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The History of Christianity student talks about buzzer practice, doing her wager math on paper, and what the Div School taught her about staying calm on stage.

Lydia Herndon, a PhD student in the History of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School, appeared on the September 25, 2026, episode of Jeopardy! She was the only contestant to answer Final Jeopardy correctly, identifying poetry slams in the category “Coinages of the 1980s,” and finished in second place with $11,199. 

Herndon is not the first from the Divinity School to take the podium. Bevin Blaber, AM’12, PhD’20, assistant professor of religious studies at Grinnell College, competed in June 2025. 

Herndon is currently writing her dissertation on humor and jokes in the writing of Gregory of Nazianzus, the fourth-century Cappadocian church father. She spoke with Criteria about the long road to the studio, practicing for the buzzer, and the wager math that nearly ran out the clock.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you end up on Jeopardy!?

That story goes back a long way. Before I was born, my dad was a contestant on Jeopardy!, so I grew up knowing it was a show real people went on. 

I think I first took one of the tests in college. I went to New York City for an interview, and they didn’t call me that year. But every couple of years since then, they email and ask me to take the test again and try out. It was always kind of fun. It never felt like I was actually going to get on. Then this spring, I got the call.

Once you found out you were going, how did you prepare?

As you can imagine, I was busy writing my dissertation, so I didn’t have much time for dedicated study. Also, contestants don’t know the categories in advance, so you have to study a mishmash of everything. 

Mostly, I watched a lot of old episodes and practiced at home. I’d clap my hands or snap my fingers when I was ready to buzz in, because the buzzer is actually the hardest part. Everyone is so fast, and it’s a specific skill, so that was mostly what I was trying to get down. 

I also read somewhere that it’s good to watch Jeopardy! standing up, since you play standing up. So I started watching it standing up. I was doing weird little things like that, things that took no extra time.

You were the only player to get Final Jeopardy right. The clue was about poetry, and it included Ernie Banks. Did you know it right away?

No. I had a moment where I thought, oh, this is about Chicago, and I don’t know it. Thankfully, I started thinking about sports words. I almost wrote down “readathon,” because that sounds like a sports term. Then “slam” came to me, and I don’t know where it came from, but that’s more baseball, so I went with it.

How did you decide on your wager?

It was a runaway game. The leader, [Nikolas Polsinelli], who is also a University of Chicago student, was going to win, and I trusted he wouldn’t bet all his money. So my goal was second place, which could only happen if I got the question right and the second-place player got it wrong. I worked out how much that player would need to wager, and how much they would have left if they missed, and then I wagered so I’d end up with a little more than that. 

I sat there doing the math on paper for a very long time. I was so in my head that I missed them saying to lock in our wagers. I was looking around, and they said, “You have ten seconds to lock in your wager.” I was just glad I got a reasonable number written down.

Two University of Chicago students competing in one episode! What’s in the water here? Is there a UChicago habit of mind at work?

A lot of people have told me I seemed very calm up there. I think the training at the Div School really teaches grace under pressure, and what it’s like to put yourself out there even when you’re not 100 percent sure about your ideas yet. When people said that, I thought, well, I’ve done oral exams, I’ve presented at conferences, I’ve done all these different things. There’s a boldness about putting ideas out there, and I think that was a helpful skill I picked up.

Is there a clue you’d like another shot at, or a moment that has stayed with you from taping?

I had one wrong answer, and it was a Boston one. Since I’m from New England, it stung. I said Faneuil Hall, but the answer was Quincy Market. In the moment, I thought, oh, this is not good. But I’m at peace with it. 

For everything else, I either knew it and couldn’t buzz in fast enough, or I just didn’t know it. I did get a Christian Science clue about Boston, and that one felt like a win for religious studies.

Do you have any advice for people who are Jeopardy!-curious, or takeaways for folks from the Div School?

My advice is to have fun and enjoy it, which I think is something we’re good at in the classroom here in Swift Hall. It’s fun to exercise your mind this way