex Trebek's death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Holzhauer</span> American game show contestant

James Holzhauer is an American game show contestant and professional sports gambler. He is the third-highest-earning American game show contestant of all time. Holzhauer is best known for his 32-game winning streak as champion on the quiz show Jeopardy! from April to June 2019, during which he set multiple single-game records for winnings, and for winning the following Tournament of Champions that November.

<i>Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time</i> American game show tournament

Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time was a special tournament limited-run series of the game show Jeopardy! that took place in January 2020. The tournament was produced for ABC and aired on the network in prime time. This was the second time a Jeopardy! competition aired on network television ; the first occurred in 1990 when the special tournament series Super Jeopardy! was carried by ABC.

Matthew Benjamin Amodio is an American mathematician and game show contestant who won 38 consecutive games on the game show Jeopardy! in 2021, the third-longest streak in the show's history, behind Ken Jennings and Amy Schneider. A PhD student in computer science at Yale University, he won $1,519,601 in 39 appearances on Jeopardy!, making him the third millionaire contestant on the show in regular-season play. Across all American game shows, he is the eleventh highest-earning contestant of all time. His run on the show has been called the "Amodio Rodeo".

Jeopardy! is an American quiz game show in which contestants use certain strategies and skills to increase their chances of winning each game, win the most games, and ensure large winnings.

References

  1. ↑ Seitz, Colleen (October 27, 1999). "Blind Contestant Wins Big On 'Jeopardy'". NBC San Diego. Archived from the original on August 31, 2008.
  2. ↑ Goff, Steven (February 19, 1991). "Timanus Paints the Picture by Numbers". The Washington Post.
  3. 1 2 3 From the Vault: Eddie Timanus | JEOPARDY!. Jeopardy! official Youtube account (August 4, 2020). Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Jackman, Tom (October 24, 1999). "1st Blind Player Wins Big on 'Jeopardy!'". The Washington Post. p. C.01.
  5. ↑ Alessandra Stanley (July 13, 2004). "O.K., Alex, Smart Nerds for $1 Million". The New York Times . Archived from the original on July 16, 2014. Retrieved October 5, 2010. In 1999 Eddie Timanus, a blind sportswriter for USA Today, became an undefeated champion despite not being able to read the clue cards; on his final two days ratings went up 15 percent.
  6. ↑ "Unstoppable quiz-show contestant slated for doubleheader". USA Today . April 21, 2000. Retrieved October 5, 2010. Eddie Timanus, 31, a sports reporter for USA TODAY, is used to covering doubleheaders. Soon, he'll participate in a game-show twin bill, acting as a phone-a-friend lifeline on May 9's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and competing in Jeopardy!'s Tournament of Champions the next day.
  7. ↑ "Enjoying Game Shows In Man's Blood". The New York Times. December 2, 2004. Retrieved October 5, 2010. Eddie Timanus 36 currently of Arlington Va recently appeared on the syndicated version of ABC's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire ...
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.