The boy and his sister did not look like they belonged. The most obvious point was perhaps the boy's mullet.  But their clothes also looked worn, and they carried themselves differently from other children in the neighborhood. They seemed like kids vacationing from Michigan or Texas, someplace other than our stately neighborhood. They played for a while, keeping to themselves. It was morning, and the only other children in the playground were too young for elementary school. I wondered where they'd come from, since they looked old enough to be in a classroom.

Ten minutes later, a portly man in a Parks Department uniform strides up to the gate. He's got a nice keyring, and it's clear he pulls some rank in the department.

"Daddy!"

Within minutes they're on the tire swing, squealing with laughter as dad pushes them.

Even on a cloudy day, Central Park's a great place for Take Your Kid to Work Day.

Dear Dad,


They told us it was a Big Deal when he was hired away from The WaPo. They paraded him around the department during an inaugural visit, and he brought with him another familiar byline, his bloomingly pregnant wife, who had worked for us on contract before.

The stories rolled in. Even before he had written that many for us, he won his second Pulitzer from his work at WaPo. They came in different shapes: beautiful, straightforward, lyrical, analytical, detached, personal. He wrote so many pieces in such a short time I can't even find the one that left the biggest impression on me.

We didn't find out until late -- very late, by the standards of deadline. Word first spread around 5 p.m., so quietly that we barely took note that a lot of people were staying late and huddling, so stealthily most of us did not know until we looked at our page proofs after 8. And then the sorrow suddenly filled us all.

Everything became harder to read, harder to process. We lost not just a member of the family, but one of the finest in the profession. We lost a kind and courteous colleague who had covered what seemed like every inch of the Arab Spring. For him to have survived gun wounds, kidnapping and harassment by hostile government forces, only to die such a pedestrian death at the height of his career, well, it isn't right. It isn't fair. I muttered that over and over as I crawled into bed last night, after somewhat unwillingly leaving an empty, grieving office where nothing was left to be done.

When morning rolled around, I was still sad. So, it seems, were my colleagues. Everything took longer: getting out of bed, preparing food for the baby, getting dressed, finding food for myself ... much of the day was sadder, for someone charged with reminding us of reality had been taken in his prime. And that's what drove the e-mail to my dad, an apology of sorts for overlooking something he had asked me to edit.

My father wrote back a few hours later:

I heard it over npr this morning, and I feel sorry for NYT, even the western world. But a man like him should die with no regret, because he already made more contributions to this world, to help people than many others can do.

The neatest part of "Jeopardy!" is definitely the people you meet, starting with the contestant coordinators. Nobody forgets the hyperenergetic Maggie, who goes through her preparation spiel like an auctioneer -- a very enthusiastic auctioneer. Robert, equally peppy but working at a lower volume, walks us through our paperwork and stories, and serves as our main herder. Corina makes sure we get paid (thank you, Radisson, for helping us get my tax forms printed because I totally forgot to bring my $$ paperwork and began hyperventilating during check-in), and Glenn runs rehearsal.

Because I got to hang out on the set for two days, I met two contestant pools. The first was older, and pretty tense. The shuttle driver commented that we were an unusually quiet bunch. People seemed to be in their 40s, for the large part. One guy came from Hawaii (he would head to DFW for the Super Bowl afterward!), and he brought his mom and sister with him. They were so cute, photographing him on the shuttle, then everyone on the shuttle, then themselves on the shuttle that they wouldn't actually take ... why yes, they were Asian, what part of all that gave it away?

I ended up mostly talking with the 35-and-under crowd. One had been a copy editor at the Merc and made headway in a Times tryout before deciding to stay on the West Coast. Another was a producer at a public radio station upstate. (He was quite a fun character. We exchanged writeups of our experience, and lemme tell ya, this was just a lark for me, but he took it quite seriously, and it showed in his high score later.) A third was getting ready for med school after taking a year or two off to work. I didn't realize quite how young the other 20-somethings were but I guess that's just a sign I'm getting old.

