Through June until
December of 2004 much of America – even those who were not fans of Jeopardy was
enraptured by the remarkable streak of Ken Jennings, who would win a record 74
consecutive games and over $2.5 million across the 20th and 21st
season of the show.
I need to go on the
record as saying that I was not one of them. On the contrary, at a certain
point during Jennings’ streak – I can’t say for sure exactly when – I basically
stopped watching Jeopardy, save for Final Jeopardy, to see yet another Jennings’
victory. I imagine most people who were watching the show during that era were
watching to see just how long Jennings could keep winning. I may very well have
been the only person hoping he would eventually lose.
During the era of Matt
Amodio and Amy Schneider’s incredible run, someone wrote into TV Guide saying
that they didn’t enjoy Jeopardy any more because the same person won every
time. I could understand where they coming from because while Jennings’ was
engaging in his unprecedented streak, I felt much the same way.
During Jennings’ initial
run, I thought that the game was a lot duller. I don’t mean because of
Jennings’ personality (though I have some friends who did feel that way in his
initial run) but because his utter dominance of the game made the entire thing
very hard to watch. Usually by the end of the Jeopardy round, the game was
basically out of reach for Jennings’ opponents and by the time Double Jeopardy
was half over, it was usually mathematically impossible for Jennings to lose. This
was, for the record, a good thing for Jennings because he did not historically
have the best track record when it came to Final Jeopardy – as I recall, he
only managed to respond correctly two-thirds of the time. There was also the
fact that while the one day record for money won was $50,000, Jennings spent
the first half of his run showing no desire to try and break it – something
that Alex was annoyed by during the first half of Jennings’ run. It was not
until Jennings’ 38th appearance that he made a real effort to break
the record – and seemed to wipe it out when he managed to win $75,000. (Unlike
many of Jennings’ other records, that one would be surpassed as you’ll see in a
later entry.)
At one point Tom Walsh,
who had been the first player to win seven games was asked by Trebek what it
felt like when Jennings broke his mark. He compared himself to an old time ball
player named Gavvy Cravath, who had set the record for home runs in a seasons
with 24 – and then four years later, Babe Ruth came along. The obvious
assumption was Jennings was Ruth. This is an accurate comparison, but in
hindsight I think the more accurate comparison for Jennings is to Lou Gehrig.
Not only did Gehrig set a record for consecutive games that many thought would
never be equaled, but like with Jennings in his appearance, he was not flashy
in the way Babe Ruth was, nor did he seem particularly dynamic. He just went
about his business being consistently excellent, day in and day out for his
career. And in that sense, maybe that explains how I viewed Jennings. He was
clearly one of the greatest players of all time, but like the sportswriters of
his era I did not truly appreciate him until he left the stage. (I think
there’s a better parallel to Babe Ruth among Jeopardy players, and I’ll get to
him later.)
So when Jennings was
famously defeated by Nancy Zerg on November 30, 2004 I think I breathed a
silent sigh of relief; I could watch Jeopardy with a clear conscience. There
have been many other super-champions over the next twenty years, but with one
critical exception, I’ve never felt the desire to look away from them when they
play the same way I did with Jennings’ initial run.
I will also confess
that, at the time, I was considering something that no doubt many other
Jeopardy fans were considering. Could other champions in the history of the
show have done what Jennings had they not been capped by a five game limit? In
what had been more than twelve years of watching Jeopardy to that point, there
were no less than a dozen names that I considered might have been able to do
what Jennings had done and there might well have been some in the early days of
Jeopardy that could have been as capable. (At that time, I still knew very
little about the history of the show and the champions prior to 1992.) I have
little doubt that it was in part due to that reasoning that a little more than
two months after Jennings left the Jeopardy stage at the end of his run, the
producers were planning just that.
The Ultimate Tournament
of Champions is, without question, the most elaborate and extensive Jeopardy
tournament in the show’s history: in the nearly twenty years since, they have
never tried something this sprawling since. The show would invite back 144
players to compete over a period of nearly four months in what Alex would refer
to as a tournament inspired by March Madness in format. It would involve what
amounted to four rounds of elimination play that would lead to two finalists to
compete against Ken Jennings for $2 million dollars.
You would think by
hearing that number that the producers were inviting everybody who had competed
on Jeopardy in the previous twenty years. I myself thought as much when I saw
it the first time and it was not until many years after the fact that I
actually learned that they had put eligibility requirements for competitors:
1.
