For Erin Buker, her experience on “Jeopardy!” wasn’t all that she’d dreamed it would be.
Buker, a stay-at-home mom, competed on a recent episode of the beloved game show and walked away with a final score of -$7,200, which is the second-lowest score in the history of “Jeopardy!”
Buker tells Fox News Digital that while she had a “pretty cool” time taping the episode, she would describe it as an “out-of-body experience.”
“You’re looking, you see the clues, but you don’t remember what category it is,” she explained. “You’re reminding yourself to not, you know, make weird faces because you’re on live television. … The way they tape it is like it’s the live show. They really try to keep it really tight.”
‘JEOPARDY!’ TURNS 60: GAME SHOW’S NEW HOSTS, OUTRAGED FANS AND ‘WOKE’ QUESTIONS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
She continued, “So you just, like, don’t make weird faces, don’t … do anything odd, which is always kind of just running through your head. And then, so you’ll see the answer in front of you … it’s all very blurry, I can’t explain it.”
“This is all happening,” she said, “and it’s just it’s all happening at once, and there’s just a lot of noise in the head, and it’s kind of an out-of-body experience, too.”
WATCH: ‘JEOPARDY!’ CONTESTANT ERIN BUKER SAYS COMPETING ON GAME SHOW WAS OVERWHELMING
She suggested that playing along to “Jeopardy!” at home and actually filming an episode are very different, but she said she’d “love to do it again.”
The contestant told Fox News Digital that when a person aspires to be on “Jeopardy!” they “have a dream of it going spectacularly, or at least not dismally. And, you know, in my head I kept saying, ‘Well, at least just make it to Final Jeopardy.’ Or I would tell people, ‘I just want to make it to Final Jeopardy.’”
Buker competed against graduate student and “Survivor” alum Drew Basile and lighting designer Graham Hicks.
Due to her low score, Buker was not qualified to compete in Final Jeopardy. Basile ended up taking the win.
WATCH: ‘JEOPARDY!’ CONTESTANT ERIN BUKER DESCRIBES WHAT IT WAS LIKE GETTING HISTORIC LOW SCORE
While competing, one thing she said that “drove [her] nuts” was the buzzer that contestants use to answer a question.
“There [were] all these opportunities where you think, ‘OK, I got this,’ but it’s like, you don’t got this because someone else buzzes in first. And I wasn’t anticipating how kind of excruciating that part would be because it’s like, ‘No, no, but I know this one.’ But this other person gets to get the points for it in the score and, you know, the score gets higher.”
Buker was far from the first game show contestant to struggle with her answers or with the buzzer.
In May, a “Wheel of Fortune” contestant named Tavaris Williams spoke to Fox News Digital about his viral moment on the show.
“I tried to just beat my contestants by buzzing in first and letting my brain catch up,” Williams said.
Host Vanna White was at the puzzle board as the letters for the phrase were revealed, reading, “____ I_ T_E B__T!”
Williams quickly buzzed in and confidently said, “Right in the butt.”
His answer was met with a brief silence, then audience laughter, followed by a “What?” from fellow contestant Tyra and a definitive “no” from host Pat Sajak as a look of utter surprise crossed Williams’ face.
The correct answer was “THIS IS THE BEST!”
“None of those commonsense [thoughts like], ‘Well, there wasn’t enough letters for the word “right”’ [or] ‘This is a family show.’ None of that is going through your head when you have 50 monitors above you, the lights are extra bright, there are 100 stagehands, there’s producers, there’s sound guys,” he said.
Williams added, “And I was standing next to Pat, so I had to say something. I wasn’t going to get buzzed without saying something. And the rest is history.”
After the puzzle, Williams said they took a break from filming, and that’s when Sajak, who he called “spectacular,” did his best to support him.
“So, right then and there he tried to make me feel better and move on, but they immediately cut to break. And in the break, Pat was very gracious, and he was very supportive and said, ‘Oh, you made a name for yourself. We’re going to see how we can edit that tastefully. I don’t know how, but we’ll figure it out.’ He was very accommodating, and he made me feel great throughout the process after that. He’s truly amazing,” he said.
WATCH: ‘WHEEL OF FORTUNE’ CONTESTANT EXPLAINS HIS RISQUE ANSWER
Williams also said White is “amazing” and had praise for the producers behind the scenes, even though he realized his answer made their day a little trickier.
“They are consummate professionals. I may have exchanged a couple of glances, and I got a ‘He’s going to make us work today’ look. But they were great. They were gracious. They’ve seen it all before. They may not have been expecting that. But you know, they allowed me to continue with the show and, hopefully, everybody got a kick out of it,” he said.
Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Stanton contributed to this report.
