An Answering Machine on Hold

He borrowed some from his brother the lawyer!

The worst grade he ever got was a C-plus!

It was in home economics!

When Jay Leno tried to pry more out of him during a "Tonight" show appearance Thursday, Jennings shook his head. "There are 'Jeopardy!' snipers in the audience right now," he said.

He did acknowledge that his favorite category is movies and that he's so absent-minded that he may have "just won a gazillion dollars on 'Jeopardy!' " but still couldn't find his car in the studio parking garage.

As a recurring character, Jennings has proven quirky and full of contradictions. He is a Mormon and former missionary who aces the Potent Potables category thanks to flashcards his wife, Mindy, made to drill him on cocktails. (He still flubbed a clue for creme de menthe, though, believing brandy was green.) He is a literature graduate from Brigham Young University who can rattle off characters and obscure plot details from virtually any great work, yet after correctly answering "The Hidden Staircase" one time, he suddenly gushed:

" Love Nancy Drew!"

Despite his conservative religious upbringing and squeaky-clean image, Jennings boasts an encyclopedic knowledge of R-rated movies and was swift to identify a line of lingerie by Victoria's Secret.

He also told Kelly Ripa on "Live With Regis and Kelly" that he planned to "roll around naked" in his money.

The Jennings juggernaut was made possible only by a change in "Jeopardy!" rules last year. Until then, champions were forced to retire after five games; now, they can play until defeated. Jennings passed the show's last longtimer a million dollars ago.

"The bad news is, they want us to institute steroid testing," Trebek quipped after Jennings triumphed for the 36th time.

America's infatuation with someone who resembles a runaway Opie from the Mayberry Wax Museum has clearly revitalized the game that Merv Griffin created in his dining room 40 years ago. Over the course of Jennings's run, "Jeopardy!" ratings have steadily climbed from 9.6 million to 12.3 million viewers, giving even the wildly popular "Wheel of Fortune" a run for its vowels.

The season that ended last night was taped in California in March, which means that Jennings's opponents arrived on the set with no clue that they were up against someone Trebek had already dubbed the Terminator.

Down they went, two by two. Lawyers, copywriters, homemakers, retirees, a guy who once drove a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and another who used to be a telephone psychic. Like all "Jeopardy!" contestants, they had to pay their own expenses and, even with $2,000 for second place and $1,000 for third, many ended up in the hole, returning home with nothing but a "Jeopardy!" travel cup, a tote bag and a bittersweet place in television history.