What is Spider Smarts?

Ask Kerry Benn, ’06, she’s likely to know the answer. This week, she bested a three-day reigning champ to win on "Jeopardy!," the popular quiz show.

By day, Benn is assistant managing editor at Law360, a site that provides nonstop legal news coverage for business lawyers.

Benn’s double major in English and journalism while at Richmond gave her good training to tackle last night’s categories. It also didn’t hurt that she worked for The Collegian as a student, and has experience performing on a stage under pressure. (She cofounded Off the Cuff, the a capella group she mentioned in her second and final night on the show.)

“I kept thinking, ‘Why did they call me for this? I don't know anything about anything!’” Benn told us. “But when I got there and got up on stage for practice rounds and then for my real game, I had this total sense of calm and was just like, ‘This is totally fine. I know a lot of things and these other people know a lot of things. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.’”

While she was watching her episode on air, she had some fellow Spiders for support, including her husband Kyle Benn, ’06; her brother Kyle Grace, ’12; and her sister-in-law Shannon Morgan Grace, ’13.

Benn knew there were certain categories she had in the bag — anything to do with wordplay or U.S. history (Her husband teaches AP U.S. History and she helps grade most of his tests.), and geography. She also worked on memorizing possible clues for the categories that weren’t her forte.

In the end, she was in second place going into Final Jeopardy and correctly answered the category on The Civil War Era, which produced the night’s second shout-out to Virginia colleges. (University of Richmond being the first!)

The clue asked players to identify the largest state school in the United States in 1861, whose enrollment dropped 90 percent by 1862. Benn correctly answered with, “What is the University of Virginia?” and sealed her place as the new champion with a one-day winning of $14,000.

Go, Spiders!