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It's a Monday evening in March, 1957. Herbert Stemple is sitting on the sofa in the living room of his apartment in Queens, New York. He watches TV while his wife Toby sits next to him, knitting a sweater. Stemple knows he should get up and change the channel because the show that's about to come on only upsets him.

It's 21, the quiz show that made him a champion and a household name before its producers decided to hand his title to Ivy League Pretty Boy, Charles Van Doren.

But every Monday night, for the past three months, Stemple has felt compelled to watch 21, hoping to see

Van Doren lose, but he never does. Stemple winces as he remembers how the show's lead producer

Dan Enright convinced him to take a fall, using promises of a job and publicity, neither of which

have materialized. And he thinks about his winnings, tens of thousands of dollars,

and how he frittered almost all of it away, first on a fancy new car,

then on a failed investment into an illegal gambling operation in Florida.

It's all so embarrassing, Stemple can hardly stand it.

And to make matters worse, Van Doren has long

since eclipsed him, becoming the longest-running and most famous quiz show champion in television

history. Some days, it feels like the whole country has fallen in love with Van Doren. In fact,

just last month, Time magazine put his face on the cover.

But what Stemple knows and the public doesn't is that Vendorin is not a trivia savant.

The reason he keeps winning is because the producers are feeding him the correct answers,

just like they had with Stemple before.

...