Caitlin screaming in the car on the way back home from the zoo this afternoon. I want a “I’M HUNGRY IN MY MOUTH!” T-shirt now. She is a real piece of work.

A couple months ago, crossword constructor/TV writer/onetime Jeopardy! contestant Andrea Carla Michaels contacted me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to inherit a couple decades’ worth of Jeopardy!- and game show-related newspaper clippings she’d collected. Sure! I like to get weird stuff in the mail. Unless it’s anthrax or something.

There were some real curios in Andrea’s collection, some of which I’ll post here on the blog from time to time. Here’s a personal favorite, a 1999 magazine sidebar feature–from Newsweek, I think, judging by the fonts. It purports to show Jeopardy! popularity regionally in the U.S. It’s weird, right? What exactly is going on here? I have some theories, but I’m interested to hear what you guys think.

At the time I appeared on Jeopardy! in 2004, I was apparently a resident of the most “trivia-challenged” state of the union. Not a real Jeopardy! hotbed like South Dakota. anyway! Well, take that, South Dakota.