Only
five time winners were invited back and they had to have won a minimum of
$47,850.
2.
Every
winner of a Tournament of Champions was invited back.
3.
Every
winner of a Teen or College Championship was invited back.
Unless you were aware of
these rules, you might not understand just how many champions this ended up
excluding. This removed from contention many players from the early years of
the show who had been five game winners with very low totals – very few players
from the first three seasons were able to get that high. It also meant that
quite a few players who had participated in earlier Jeopardy tournaments were
eligible – nearly half the participants in the 10th Anniversary
Tournament and two participants from the Million Dollar Masters, Claudia Perry
and Kate Waits, were denied eligibility either due to not having won enough
games or enough money. And though I was unaware of it at the time, many of the
participants in the failed-spinoff Super Jeopardy were ineligible to
participate because of these limitations – including Bruce Seymour, who had
defeated Bob Verini and Dave Traini in the final to win the $250,000 grand
prize, but because he had won only four games, was ineligible while his opponents
were invited back.
I understand the basic
logic behind these requirements – if the show had invited back everyone who had
ever participated in a Tournament of Champions, the Tournament would have taken
an entire season to finish. As it was, the basic structure of the tournament
was unwieldy enough as it – and perhaps not entirely structured to showcase the
true best of the best. This was particularly clear when it came to the ‘Nifty
Nine’ – nine seeded players who were given a bye into the second round of the
Tournament. These nine players including several former Jeopardy record holders
– the previously mentioned Frank
Spangenberg, Tom Walsh and Brad Rutter – as well as some players who had done
well in previous tournaments, such as Bob Verini and Eric Newhouse, who had
been finalists in the Million Dollar Masters. However, the challenge of having
to go up against players who to that point had already won a game would be too
much for most of the players: only Spangenberg and Rutter would manage to win
their second round game.
Nor did this necessarily
assist those winners of a Tournament of Champions who had to start out in the
first round. There were thirteen Tournament of Champions winners who had to
start out in the first round. Four of them made into the second round of the
Tournament. Only Dan Melia, who had won the 1998 Tournament of Champions, made
it as far as the quarterfinals and he lost his match. Similarly Chuck Forrest
(1986) Bob Verini (1987) Robin Carroll (2000) and Brad Rutter (2001) had all
won the Tournament of Champions but only Rutter managed to make it into the
quarter-finals. While this should not have come as a shock to anyone who has
watched any Tournament of Champions over the many years of Jeopardy, I’m still
not certain many of them were showcased to their best ability. In a future
tournament, many would play far better.
However this was a
significant tournament for me in some regards because it was the first one in
my more than fifteen years of watching that I was openly rooting for some
players more than others. Of the 144
players who were participated, I can’t say with any certainty how many of them
I remembered – I had been watching the show for thirteen years and even in
2005, it was still very difficult to find records of Jeopardy champions
anywhere. My best guess is that I personally remember maybe a quarter of the participants
from their original appearances, perhaps a dozen from previous tournaments here
and there. Most of the ones I was pulling for were winners of Tournaments of
Champions that I’d seen and several of the players who’d been seeded.
Brad was one of the
players I was pulling for because of a fairly obvious reason: because Jennings
had surpassed him for money won, I thought that the only way for Jennings to be
considered ‘legitimately’ the greatest player of all time was for him to defeat
in a tournament the man whose title he had taken. I had no idea that this
prophesized what would end up being a fifteen year battle between the two.
There were many players
in this tournament that I was pulling for. Some were quickly eliminated, some
did better than I thought. But the two I wish to discuss the most in this
article are two players who would make it farthest: one would end up competing
against Ken Jennings, and the others performance in this tournament would make
her a player in future tournaments for nearly as long as Brad and Ken would be.
I mentioned Jerome Vered
in passing in my initial article. Jerome was, very simply, arguably one of the
two or three greatest players of the five-game limit era. Few long time fans
would dispute this fact. I will also say that when Alex said in the
introductory game of the Ultimate Tournament about the possibility of other
players doing what Ken did had they not been limited, Jerome was one of the
first names to come to my mind and few people who had watched the show as long
as I did would debate this idea.
