Prince William woman a winner on 'Jeopardy!'

WOODBRIDGE — The trouble with winning at Jeopardy! is that you have to turn around and try to do it again almost immediately.

"They do five episodes in one day and it's 10 minutes before they start filming the next one," said Diane Wilshere, a Prince William County woman who recently won a total of $19,801 on the game show hosted by Alex Trebek.

Wilshere, a one-time Jeopardy champion, lost her second game on what is possibly the most cerebral trivia game show on television.

"I was in shock and I couldn't calm down," said Wilshere, an actor in the Maryland Renaissance Fair.

"I was just flustered from winning," she said.

Trebek saw that Wilshere was excited and mentioned it when she and the two other contestants stood with him at the end of the show.

"The first thing Alex said to me when we walked over to our marks was that, 'There is no crying in Jeopardy!'" Wilshere said.

Wilshere got a slow start in the Jeopardy! round and only managed to buzz in successfully on two answers. She got one right and one wrong.

It wasn't until the Double Jeopardy! round that she got on a roll.

The "Tudors" category was one she knew something about.

"I caught fire in a category that I knew cold," said Wilshere, who lives with her husband and son on Lost Creek Court in the Hoadly area.

Another thing she and Trebek talked about at the end of the show was that category, Wilshere said.

"He and I actually discussed some of the historical inaccuracies in the Showtime series. It turns out he knows as much about the era as I did," she said.

The other challenge in Jeopardy! is that darn signaling device, the 47-year-old said.

"My biggest problem — this is the biggest problem for anybody — is the buzzer," Wilshere said.

Contestants cannot signal in until Trebek finishes reading the clue, and there are lights on the set that signal when contestants can ring in. Wilshere was off her rhythm during the first round, while the other two contestants did better.

"I was buzzing in too early and I just was getting beaten out by the two guys," said Wilshere, who has also appeared with Vpstart Crow theater group that performs at the Cramer Center in Manassas.

But by the second round, she was focused on the game to the exclusion of all else, and pulled ahead of the two men.

"I really didn't know I was in the lead and by how far until Alex said, 'There's a minute to go' and I glanced up to where the contestants can see the score," Wilshere said.

After that she played it cool and decided not to "screw it up" by buzzing in on questions she wasn't sure about.

Getting on the show is perhaps more demanding than playing the game.

Wilshere auditioned online in Jan. 2007. The test is 50 questions and contestants have eight seconds to answer each question and there's no going back, Wilshere said.

She did well on the test.

"I was called in to do an audition on Mother's Day 2007 in a hotel in D.C. in Dupont Circle," Wilshere said. "There were only about 20 people there and we were one of about five or six groups of 20 they were seeing."

Contestants get another test of 50 questions and are then divided into groups of three for filming to see if they play the game well, speak clearly and use the signaling devices effectively, Wilshere said.

Wilshere thought her chances for getting a spot on the show were "remote."

"They see about 2,400 people in person, and out of that they'll use about 400 for the entire season," she said.

Wilshere, who worked in a trip to Disneyland while she was in California for filming, said the whole experience was worth her time.

"It was a blast. It was a lot of fun," she said.

Keith Walker is Manassas Bureau Chief for the News & Messenger.