Answer: This University of Chicago librarian is also a celebrated Jeopardy! champion who dethroned James Holzhauer, ending his 32-game run. When she's not assisting university students and faculty or analyzing the difficulty level of Jeopardy! clues, she's a dedicated volunteer with the Chicago Humanities Festival.

We reached out to Emma to congratulate her on her recent success and learn more about why she volunteers with the Festival.

CHF: How did you first become involved with CHF?

Emma Boettcher: The first CHF program I attended was a conversation with Siddhartha Mukherjee on his book The Gene, back in 2017. I had just moved to Chicago the previous year, and didn’t know a lot about CHF, but getting to hear the author of one of my favorite books convinced me that I needed to keep the festival on my radar. With many more experiences with CHF since then, I’ve started looking at its programming not just as a way to see my favorite authors, but to discover new-to-me authors that I might love.

CHF: Why do you volunteer with CHF?

Emma Boettcher: I started volunteering in 2018 because I wanted to feel more connected to Chicago. Attending the events is great, but as a volunteer, I feel like I’m helping other people develop that relationship with the city and with the humanities as well (even if I’m just pointing people toward the bathroom or scanning their tickets).

CHF: What memorable moment from your time with CHF stands out to you?

Emma Boettcher: In the fall, I was a volunteer for the conversation with Carol Anderson about her book One Person, No Vote, where voter suppression in the Georgia governor’s race was very much on everyone’s mind. Five months later, Stacey Abrams, the candidate who lost that extraordinarily close race, was speaking at CHF herself. I loved seeing how those two separate pieces of programming spoke to each other over time – CHF isn’t providing just one diverting afternoon, but facilitating a long-term engagement with these ideas.

"I started volunteering in 2018 because I wanted to feel more connected to Chicago."

CHF: Have CHF programs helped boost your trivia knowledge or preparation for Jeopardy!?

Emma Boettcher: CHF programs remind their attendees to stay curious about the world. While I can’t point to any one fact from one event as being crucial to my trivia knowledge, being surrounded by people who love to learn is a great environment for any trivia buff. And after enjoying Amor Towles’ event this spring, I’m crossing my fingers that Jeopardy! will do a category all about the fascinating history of the Metropol Hotel.

CHF: What advice do you have for trivia buffs or those who aspire to be on Jeopardy!?

Emma Boettcher: Keep asking questions, and never assume you know everything.

CHF: By the way, what does writing a Master’s thesis on Jeopardy! actually entail?

Emma Boettcher: A lot of time in the library! More specifically: I wanted to see if how Jeopardy! clues were written affected how difficult they were. Because the show assigns a monetary value to each clue based on its difficulty, and the clues are largely text-based, it was the perfect dataset to study how things like length, syntax, and word choice affect perceptions of difficulty.

More to Explore

Read more about how Emma defeated James Holzhauer

Read a Vulture Q+A to learn more about the behind-the-scenes of Jeopardy!

Read Emma Boettcher's Master's thesis,"Predicting the Difficulty of Trivia Questions Using Text Features"