I remember someone joking, “Who’s next into the meat grinder?” I couldn’t decide if I wanted it to be me. At least then the wait would be over. My mother was in the audience, and you’re not allowed to talk to your guests during the taping, but her face said it all.

[What is life like for Ken Jennings and other former “Jeopardy!” stars?]

Lewis Black, a lawyer from Salt Lake City, and I are the first ones out of the trenches after production breaks for lunch. It’ll be a Thursday episode, April 11. We step onto marked-off squares that have built-in elevators that rise up to make it look like we’re all the same height. Lewis and I give each other a look. I try to remember that we’re playing against each other, too, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like we’re in this together. And someone, somehow, has got to take this guy down.

It’s not like I didn’t realize that was unlikely. In a strange way, though, the long odds felt liberating. The numbers on the game board stopped being real money and became nothing more than points in a game. A game I was still going to try to win, because Goliath or not, this was my one shot.

Most of James’s strategies aren’t new to the show — starting from the high-value clues at the bottom of the board, jumping from category to category, hunting for Daily Doubles. What makes him a “Jeopardy!” machine is all of that and his impeccable timing on the buzzer. It’s unreal.

I had thought that mastering the buzzer would be the easy part. I’m a millennial! I grew up playing video games! In reality? It felt impossible. You can’t buzz in until Alex is finished reading a clue; if you’re too early, you get locked out for a fraction of a second. You can try to time it by listening to him or you can watch for the white lights on either side of the game board, which turn on the moment the system is armed. I tried it all in our rehearsal rounds, but I never got the hang of it. And James had already had five games’ worth of practice.