NYC bartender Austin Tyler Rogers has so far taken $278,300 in seven games of Jeopardy!, delivering a Ken Jennings-like performance with a persona that doesn’t remind people of Jennings at all. Rogers appears to be having loads of fun on the show, slowly revealing parts of his history in the little anecdotes host Alex Trebek elicits during the breaks between rounds.
Rogers grew up in Westchester County, New York — about an hour north of New York City — on a nature preserve where he says he had to “go six miles” to see another house. (His dad was a park ranger.) Asked by Trebek if he ever encountered wild animals there during his youth, Rogers replied that the wildest creatures he’d come across then were “drunk kids from John Jay high school.” These days Rogers presumably sees other drunk people on occasion: he’s a bartender at The Gaf West on West 48th Street in Manhattan, according to his Twitter posts. But he’s hard to pin down: Rogers also claims he lives in Russia and works for a fictitious company from Blade Runner. It seems like he really did get degrees in history and music from Macalester College in Minnesota.
The best part of Austin Rogers Jeopardy! run is you can virtually watch it with him, since he’s live tweeting the shows. (He “barely got subcutaneous” in one episode, but he’s sure getting under the other contestants’ skin!)
#austinonjeopardy #Jeopardy @Jeopardy @TheWaylonNYC pic.twitter.com/q5Jvec4ZqF
— Austin Tyler Rogers (@austintylerro) October 4, 2017
Barely got subcutaneous. #jeopardy#austinonjeopardy @Jeopardy
— Austin Tyler Rogers (@austintylerro) October 4, 2017
