Update: Arlington Woman Competes on 'Jeopardy!'

Update (7:57 p.m.): Arlington resident and Annandale native Susannah Rosenblatt placed second in tonight's "Jeopardy!"

Returning champion Patrick Morrison from Northville, Mich., carried the game with $29,600; Rosenblatt came in second with $9,800; and Andrew Knebel of Norwalk, Conn., placed last with $8,400. 

The Final Jeopardy! question -- and wager -- sealed the deal for Morrison, the only contestant to get it right. The correct response was Berlin. Contestants had to name the city that was home to Newton's top scientific rival in 1711.

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Answer: Susannah Rosenblatt, a 30-year-old writer and communications strategist.

Question: Who is the Thursday-night "Jeopardy!" contestant from Arlington?

Rosenblatt, an Annandale native, grew up in a family of fans of the televised quiz show. They liked to read. They liked Trivial Pursuit. Rosenblatt wouldn't call them "trivia fanatics," but the desire to compete did compel her father and sister to try out for the show.

Rosenblatt, herself, tried to make it onto "Jeopardy!" once in 2005. She was living in Los Angeles at the time -- Rosenblatt spent more than five years covering local news for the Los Angeles Times -- and went to the studio to take the entry test. She didn't make it.

Fast forward to February 2011. By then, a few of Rosenblatt's friends had competed on "Jeopardy!" -- including classmates from Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Rosenblatt tried again. This time, the process started with an online test. Fifty questions, covering various subjects, were asked and answers had to be typed in within eight seconds.

"You have to wait to see what happens," Rosenblatt said Thursday in a phone interview. "You don't know how you did."

She received an email in May inviting her to Round 2. She and about 30 other people converged on a hotel in Washington, took another 50-question test and then played mock games -- rotating people in and out as contestants, using the real buzzers from the show, practicing their biographical anecdotes.

Afterward, she was told she could potentially be called up to be a contestant in the next 18 months.

She got the call in October. In November, she was back in Los Angeles.

She made it, but she's had to go the last three months without telling anyone how she did.

"It's more fun, because there's suspense," Rosenblatt said. "I don't want people to know what happens because it's more fun to watch."

Rosenblatt faced -- or will face -- returning champion Patrick Morrison from Northville, Mich., and Andrew Knebel of Norwalk, Conn.

She described the process as "nerve-wracking, exciting, incredibly fun."

Rosenblatt works for Courthouse-based , where she is a senior client director. She writes and does strategy for various education clients, from school systems to foundations.

She also is a student at the Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies campus in Clarendon.

Rosenblatt and her husband bought a house in the South Arlington neighborhood of Barcroft last year. She said she loves it.

In her video introduction for tonight's show, Rosenblatt says, "Hey, D.C. I'm Susannah Rosenblatt from Arlington. Watch me win some dead presidents on Jeopardy!"

"Jeopardy!" airs at 7:30 p.m. on WJLA-TV, Comcast Channel 7.