Wilcley Lima, the IT director at UF’s Business Services Division, poses with “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek in March. Lima said he binge-watched “Jeopardy” for about six months before going on the show.
When people think of “Jeopardy,” some think of encyclopedia-like knowledge and books of trivia. For Wilcley Lima, he saw numbers and patterns.
In March, the IT director at UF’s Business Services Division played as a contestant on the show. He’s been sworn to secrecy for two months, but the episode will air May 30.
He and his wife, Pamela Lima, a second-year UF dental student, said they enjoy watching “Jeopardy” together. She suggested he apply to get on the show, and although he had tried before, he gave it one more shot and was asked to attend a live audition in Tampa.
“What’s cool about ‘Jeopardy’ is there’s people from all sorts of backgrounds and ages and professions,” he said. “That’s what makes it appealing: Anybody can get on there.”
Once a year the show finds new contestants through an online quiz that anyone can take.
It’s not really about memorizing long lists or numerous facts, he said. It’s more about figuring out the patterns in which they ask questions and what topics they like to focus on.
“I binge-watched a lot of ‘Jeopardy,’” he said.
At UF, part of Wilcley’s job is to look for patterns in software. Although his undergraduate and master’s degrees are in mechanical engineering, he started to teach himself coding in high school and continued to learn and work with software through college. By the time he graduated, Lima had his own software company and decided he wanted to work in IT professionally.
“There’s a lot of different levels of smart,” he said. “I guess I’m enough to get on ‘Jeopardy.’”
For two years, Pamela and Wilcley would watch “Jeopardy,” never missing a night. After a while, Pamela said she began to notice something: Wilcley usually did better than the contestants.
“He always played really well,” she said. “He always beat me. ‘What are you doing? You need to be on this show!’”
Six months after the audition, Lima found out he would be a contestant on the show. He flew to Los Angeles with his family to cheer him on as they filmed the episode. For “Jeopardy” fans, he suggests traveling to be part of the show.
“Go make the trip to Los Angeles; go watch the show and be in the audience,” he said. “It’s a really fun experience.”
