Ken Jennings - After Jeopardy!

After Jeopardy!

Taking advantage of the notoriety that Jennings's losing Final Jeopardy! answer afforded, H&R Block offered Jennings free tax planning and financial services for the rest of his life. H&R Block senior vice president David Byers estimated that Jennings would owe approximately $1.04 million in taxes on his winnings.

In 2004, Democratic politicians Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid unsuccessfully asked Jennings to run for the United States Senate from Utah. Jennings observed, "that was when I realized the Democratic Party was f@#$ed in '04."

Jennings has written three books. Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs (2006, Villard, ISBN 1-4000-6445-7, trade paperback ISBN 0-8129-7499-9) details his experiences on Jeopardy! and his research into trivia culture conducted after the completion of his run. Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days, a hardcover book (2008, Villard, ISBN 0-345-59997-2), is a compilation of trivia questions—with 3 categories and about 20 questions per day of the year. Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks (2011, Scribner, ISBN 1-4391-6717-6) explores the world of map and geography enthusiasts.

Jennings also had a column in Mental Floss magazine called "Six Degrees of Ken Jennings", in which readers submit two wildly different things and he has to connect them in exactly six moves, much in the same vein as the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. The column ran from November 2005; to the September–October 2010 issue.

According to Variety.com, Jennings and television producer Michael Davies teamed up as executive producers on a new game show format for Comedy Central. According to Comedy Central execs, it was planned that Jennings would co-host and participate. The series was planned to premiere late in 2005 or in the first quarter of 2006; as of April 2006, development had stalled, and the show's future remained uncertain. Jennings explained on his website that "Stephen Colbert's show was doing so well in its post-Daily Show spot that Comedy Central decided they weren't in the market for a quiz show anymore." However, as of mid-2006, he was still shopping a potential game show titled, Ken Jennings vs. the Rest of the World.

Jennings appeared on The Colbert Report on September 14, 2006. During the interview, Colbert discussed Jennings's book, Brainiac, and mocked him not knowing the number of pages the book contained. After Colbert coined a word to describe intellectual nerdiness, "poindexterity", Jennings was going back and forth of what is the correct noun for "poindexter." Jennings noted, as he had done earlier that day on NPR's Talk of the Nation, that since his streak, people "seem to have an extra-hard trivia question" in case they run into him.

He also appeared twice on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! program. In his Feb. 25, 2006 appearance on the "Not My Job" segment, he answered all three questions correctly, winning for a listener Carl Kasell's voice on that person's answering machine. Jennings stated, "This is, this is the proudest moment of my game show life."

Entertainment Weekly put his performance on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Answer: A software engineer from Utah, he dominated the quizfest for a record 74 shows in 2004, amassing $2,520,700. Question: Who is Ken Jennings?"