Mayim Bialik Reveals Her Best Tip for 'Jeopardy!' Success

Plus, the hardest words for her to say and how she perfects her pronunciation.

The clue: Patton Oswalt, Wil Wheaton or Ike Barinholtz

Answer: Which semifinalist is the new champion of Celebrity Jeopardy! who gets a $1 million grand prize?

All will be revealed on Thursday, Feb. 2 on the Celebrity Jeopardy! final when Oswalt, Wheaton and Barinholtz go head-to-head in the battle for $1 million for the charity of their choice. (For Wheaton, it’s National Women’s Law Center; Oswalt: Alice’s Kids; Barinholtz: Pacific Clinics.) Celebrity Jeopardy! airs at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and will be available to stream on Hulu.

For host Mayim Bialik, there's something special about the primetime feel of Celebrity Jeopardy! Plus, she continues to be wowed by the contestants.

“It’s really fun for me to get to see incredible comedians, actors and performers competing against each other on an intellectual level and also being really playful. So it's fun for me as an observer just to watch it all,” says the actress, author, host and neuroscientist of the show that features a Triple Jeopardy! round for the first time ever in the history of the franchise. “Many of these celebrities, especially as we get into this level of the competition, are people who could hold their own in a non-celebrity Jeopardy! tournament.”

Mayim Bialik sat down with Parade to talk about Celebrity Jeopardy!

Patton Oswalt, Will Wheaton and Ike Barinholtz are stepping up to the podium for their chance to win a million dollars. What qualities do they each have that makes them great?

Oh my gosh, no one has asked me this. I've been friends with Will for a long time and was always been impressed by his incredibly specific brain. He has a very good analytic brain. Even if something may not be intuitive to him, he can think really, really quickly. And that's really important for extrapolating—if it's something that you're close to, but able to extrapolate out. So I'd say that's a really strong skill of Will's.

Patton is one of those really effortlessly smart people. He's humble, funny and really great to watch. But he's also a pretty serious competitor. Precision really matters to him. And I think it matters to him not only in how he communicates, but in how he remembers the things that he knows. And there's a lot of them.

And Ike is one of those people who has an incredibly broad set of information and knowledge in his brain that he is able to recall very, very quickly, efficiently and effectively. So these are three really strong competitors in their own right. But putting the three of them together makes an intense competition—particularly, because of all those separate features.

What do you think is the best strategy to become a Celebrity Jeopardy! champion?

It's the kind of thing where a lot of it is about what you know and how you are able to recall information quickly. But a lot of it, as in acting and comedy, is about the timing. It’s being able to get into the rhythm of that buzzer. It can be a huge impediment if you're not in that rhythm and the timing is hard. So you'll see with a lot of our contestants that there's a rhythm that they get into. It's not that different from the rhythm that many of them as actors, comedians and performers need to keep in mind. So that's a big one. For me, nerves would stop me from ringing in at the right time. So I guess try not to be so nervous.

Do you provide any input as far as topics or specific questions?

No. You just kind of wind me up and put me out there. We have an incredible staff of researchers and writers here who are in charge of all of the things that we all love about Jeopardy! For me, I just need to make sure I pronounce things correctly and get as many clues read as possible. That means speaking quickly, but not fast. And I’m trying to make it a showcase for our contestants, which is what I try and do on syndicated and in every other opportunity at Jeopardy!. And that’s even more so with our celebrities, they have their own persona and personality. But what we're really here to do is highlight their intelligence and their quirkiness,

People say, “Mayim seems so excited when there's a science category.” Do those make you extra happy?

Oh, yeah. I’m always extra happy when science is brought up anywhere in the universe. It's especially fun for me. Science is often one of the only categories I don't have a million questions on before I figure out how I'm gonna say things and pronounce them. So that’s nice.

I love all our categories equally. I’m the child of English teachers, so I also love literature. My parents were huge art fans. So I love those categories. And I have a minor in Hebrew and Jewish studies, so I really love anything around the Middle East, politics, language or culture, like Bible history. All those things are fun. I get to learn every day here, and that's really special. I get to learn things I would never get to learn—just from learning the clues and seeing all the things that come easily to our contestants

Can you talk about your earliest connection to Jeopardy!?

One of my first sort of direct interactions with Jeopardy!, besides knowing of it in the cultural vernacular and such, was when I was on Blossom. Alex Trebek did a guest spot. It was a fantasy sequence so I didn't get to interact with him directly. But I had an awareness that it was such a cultural touchstone.

Now I get to experience it from the other side of the podium as it were. I get to see all the incredible things that happen behind the scenes to make these shows happen. I've always been a what’s-happening behind-the-camera person. I've always been interested in how things come together. And Jeopardy! is one of those shows where it's like a finely choreographed, synchronized experience of how the clues come together and how the show is put together. There are so many pieces that people don't get to see. It’s a thrill to get to experience it.

How has the experience of hosting changed you?

It's been an enormous shift in my life and how people think of me. I've been an actress and sitcom actress in the public eye since I'm 13. I left the industry for 12 years to pursue education. I got a doctorate and had two kids, which is its own doctorate of trying to figure out how to raise children. So, at this point in my career, I work on Call Me Kat, which we are finishing our third season for Fox.

My acting life is still a huge part of my life. But this is something that allows me to essentially keep learning. I was in school for 12 years—graduate school and undergrad. And I love learning and being around people who are intellectually stimulating and stimulated. This feels like my people. It’s a bunch of people who really value all the details of the things that go into making Jeopardy!.

You mentioned how you have to study how to pronounce certain words. Are there subjects that are more challenging than others?

The French language is very challenging. Alex [Trebek] was Canadian and French came quite easily to him. That's the one language I don't speak. Today, I'm literally in my dressing room here at Jeopardy!. And there was a word that I was so certain I was pronouncing correctly and the writers were like, “Nope. Still, no. That's not how French works.” So French remains a sticking point.

Do you ever get a coach to help you?

No. There's a few French Canadians backstage and part of our writing team has some Canadians and so they help. My boyfriend in real life is Canadian. I'm not allowed to talk about clues with him, but I'll sometimes ask about rules of grammar so I can try and get a better handle on it. I feel like I have enough support here. It’s an amazing team that I do feel very supported by, especially in the French department.