It’s not online yet, but this week’s Entertainment Weekly has a nice write-up of both Prisoner of Trebekistan and Brainiac, Ken Jennings’sese’ss (man, I hate possessive plurals) book.  Nice picture of us both and everything.

One delightfully odd nitpick: the reviewer, whose writing I generally quite like and respect, strangely claims that I’ve earned "hundreds of thousands in non-televised contests."

Um. 

I have no idea what this writer is imagining — apparently some kind of back-alley trivia competition, perhaps in the style of underground cockfights, where a skeevy host with gold teeth and a scar is surrounded by sweaty bettors waving crumpled lumps of third-world currency, all pressing themselves against a chicken wire enclosure as two desperate and dead-end knowledge geeks face off with buzzers pressed against their heads, Deerhunter-style.

Granted, this is what Jeopardy! itself sometimes feels like when you’re playing.  But no.

My guess is the guy just didn’t read Chapter 18 ("Greed, a Quick Smush, and a Shameful Little Booby"), about other game show experiences I’ve had, very closely.  Probably just got a little confused.  Could happen to anyone.  Lord knows I probably make ten mistakes in every post.

Although if he actually does know about some back-alley trivia somewhere… what the heck, sign me up.