Jonathan Corbblah

Jonathan Corbblah was born in 1979.^[1] As a child, he was almost held back in the first grade because he was illiterate; after his father—a Christian preacher—spent the summer drilling academics non-stop, by the next academic year, he was ahead of his second-grade class.^[2]

As of December 2010^[update], he was married and living in Harlem.^[3] By February 2014^[update], he was coaching individuals and teams for national trivia championships, and taught Scrabble^[2] to schoolchildren.^[3]

Corbblah learned to play chess at age six or seven.^[2] According to the United States Chess Federation, since he began playing ranked matches in the late 1990s, Corbblah has a top regular Elo rating of 2199 (earned between 2010 and 2014) and a top blitz rating of 2262 (in 2019).^[4] In December 2002, he became a USCF Candidate Master,^[5] and in 2014, Pacific Standard reported he was a master-level chess player.^[2]

Corbblah was eleven years old in 1990 when he appeared on his first game show, PBS' Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?.^[3] In December 2010, after his two days on Jeopardy!, he told ABC News that "I'm trying to go on as many possible game shows as I can";^[6] he has appeared on at least seven.

In summer 2019, he was a guest expert on several episodes of Best Ever Trivia Show, and then as a master mind on several 2020–2021 episodes of Master Minds.^[7] He has also won $1,500 on Cash Cab.^[3]