'What is Iowa?' Waukee woman wins on 'Jeopardy!' while putting Iowa in the spotlight

A phone call Halley Ryherd thought might be an April Fools’ Day joke ended up leading to her to a "Jeopardy!" win on Wednesday's broadcast of the long-running trivia show.

"I got a call on, of all days, April 1, from 'Jeopardy!' and I was thinking, ‘If this is my brother, I’m gonna kill you,'" said Ryherd, a real estate attorney from Waukee. 

As she quickly discovered, the call was genuine and at the end of April, Ryherd was flown out to the "Jeopardy!" set in Culver City, California, to record episodes, including her current win.

She faced one-day champion Pete Chattrabhuti and Lauryl Tucker on the episode that aired Wednesday night.

During the first round, Ryherd snagged a question after Chattrabhuti couldn’t come up with the answer: The Missouri is a museum in Oahu, the sister ship, named for the state due north, is also one at the Port of Los Angeles. She asked, “What is Iowa?”

“Getting to answer “What is Iowa?” and steal from Pete on 'Jeopardy' is maybe one of my top five life moments,” she wrote on Twitter.

“I have always been a kind of trivia nerd. I was on the Quiz Bowl team at Southeast Polk High School,” Ryherd told the Des Moines Register. “(Before that) I remember coming home and watching shows like ‘Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?’”

At the end of the “Jeopardy!” round, all three contestants were within $200 of each other.

“In Double Jeopardy, I lucked into a literary title characters category and I was an English minor at Iowa State," she said, noting another key factor in her victory.

She also noted her time working at the bygone movie rental chain Family Video as helping her with some film-related questions.

By the end of Double Jeopardy!, Ryherd answered three $2,000 clues to take a $14,000 lead into Final Jeopardy!, where the category was Television History.

The answer: in the opening scene of its July 21, 1969, pilot episode, a man carves the letter D into wet cement. None of the contestants got the right question, what is “Sesame Street?”

She credits her victory to approaching her betting in Final Jeopardy! with the anticipation that everyone else would get the answer right when it ended up being wrong answers across the board.

Ryherd ended the game in the lead with $5,999.

After graduating from Southeast Polk High School, Ryherd attended Iowa State University, and later she received a degree in law from Drake University. She kept up with her love of quizzes with bar trivia and by taking the "Jeopardy! Anytime Test" — an online qualifying test for the show — every year the day after Valentine's Day.

Also central to Ryherd's appearance on "Jeopardy!" was impressing the Twitter account @OneEclecticMom, run by Lilly Nelson, a self-proclaimed "Jeopardy!" fashion connoisseur who rates the outfits of contestants.

"Also tomorrow is the day I get to find out what @OneEclecticMom thinks of my favorite sweater, which is ALMOST as important as being on @Jeopardy," Ryherd wrote in a Tuesday tweet.

Ryherd took home $5,999, which she's earmarked for a trip to France next year with her husband for their 10th anniversary.

Ryherd returned as a one-day champion on Thursday to defend her title, however, she didn't fare as well

Trailing behind the other two competitors with $7,200, Ryherd wagered $7,199 during Final Jeopardy!, which ended up being incorrect across all three competitors. Ryherd finished the day with $1 while Dave Bzdak — a philosophy professor from Syracuse, New York — dropped from $13,000 to $2,000 and won the day.

Isaac Hamlet covers arts, entertainment and culture at the Des Moines Register. Reach him at ihamlet@gannett.com or 319-600-2124, or follow him on Twitter @IsaacHamlet.