A true gamer

By Casey Gillis

Published: November 1, 2008

Over the summer, Cristy Lecik did some hard time in what she calls “game show contestant prison.”

While waiting to tape an episode of “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire,“ the Forest resident was sequestered in a room with a group of other contestants from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. The only things they had to entertain themselves were old reruns of “Millionaire” and each other.

It sounds like a recipe to go stir-crazy, but “it gets you pumped,” says Lecik, who eventually made it on the show the following day and won $50,000 in two back-to-back episodes that aired last month.
It was a dream come true for a true gamer.

“Our family, we’re just the biggest game people,” says Lecik, who grew up in Altavista. “I remember as a little girl, when I’d be home sick from elementary school, and my grandparents would keep me. I’d be sitting (on the couch), between the two of them, watching ‘Wheel of Fortune’ or ‘The Price Is Right,’ and we’d all be yelling.”

She always thought “Millionaire” would be the least stressful game show to appear on because contestants are “sitting down (and) there’s no button to push and no clock.”

Then she arrived in New York to tape her episode and discovered producers had changed a few things for the show’s seventh season, most notably putting a time limit on each question.

Contestants now have 15 seconds to answer each of the first five questions, 30 for the next five and 45 for the next five. They can stop the clock to answer the question or use a lifeline, and they can bank any left over time on the $1 million question.

“That just changes the whole dynamic,” Lecik says. “You can watch old shows … and people just get to mull (their answers) over. Now, you have no time. For the audience, I think it’s a great thing because it pushes the game along.”

But “I do think it’s going to make it harder to win a million dollars.”

Forget a million dollars. Just getting past the first question was a challenge, she says.

“I know now how easy it is to miss the $100 question. I felt like I couldn’t focus (at first).”

You’d never know it from watching the show.

Lecik breezed through the early questions, answering quickly and confidently. She successfully used lifelines on questions about retail chains — the $8,000 question, which asked what product competing chains Pinkberry and Red Mango sell (answer: frozen yogurt) — and World War II.

“She played it perfectly,” says her husband, Barry, who watched from the crowd. “She utilized all of her lifelines exactly the way you’re supposed to.”

He says he was probably more nervous than his wife.

“I was freaking out and panicking, and she was all cool and calm.”

Even host Meredith Viera commented on her calm demeanor, a memory that cracks the bubbly Lecik up.

“That is so not me,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t even feel like I could take a deep breath. I was very focused.”

The $100,000 question was definitely the hardest for her:

“According to the United Airlines Web site, which of these nonstop flights lasts the longest?: Washington, D.C. to Beijing; Los Angeles to Tokyo; Chicago to Hong Kong; or San Francisco to Taipei.”

“Right after it popped up … I was going, ‘Could I estimate the distance?’” she remembers. “I (finally) said, ‘There’s just no way I could figure this out.’”

Making matters more difficult was that the question wasn’t asking which trip actually spanned the longest distance. It was the longest trip based on a specific airline’s calculations.

Lecik used her final lifeline, “Ask The Expert,” and connected with Entertainment Weekly writer Kristen Baldwin, who wasn’t sure either.

That’s when she knew she should exercise the option to stop and go home with the $50,000 she’d already won, rather than guessing.

“It didn’t matter,” Lecik says. “I was over the moon. For me, it wasn’t really about the (million).”

The answer? Chicago to Hong Kong.

Becoming a ‘Millionaire’
Lecik’s journey to “Millionaire” began over the summer, when she and Barry decided to celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary in New York to coincide with “Millionaire” auditions.

They went the first week in July, and Lecik says the audition process took a little over an hour, beginning with a 30-question test that she took alongside other hopefuls in the ABC cafeteria. She passed and went into a qualification interview, followed by an on-camera interview.

Producers told her they’d send her a postcard in a couple of weeks, letting her know what they’d decided.

“Then we just kind of put that out of our mind and did the whole New York thing,” she says.

They got home that Sunday, and by Tuesday, there was a message on their machine from a producer. Lecik called him back, and he asked her to be on the show, which would be filming in late July.
“I said what any woman would say,” she laughs. “I can’t lose 30 pounds in one month!”

To ready herself for the game, Lecik played online versions in the weeks leading up to filming.

Other than that, “there’s not a whole lot you can do,” she says. “Thankfully I have a wealth of useless infor-mation in my head.”

Lights, camera, action
While Lecik battled nerves on camera, she was surprised to see how much went on behind it.

“It’s just insane what goes on behind-the-scenes,” she says, comparing it to a “”well-oiled machine.”

During filming, production assistants waved glow sticks to get her attention and make sure she looked into the right cameras.

Contestants are also assigned their own producers, who coach them between commercial breaks and remind them what question they’re on and how many lifelines are left.

“They’re trying to keep you in the game,” says Lecik, who did her own hair and make-up for the show.

She also chatted with Viera.

“She is the sweetest person and, it seemed to me, (she was) so invested in whether you do well or not,” Lecik says. “On all the commercial breaks, she was so encouraging.”

Now that she’s $50,000 richer, Lecik won’t be going on any shopping sprees. Instead, she plans to put the money into college funds for her two children, Mason, 8, and Maddie, 4.

She also hopes to inspire others.

“If you can actually live through it, it’s a great experience,” she says.

“I hope people who watch it say, ‘Hey, I know that girl. If she can go do that, I can go do that.’”