Quiz whizzes Ray and Ron Lalonde talk twin telepathy, identity swaps and growing up in a trivia-obsessed home
Take us back to the Lalonde household growing up. Were your parents Jeopardy! viewers?
Ray: Big family, small house. Jeopardy! was a bit of a ritual. After dinner we’d all go into the kitchen and clean up, and then everyone would be back in the living room in time for the episode. Ron and I are the youngest of seven siblings, and everyone was really smart, so we were always climbing uphill, trying to yell out the answers first.
Was there one family member who tended to be victorious?
Ron: I think we all remember ourselves winning. I would say me, but I’m sure each of my brothers and sisters would say it was them. Growing up, we had every Parker Brothers game known to man, including Monopoly and Scrabble. Especially in the few days after Christmas, we would get a new game and play non-stop.
Ray: It was very competitive, and Ron and I were probably the most competitive against each other. Blood was involved. But now that we’re not sharing a room, we’re much better friends. We’ve stopped trying to punch each other in the nose.
Related:“I quit my job to host trivia full time. Then I got on Jeopardy!”
Did your parents do anything to encourage your intellect?
Ron: Both of our parents were big readers, so there were always books all over the house.
Ray: My mom would go to the library every weekend, and we would go with her. Every Saturday we were in the kids’ room, pulling books off the shelf. Did you have the same interests?
Ron: I was into dinosaurs.
Ray: I was into space. I had scrapbooks of all the Apollo missions.
Ron: We were both big fans of mythology, which pops up all the time in Jeopardy!.
You both grew up in Thunder Bay. Ron, how did you end up in Pittsburgh?
Ron: I was doing my PhD at the University of Toronto, and then I did a residency in Hamilton. I was working in optimization and radiation therapy, and there was a small company forming in Pittsburgh doing some pretty interesting things in my field. I’ve been down here ever since.
Ray, when we spoke in 2023, you were designing sets for The Handmaid’s Tale.
Ray: That show just wrapped up last year, and since then I’ve been working on The Testaments, which is the follow-up coming in the spring. I also worked on a Guillermo del Toro movie called The Boy in the Iron Box, which just wrapped.
Back then, I asked if Margaret Atwood had acknowledged your Jeopardy! celebrity and you said not yet. Any change?
Ray: No. I’m not actually sure if she’s a Jeopardy! fan. I’m told that Elisabeth Moss is a big fan, but it’s not something we have discussed.
Ray, you were in the audience at Ron’s tapings. Ken Jennings made a joke that it was to prove that “Ron” wasn’t just an invented twin so that Ray could get back on the show. I’m curious if you ever did the twin-swap thing growing up.
Ray: We never did that, and I don’t think we ever knew any twins who did that. I think that’s probably a twin myth.
Ron: As a twin, you are always struggling to find your own identity. Pretending to be Ray is not something I would ever do.
Next you’re going to tell me there’s no such thing as twin telepathy!
Ray: It hasn’t happened for us yet.
Ron: Growing up in the same house, having the same friends for 20 years, we certainly know a lot about each other, but I wouldn’t call it mind-reading.
Any other twin myths to dispel?
Ron: There isn’t always one good twin and one evil twin.
Ron, you said that the secret to your familial Jeopardy! success is that you’re both nerds. Who is nerdier?
Ron: I’ll cop to that. I think going into science by default makes you a pretty big nerd.
Ray: I’ll let that one go.
Ron: Nerds have great careers and great jobs.
Did you both aspire to be on Jeopardy! or was it more of a “Ray did it, now Ron has to do it” kind of thing?
Ray: It used to be that you had to write letters to the show to apply and there was a test every year and the timing was very specific. And then, as the internet became a thing, they started doing tests online and then on Zoom, and it became a lot easier to apply. I did three or four tests back in the day, and then once it was online, I started trying out every year.
Ron: I was the same. Maybe not every year, but every couple of years. And then after Ray got it, I was like, Oh, it’s actually possible.