In his original five
games in May of 1992, Jerome had been one of the greatest players in the shows
history. His total of $96,801 was second only to Frank Spangenberg to that
point in the show’s run and not until the dollar figures were doubled in 2001
did that change. His one day record of $34,000 stood for ten years, again after
the dollar figures were doubled. Of all the players who had not been invited
back for the Million Dollar Masters in 2002 his absence, in my opinion, was one
of the most glaring. Early on, I was convinced that Jerome would almost
certainly make it very far into the Tournament, if not to the finals itself.
Jerome was one of the few players I rooted for who did not fail me in that
sense.
Jerome’s streak put him
against some of the all time greats. In his Round 1 match, he handily defeated
Jim Scott, the winner of the 1991 Tournament of Champions. In his second round, one of the players he
managed to beat was Sean Ryan, the first player to win six games on Jeopardy.
And in his quarterfinal match, he had managed to trounce Dan Melia, the winner
of the 1998 Tournament of Champions and Michael Daunt, who among his
accomplishments had won the 1998 International Tournament. In the latter game,
he completely trounced his two opponents.
When it came to money,
the rules were also different than all other previous tournaments: the winner
kept the cash, with a minimum guarantee of $15,000 in Round 1. In Round 2, the
minimum went up to $20,000 and in the quarterfinals it went up to $30,000.
Jerome exceeded the minimum in each of his first three appearances and by the
time of his semi-final appearance, he had already won $89,800 – almost as much
as he’d won in three games thirteen years earlier.
His semi-final match
gets me to the second player in this article who while I was familiar with her
before this tournament, I would never have considered her a legitimate
possibility to do as well as she did. If we compare the UTC to March Madness,
Pam Mueller was the UTC’s Cinderella story.
Representing Loyola, Pam
Mueller had won the College Championship in November of 2000. By chance, she
had appeared in the 2001 Tournament with Brad Rutter and had made it to the
semi-finals before being defeated by Rick Knutsen in what would turn out to be
a rout. She had played well but not remarkably so and at the start of the UTC,
I did not think she would make it very far.
But I had underestimated
her. In her round 1 game she would run roughshod over her opponents and win
$32,201, Her Round 2 match was a narrow
victory over Arthur Philips which came down to Final Jeopardy and an incorrect
response by him. But I did not truly consider Pam as a contender to be one of
the greatest of all time until her quarterfinal match.
Pam faced off against
Brian Moore and Phil Yellman, who in their two previous appearances in the
Tournament had been spectacular. Brian had utterly trounced his opponents in
both his first and second round appearance, and in the latter had managed to
amass a whopping $37,600 before Final Jeopardy. An incredibly tough Final
Jeopardy clue had reduced his pay off substantially; he still walked away with
$25,200. Phil had shown in his two wins that you could not underestimate: in
both of his previous two matches he had been in a distant third at the end of
the Jeopardy round, and he would manage to come from behind to win both games.
I truly thought Pam was in over her head, and indeed by the end of the Jeopardy
round, she was in a distant third with $3600 to Phil’s $5400 and Brian’s $9000.
The Double Jeopardy
round was significant in more ways than one as it demonstrated Jeopardy’s sense
of humor. There is a famous episode of Cheers
in which Cliff Clavin appears on Jeopardy. The categories in this round
directly referenced his game as Alex pointed out: CIVIL SERVANTS, STAMPS FROM
AROUND THE WORLD, MOTHERS & SONS, BEER, ‘BAR’ TRIVIA & CELIBACY. (On Cheers
‘BAR’ was not in quotation marks.) Alex didn’t make his trademark comment:
“Oh, the writers are having fun” He didn’t have too.
This round was the most
hard fought of the quarter-finals and it was fairly evenly fought until Pam
found the last Daily Double in CELIBACY. I think you all want to know what kind
of clue this category had so here it is: “This 20th century leader
wrote: ‘For me the observance of…Brahmacharya has been full of difficulties.”
Pam knew this referred to Gandhi and gained $2000. This put Pam in the lead but
it was still very close at the end of Double Jeopardy: Pam had $14,800, Brian
had $12,600, Phil had $11,000.
Final Jeopardy probably
cemented my impression of Pam among the all time greats even before the
semi-final. The category was 20th CENTURY AUTHORS: “Born of Norwegian
descent in 1916, he was given the first name of a famous Norwegian of the
time.”
Pam wrote down her
response quickly. Before it was revealed Alex added this comment:
Alex: “Pam, I’ll give
you some advice. Don’t ever get into a poler game because you do not have a
good poker face.”