Robert went around the room and asked us to go over our prepared lines: our stories for Alex, our hometown howdies, some basic info about us in general. The guy from upstate used "empire state of mind" for his howdy, which I had planned, so I was "sent to the back of the line" to try again. I thought of something stronger during a bathroom break and it turned out well, but for a while I was in a bit of a panic. As we went through quiz prep we'd be sent 2 at a time to do makeup. The artists were nice and  chatty. The first day I had a lady who had been in the business for 20 years or so, starting out in soaps, and she had quite a bit to say about how things had changed. When she started, most makeup artests were men and it was an uphill fight for her, but now she felt "any girl with tits and a makeup brush" could get a job and she felt her generation's legacy was disrespected, I guess.

Our legal briefing was particularly detailed. Though Jeopardy came on long after the payola scandals, everything in TV seems to be lawyered up as a result. Someone from the legal compliance firm explained that there are six game boards written for each week, and an employee of the firm chooses 5. The other, I guess, goes to rehearsal. This is supposed to ensure the game isn't rigged, though we got a pretty freaky Final Jeopardy that day: "TV Theme Songs" was the final clue, and the victory naturally went ... to a guy whose little story was that he collects TV theme songs. (No way I would've gotten it, but I wish I'd had that board if only for this category. You know what other category I would've loved? A few weeks before I'd seen one devoted to the -stans. I know my -stans, dammit!)

The show prepares index cards for Trebek to study, with our basic info and 3 "stories." The 12 cards are shuffled, and a lawyer draws 2 before each episode to determine who goes on. My name did not get drawn. It was a very tense day, just waiting and waiting. The bigger bummer was probably that with 2 people disappearing every half hour, we didn't really get to know one another that well.

On the bright side, this is what I got: free lunch (even though I got more food than my allotted $10 voucher ... but I ate all of it!), extra buzzer practice, 3 rehearsals (by the time I actually went on the mic-wiring guy seemed like a distant cousin) and watching Trebek slowly unwind through the day.

So in the morning (aka Monday and Tuesday episodes) Alex Trebek is this totally smooth guy. He's cheerful, gung-ho, ready to go. But things crop up: technical glitches, a flubbed line that needs to be re-recorded during commercial breaks, and of course the game requires a lot of concentration because Alex doesn't decide which questions come up -- the players do, and he has to keep up with them to read the clues. So by the Wednesday taping he wants lunch, and then after lunch he gets kind of cranky. You can see it on the Thursday episodes, particularly, I think. He's kind of short with people who give the wrong answer. And the afternoon Q-and-A session with the audience is definitely ... less focused. He rambles a bit. But hey, he's 70.

With a fruitless day 1 of taping behind us, we went off to dinner with Alice and Paul. The Himalayan food was neat ... like Chinese-spiced Indian food. We were very sorry, though, that they were out of yak.

The next day the average age of the crowd seemed a little younger. I was really glad for that -- the other undrawn contestant was a woman in her late 50s/early 60s who was quite huffy about being stuck overnight. And the returning champ was also about 20 years older than me. He was neater company, but kind of dazed he had won and focused on keeping it going. Among the younger contestants was this super-nice lawyer for the ASPCA, a medical student waiting for her Match and this guy from -- where did you say? West Chester, PA? I know someone from there. What year did you graduate from high school? Oh you know Rosie, then, don't you? She's a good friend of mine from college. Oh, you hung out with her ex? ("Er, we weren't that close," he backpedaled.) You know she married Stan and all that? Hmm, unlike all the other cool co-contestants I mentioned above, he did not accept my Facebook friend request. *shrug*

Another particularly interesting character in that day's pool was the rabbi from New Jersey. Oh my gawd, what a character. Els said she was a beast on the stage (yes she was, super sharp and in fact she won), but she was one in the Green Room, too. There are people whose humor comes largely from dourness. I'm not even sure there was that much humor in hers, but she certainly was entertaining. When Maggie had us go around naming our favorite Michael Jackson song, the rabbi hollered from her makeup chair, "I don't listen to music by child molesters." Zing. Also, for her story, it was suggested she not use the word "idiots," regardless of what she thought the facts of the matter were. Her hometown howdy was so awesome -- "Why do rabbis answer questions with questions? To practice for Jeopardy, of course."

Though as a second-day contestant I was supposed to go early, my name wasn't drawn until lunch. Finally, showtime.