‘Jeopardy!’ Hasn’t Had a Player Like Amy Schneider

OAKLAND, Calif. — When Amy Schneider’s 40-day “Jeopardy!” winning streak ended, she said she handed out thank you notes to the crew, briefly chatted with other contestants, then excused herself.

“I went in the bathroom, cried for about 30 or 40 seconds, pulled myself together and headed out,” Ms. Schneider said from her sunny apartment in Oakland on Friday.

The way she recounted her defeat mirrored the way she played on “Jeopardy!”: quickly, efficiently and with matter-of-fact warmth.

“It wasn’t just a feeling of sadness, there was a sense of relief,” she added. “It was so exhausting.”

Ms. Schneider’s continued success on the show meant that once her episodes started taping at the end of September, she was competing in five games a day, twice a week for several consecutive weeks, commuting from Oakland to Los Angeles.

She had taken a demotion at her workplace, used all her paid days and taken several unpaid vacation days to keep her job.

She had won $1,382,800 and she left the show. But as of this week, her check hadn’t arrived yet and Ms. Schneider was still working full time.

“It started airing when I knew that I had done this kind of historic thing and nobody else knew anything about it,” she said.

She was a skilled player in speed and accuracy, but her style of play was more traditional than Mr. Amodio. Ms. Schneider preferred to play one category vertically, from lowest to highest score, rather than playing across the lucrative bottom rows. This style was popularized by James Holzhauer who won $2,464,216 in his 32-game streak. Ms. Schneider didn’t bounce around the board looking for Daily Doubles in the style of previous contestants like Chuck Forrest and Arthur Chu. Her wagers were conservative.

Her strategy paid off. Ms. Schneider left the show as the highest-winning woman in the show’s history. She’s already a legend among both “Jeopardy!” fans and former contestants.

“The depth and breadth of her knowledge are remarkable,” said Terry Wolfisch Cole, one of the 82 contestants who competed against Ms. Schneider during her run on the show.

‘I’ll Give Anything a Shot Now’

Ms. Schneider had already done three interviews when I met her. If she was tired of speaking to reporters, she didn’t let it show.

She greeted me wearing an oxblood dress with big white polka dots from Anthropologie that revealed a large tattoo on her left arm of the titular character from L. Frank Baum’s novel “The Ozma of Oz.” Ozma has special significance for Ms. Schneider. “When she was an infant, she was kidnapped and enchanted by an evil sorceress and raised as a boy,” she said.

“And then the enchantment was lifted and she was revealed to be the beautiful princess she was all along,” Ms. Schneider said.

Instead of wearing her signature pearls, she wore the necklace depicting the Star, one her favorite tarot card. Genevieve Davis (25), a Oakland native and nanny, gifted the necklace to her. Ms. Schneider gave Ms. Davis the tarot reading that night. Ms. Schneider describes herself as an atheist who doesn’t believe in the occult or the supernatural but, as she said, “It’s not a queer meet cute if there’s not tarot.”

Ms. Schneider came to tarot via her ex-wife, who introduced her to Rachel Pollack’s book “78 Degrees of Wisdom.” Tarot would have been out of the question when she was growing up in Dayton, Ohio. Her family was committed to Catholicism, and Ms. Schneider struggled with her faith as a child.

She recalled a 2002 moment when she drove with her brother and two of her cousins to Toronto to visit Pope John Paul II for World Youth Day. Ms. Schneider agreed that she would go on the trip to avoid telling mother that she no more considers herself Catholic.

They had waited in a field for the night to secure their spots, but they forgot to bring any tents or other camping gear. It started to rain as they tried to go to sleep. Then liturgical music began to play over the sound system.

This was Ms. Schneider’s benchmark. “Whenever it gets bad, I think, ‘I’m not lying in a field in the rain,’” she said.

Since her transition in 2017, Ms. Schneider said that she’s made a point to say yes to new experiences. “Because there was so much that I denied myself for so long, I’ll give anything a shot now.”

She tried stand-up comedy, pierced her nose, and entered a new relationship. This was her first since her divorce from her wife in 2016.

Ms. Schneider, now 42, is in love with her new girlfriend. They openly gush about their new girlfriends, share inside jokes, and adore their black longhaired cat Meep. His toys were scattered all over their living room floor. (In case you need more proof that Ms. Schneider loves cats, she scrubs her dishes in cat-shaped sponges. She also cuts her vegetables on a cat shaped cutting board.

“I’ve had two serious relationships in my life, and this is the second,” Ms. Schneider said. “When I met the woman who became my wife, I had never even kissed anyone and I was 25.”

What is Public?

There is an unfortunate pattern of “Jeopardy!” alums — particularly women — being targeted online after their appearances. Former contestants recounted instances that included insults and creepy messages as well as threats.