Pam knew that the famous
Norwegian was the explorer Roald Amundsen and that led her to Roald Dahl, which
no one else knew (certainly not me). Pam went on to the semi-finals.
There would be two sets
of semi-finals, each a two-game total point affair. Pam was up against Jerome
and Frank Spangenberg, two of the all-time greats. I was certain either Jerome
or Frank would win and I didn’t think Pam, who at the time was only 23, stood a
chance. I would only half right.
Pam got off to a fast
start in the Jeopardy round and actually shot to a huge lead when she got the
Daily Double right. At that point she had $8000 to Jerome and Frank’s $2000
each. That would be her highpoint for the round as she got two answers wrong
and no more correct ones, Jerome managed to surge forward in the category THE
NIXON LIBRARY in which he got every clue correct except the first one for $200
which I will repeat because of Alex’s reaction as much as anything:
“In 1970 this man
dropped in at the White House, gave Nixon this gun and bullets, & asked to
become a federal drug agent.”
Jerome: “Who is Chuck
Barris?”
After telling him it was
wrong, Alex began to laugh, explaining: “That’s sort of an inside joke, and I’m
laughing at it.” If you’ve ever seen Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, you’d
get it too. (The correct response was Elvis Presley, by the way.)
Jerome was in second by
the end of the Jeopardy round and he and Pam went back and forth for the lead
in Double Jeopardy, which at the time I remember not doing particularly well in
with the exception of JACKS IN THE BOX. No not even in the category NEW YORK
CITY NICKNAMES did I do well, and I take some consolation that Frank, the New
York native had his own struggles with it.
I remember Final
Jeopardy very well because it was the last one I would manage to get correct
for the remainder of the tournament. The category was FAMILIAR PHRASES: “This
5-word rule or maxim has been attributed to both H. Gordon Selfridge and John
Wannamaker.” It was only because I recognize the latter’s name that I came up
with “What is the customer is always right?” Jerome and Frank both knew this;
Pam did not. At the end of Game of the semi-final, Jerome was in the lead with
$23,100, Frank was next with $13,500 and Pam was in third with $10,000.
The Jeopardy round of
Game 2 was divided fairly evenly between Frank and Pam, though in Frank’s case
much of his success was due to the fact he got three of the six $1000 clues
correct as well as three of the $800 clues. Frank moved into first on the last
clue of the round in a very close match: he had $6200, Pam had $5200 and Jerome
had $4200.
In Double Jeopardy,
Jerome slowed down and more importantly made three expensive mistakes,
including two on the last two in the category ROSSINI OPERAS. (I have been
something of an opera fan and I had no idea Rossini had done an opera version
of Othello. Frank, in the meantime, managed to surge ahead helped by a
Daily Double in the nowhere-but-this-show category NAME THAT DICTATOR. Near the
end of the round he had a $6000 lead over Pam before she found the other Daily
Double in the category PULITZER-PRIZE WINNING WOMEN. She boldly bet $6000:
“This member of a prominent Boston family won a 1926 Pulitzer for her poetry
collection: What’s O’Clock.” Pam needed a second to come up with Amy
Lowell. She also managed to get the $2000 clue in THAT’S SO ‘LAME’ right which
impressed even Alex. “A thin membrane or layer, as of bone, tissue or cell
wall.” When Pam came up with lamella, Alex said he’d never even heard of that
word.
At the end of the Double
Jeopardy round, Frank had $18,000, Pam had $16,800 and Jerome had $7800. The
semi-finals turned on Final Jeopardy in which the category was WORDS FROM
LATIN, which sounds difficult but based on when the shows were being shot in
late April of 2005 was actually contemporary:
“Some of the periods of
time called this occurred in 304 A.D. (it lasted 4 years) 1314 (2 years), 1958
(19 days), 1963 & 2005.” Jerome was the only player to know that the term
they were referring to was the interregnum, the period in which a new pope is
chosen. (John Paul II had passed away that April.) He wagered nothing. Neither
Pam nor Frank knew the correct response and because they had to wager to beat
each other, they both dropped enough so that Jerome’s two-day total of $30,900
(he chose to bet nothing) was enough to make him a finalist.
Pam’s remarkable
performance in this tournament would grant her a place in two more million
dollar tournaments during the 2010s which I will get to later. As we shall see,
her play in this tournament, against far older and more experienced champions,
was far from a fluke.
