Albuquerque woman to appear as a contestant on ‘Jeopardy!’

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Albuquerque resident Weckiai Rannila will appear as a contestant on the popular game show “Jeopardy!” Wednesday night.

Rannila, 28, a module engineer at Intel in Rio Rancho, got the call to compete on the show on Feb. 14 and went out to film in Los Angeles, California, in March. “Actually stepping onto that set that I’m used to seeing every night on TV was very strange. And the actual, you know, it felt like a dream. And the time of actually filming the show went by so quickly,” Rannila said.

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Rannila said she grew up watching “Jeopardy!” with her parents and had previously auditioned for the teen tournament when she was in high school. “I didn’t make it, but that actually turned out to be ok, because you can only, if you’ve appeared on teen ‘Jeopardy,’ you can’t do it again as an adult,” she explained.

She decided to take the “Jeopardy!” Anytime Test again in late 2022 or early 2023 after she learned her father was taking it. Rannila went on to do an audition over Zoom before being selected as a contestant. “Anyone who is a fan of the show, or a fan of trivia in general, that it’s totally worth it to try out and audition by taking that Anytime Test,” Rannila told KRQE News 13.

Wednesday’s episode featuring Rannila will air at 6 p.m. MT on KRQE, channel 13.1. The local contestant will go up against five-game “Jeopardy!” champion and emergency room doctor Amy Hummel from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Nils Cousin, an attorney from Washington, D.C.

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