To prepare for this, Ms. Schneider followed the guidance offered to all new contestants by the show’s producers, including locking down her social media accounts. She also created the public-facing @Jeopardamy and Twitter accounts. Still, these precautions didn’t prevent harassment online.

She has so far mostly ignored the vitriol directed toward her, or responded to it with sarcasm. “thank you” tweet she posted on New Year’s Eve.

Ms. Schneider was gunned down in her apartment’s lobby a few weeks back. She was not physically harmed and stressed that she doesn’t think the incident was related to her appearance on “Jeopardy!” Still, it’s not her favorite thing to talk about.

“I tweeted about it, and so it was public, and that’s on me,” she said. “But to have people in my life find out about this thing that happened to me by seeing a news article was a slightly unsettling thing to happen.”

Ms. Schneider had the difficult decision of what she wanted to wear when she was preparing for competition. Ms. Schneider took along her favorite pink blazer to Nordstrom Rack and Target. She said she “overpacked” jewelry, but after she won a few games in the pearls she thought audiences might like it if she continued with a signature accessory.

She also thought about how she wanted to sound.

“I’ve got a more feminine voice when I really want to, and I’d sort of been planning on using that voice on TV,” she said. She decided to keep her normal voice and not alter her voice conscious. She’s proud of that decision.

“Trans women watching can see me with my voice as it is and see me being OK with it,” she said.

Ms. Schneider had previously found her voice to be a source of anxiety and dysphoria. But, she is now considering making it a profession. She recently signed with the talent agency CAA and said that she’s interested in voice acting.

She is also considering returning to podcasting. She and her ex-wife used to co-host a “Downton Abbey” podcast, and she hosted a show about “Moby-Dick” and a tarot podcast called “These Are Just Cards.”

“Jeopardy!” forbids contestants to appear on other game shows for six months after they are on the show, but after that Ms. Schneider is also open to more game show appearances, which could be well suited to her preternatural response time.

She practiced for “Jeopardy!” using click pens and said she didn’t know she had a gift for buzzing in until she was on the show. This fact will no doubt frustrate many contestants, some of whom train with special buzzers, designed to mimic those used in the “Jeopardy!” studios, to shave milliseconds from their buzzes.

Ms. Schneider was able to see herself play at the Heart and Dagger Saloon in Oakland on Friday. Ms. Schneider settled down on a stool to order a sauvignon Blanc and a pack Parliament Lights.

Another customer asked the bartender if the TV would be tuned for the Warriors game. “No, we’re watching ‘Jeopardy!’” the bartender replied, nodding to Ms. Schneider. The man’s eyes lit up when he saw the champion sitting beside him. “Unbelievable! Cheers!” he said, toasting her. Moments later, a bearded man sitting next to him leaned over and asked, “You got robbed?”

Ms. Schneider smiled, and nodded. “Yeah, I got robbed.”

Over the course of the show’s 30 minutes, two patrons sent free drinks, which were happily accepted by Ms. Schneider.

After watching herself win $25,000 in Final Jeopardy, Ms. Schneider went to the bar’s patio with Ms. Davis and their friend Hilary Hays.

Ms. Hays is the account manager for @Jeopardamy Instagram. “I was like, ‘Let’s get you on Instagram and get you some free stuff!’” Ms. Hays said, using an expletive.

A collection of photos from the show are featured on the Instagram account. They are all remarkably similar. Ms. Schneider is almost always framed identically, smiling in front of the show’s blue set, head tilted, pearls around her neck. Her clothing is conservative, and the captions are direct: “​​Day 32: I’ve worn this blouse a few times now and who doesn’t enjoy a good find from @target?”

“I would have no interest if anyone else did it, but apparently people like it,” Ms. Schneider said of the account, which has more than 25,000 followers. Ms. Hays stated that celebrities such as Kelly Osbourne and Molly Shannon, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amy Schumer, and Molly Shannon have sent her DMs.

It seemed to work if the goal was to get some free stuff. Ms. Schneider was able to shop at Nordstrom in San Francisco with a stylist the next day. She was on the lookout for something to wear to April’s GLAAD Media Awards, at which she would be honored.

After settling on a haul that included a navy Alex Evenings gown, a blue and tan floral print dress by Maggy London, Marc Fisher pumps with a chunky heel and some jewelry, Ms. Schneider’s tab exceeded the $2,000 she had been given.

However, the cashier ran her credit card and flagged the transaction as fraudulent. Ms. Schneider was not surprised by the fact that she had a credit card problem after winning more than a million dollars. However, there was no time to dwell on it.

She was already late for a complimentary hair color appointment in the city.