During this same period my esteem from Brad
Rutter was growing. As I mentioned he was granted a bye into the second round
automatically and unlike almost all of his fellow seeded players, showed no
signs of any rust in his appearance. He dominated the game from beginning to
end, finishing Double Jeopardy with a whopping $33,800. His overwhelming
runaway was somewhat negated when he got a very difficult Final Jeopardy round,
but he looked like he would be formidable going forward.
Instead in his
quarterfinal match he looked all too human. Actually that’s putting it mildly.
In his quarterfinal appearance against Steve Chernicoff and Michael Rooney he
played what was his worst game in a Jeopardy tournament to that point and would
not play nearly as badly until nearly fourteen years later.
Both Steve and Michael
had impressive track records in their own right and I had witnessed both their
original appearances. Steve had won $83,902 in five games and had one of the
highest one day total of the 1993-1994 season. He had been in a semi-finalist
in the 1994 Tournament of Champions, narrowly losing to College Champion Jeff
Stewart. He’d been quietly superb in both his matches and had won $42,802 in
both of them. Michael had competed in the 1999-2000 season and had been a
semi-finalist in that year’s Tournament of Champions beating the eventual
winner Robin Carroll in a runaway match before losing in his semi-final. (Robin
would qualify via wild card.) He had won his previous games against more impressive
competition, defeating Mark Lowenthal, winner of the 1988 Tournament of
Champions in his first round match and coming from behind to defeat Tom Walsh
in his second round victory. To that point in the tournament, he’d won $55,801.
Both of them made Brad look
very bad in the Jeopardy round; when it was over Brad trailed both of them with
$3600 to their $6000 apiece. In Double Jeopardy Brad made himself look
very bad. He found the first Daily Double very early, wagered big and lost
almost everything he had. He actually went into the negative immediately
afterward and never got out of third place. It took a strong showing in the
last category MUSICAL NUMBERS for him to get to a respectable total and he even
he admitted things weren’t looking good for him at the end. He had $5600 to
Michael’s $9200 and Steve’s $12,400.
The Final Jeopardy
category was extremely vague: PEOPLE AND PLACES. The clue was not much more
helpful. “This Mediterranean island shares its name with President Garfield’s
nickname for his wife.”
Brad wrote down: “What
is Malta,” crossed it out, and wrote down Crete. That was the correct response.
Garfield’s wife’s name was Lucretia. Brad wagered $800 and was at $6400.
Michael had written down Malta and lost $3599, which left him with $5601. It came
down to Steve. He wrote down: “What is Rhodes?” His wager was $6001, which left
him with $6399. Brad’s reaction said it all: “I can’t believe it! Oh. Great
game you guys.”
Paradoxically this
hair’s breath victory made me respect Brad in a way even his dominant win
hadn’t. Yes, there had been luck involved but not even had expected to win. I
thought he might easily prevail in the second set of semi-finals but I was fully
aware of the skills of his competition.
I had been rooting for
John Cuthbertson throughout the tournament because he was one of my favorite
players from my early years of watching the show. During the 1993 season he’d
won more money than any five-day champion: $82,400. By chance, he had appeared
in the same semi-final match as Steve Chernicoff in the 1994 Tournament of
Champions. Slowly but surely he had risen throughout the tournament against
impressive competition, defeating 1990 TOC Winner Bob Blake in Round 1, Bob
Verini in Round 2 and managing an impressive quarter-final victory. He’d won
$67,900 to this point.
Chris Miller’s was one
of the participants in the UTC whose original appearance had been relatively
recent: he had won five games in 2004 and had been a semi-finalist in the
Tournament of Champions that year. He had been climbing up the ladder slowly
but impressively: winning a runaway in Game 1, coming from behind in Double
Jeopardy to impressively win Round 2, and managing a very impressive fight in
the semi-finals. At this point, he’d won $73,844 in his three victories.
In the first game of the
semi-final Brad got off to a lightning fast start in the Jeopardy round. When
he found the first Daily Double he had $6800, a $4800 lead over John his
nearest opponent. Then he bet $4800 and lost it. And as a result when the round
ended a little later, he was in second place with $3200 to John’s $3400. Chris
was struggling and had only $1200.