Did either of you try out in the Alex Trebek era?
Ray: I was actually at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto doing the in-person test. They told us at the end of the test, We have a surprise for you. Alex walked in. He was on his way to Ottawa to pick up his Order of Canada medal, and so he stopped in to say hi. We talked about his relationship with quizzing in Canada. Ron and I were on Reach for the Top in high school, which was a quiz-bowl kind of thing in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Alex was the host of the national version for a while.
Ron, did you attend Ray’s tapings?
Ron: I couldn’t go down to watch him because Ray’s run was during Covid, so there was no audience allowed. I did start getting “recognized” quite a lot in the months after Ray was on: You’re the guy from Jeopardy!.
Ray: Ron was on vacation in Newfoundland when he called to say he was going to be on the show in the fall. I shared a bunch of websites for training, the books, the practice buzzers that you can buy online to work on your buzzer reaction time. There are people who have been on the show who write blogs with a lot of advice for contestants.
Ron, was any of it useful?
Ron: A lot of the blogs emphasized buzzer speeds. You have three smart contestants up there—most of them probably know most of the answers, so the buzzer becomes really important. There’s an app where you can work on buzzer reaction speed down to the millisecond. I figured that, since I’m older, I’m probably going to be competing against contestants with better reaction speeds.
Any other preparation techniques?
Ron: I spent time studying the things that tend to come up often—lakes and rivers, countries and capitals, and of course, history. But then you have areas that are just not in your area of expertise. Like YouTube celebrities—that’s not going to be my category.
Ray: It really is luck of the draw. I remember getting “American College Football” during my run, and it’s like, okay, those are five questions I’m not going to get. That last game that Ron had was pretty tough. He had “Instagram Stories” and “Celebrity Hookups” on the same board.
That’s right. I couldn’t believe nobody got the one about J. Lo and A-Rod.
Ron: I watched some episodes of Pop Culture Jeopardy! to prepare, but I’m not sure how much I absorbed.
What was the most surprising part about actually being on the show?
Ron: That first game, it was being under the lights. I didn’t think I would be so nervous, but my legs would not stop shaking. I was a lot more comfortable by the second and third games.
Did you pay much attention to the social media dialogue?
Ron: I knew that people who watch online have a tendency to pick apart every single thing you do—if you don’t shake hands with your opponents right away after the game, if you don’t clap after they get a Daily Double clue. Viewers are really critical. When Ray was on, he had a swaying habit, and he got called Ray the Sway.
Was anything you did picked apart?
Ron: Very little. I guess I didn’t stay on long enough for people to get sick of me. There was some discussion about one of the answers I missed. I just completely blanked on the word for Viagra.
Ray: People online were saying that he did it deliberately. Like, Oh, I wouldn’t know what that is.
Jeopardy! tapes weeks in advance. Did you host a viewing party?
Ron: You’re supposed to keep it a secret. The first game I played aired last Wednesday, which is when my colleagues and I have our weekly pub trivia night. We were a big crowd, and then at about 7:29 p.m., I got behind the microphone and told them I had a surprise. The TV started playing my first Jeopardy! episode and everybody just lost their minds.
With three wins under your belt, any chance you’ll make the Tournament of Champions?
Ron: I just missed the cutoff for this year, but I think there is a good chance I could make next year’s wild card round and if I was successful in that I could advance. We’ll see.
And until then? Are you fielding offers to host a Jeopardy! Twins Tournament?
Ron: I haven’t heard that, but I will ask.
Ray: I have seen online that people are suggesting siblings Jeopardy!, so we could come back as a team.
With all of those brainiac siblings, have you considered Family Feud?
Ray: I was recently at a party with my friend Juveria Zaheer, who is a Jeopardy! master from Whitby. Her brother is on The Traitors Canada, and she was saying that she had been speaking to someone from Family Feud Canada and had suggested that her family and our family could go up against each other.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