Nor did things improve
immediately for him in Double Jeopardy. In fact, John got off to a quick start
helped when he responded correctly on the first Daily Double. At one point John
had $8400 to Brad’s $1600. Then Brad slowly but surely began to rebuild, though
he did not regain the lead until he managed to put together a successful run in
the categories 18TH CENTURY POTPOURRI and WE RULE. He managed to finish Double Jeopardy with
$14,200 to John’s $8000 and Chris’ $7200. It looked like he was in a commanding
position.
Then came Final
Jeopardy. The category was NUCLEAR POWER. “This state, besides having the
first, also has the most nuclear reactors.” Brad was the only player who didn’t
write down the correct response; I know because it’s the one I wrote down:
“What is Tennessee?” Both he and I were thinking of Oak Ridge, where the first
atomic bombs were developed. Chris and
John, however, knew the clue referred to Illinois which was where Enrico Fermi
developed the first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago. Brad lost
$4200, which put him at $10,000. At the end of Game 1, he was tied with Chris
for second place, while John was ahead with $13,500.
The Jeopardy round of
Game 2 started well for Brad but he found the Daily Double on the third clue of
the round and by this point he was so gun-shy he only wagered the $400 he had.
He spent much of the first half of the round fighting it out with John for the
lead and the second half fighting it out with Chris. When the round was over,
he was ahead with $5400 to Chris’ $5000 and John had $3200.
The Double Jeopardy
round was, in a sense, the making of Brad Rutter. Brad did get off to a quick
start in the category PRE-DATERS and went into the lead. At the halfway point,
he had $9800 to Chris’ $7800 and John who had stumbled to $3200. He then
proceeded to get ten of the next twelve clues correct and nobody could come up
with a correct response on the two that were missed.
Well, among those playing the game. I wasn’t
doing much better than anyone else keeping up with Brad on the clues he got
right but I did get the two he missed.
AUTHOR! ARTHUR! “Born in
Budapest, he’s best known for his 1940 novel Darkness at Noon.” Because
I’d read it in college, I knew Arthur Koestler was the author.
SECRETARIES OF STATE
BEFORE & AFTER (only on Jeopardy folks): “Oscar-winning 1982 Bergman films
that’s been accused of being ‘Deep Throat’ but vigorously denies it.” “What is
Fanny and Alexander Haig?” (Until Mark Felt revealed the truth the following
year, Haig had been considered the most likely suspect.)
These clues netted me
$2800. With the exception of sweeping the category GLENN CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, I
know I didn’t know most of the rest of the rest of them. When John managed to
ring it by getting the last correct response in that category for $2000, I knew
what they must have felt like competing against Brad. By that point Brad had
$26,600 to Chris’ $7800 and John’s $5200. He had officially locked up his slot
in the finals.
Final Jeopardy was
basically irrelevant at that point but Brad at least took it seriously. The category was HISTORIC OBJECTS. “Given to
Washington by Lafayette, one of the keys to this is on display at Mount
Vernon.” Brad somehow knew that this referred to the Bastille. Apparently
Lafayette gave it to him as a symbol of liberty. Brad was now in the finals and
would face off against Ken Jennings for the first time.
After all of the buildup
to this point, the actual three game final was somewhat anticlimactic. However,
I remember reading a remark in Entertainment Weekly in the aftermath of the
Tournament wondering if Ken had actually put in an effort. That struck me as unfair then and now. In all
three of the matches of the final Ken made every attempt possible to win.
Indeed, it was because he played so well even in defeat that I finally began to
gain respect for him as a player.
The final was played
over three games. In the Jeopardy round of Game 1, Ken did not seem to have
lost a step: he got off to a quick start and did not really slow down. He had
$8200 at the end of the round, $5000 more than Jerome and $6000 more than
Brad. Brad managed to overtake Ken at
the halfway point of the Jeopardy round when he found the first Daily Double in
MY CATEGORY WITH ANDRE. However, for much of the second half he stopped ringing
in and Jerome and Ken basically took command and Ken retook the lead near the
end. Only because Brad managed to do decently in the category IT CHANGED THE
WORLD was he ahead at the end of the round and the game was still very close
with $1800 separating first place (Brad) from Jerome in third.
The first Final Jeopardy
clue had to do with IMAGES OF AMERICA: “Citing John Winthrop, who said: “The
eyes of all people are on us,” Ronald Reagan like to compare the U.S. to this.”
All three players knew that it was a city on a hill. (I didn’t.) Everyone
wagered fairly cautiously and the end of Game 1, the scores were still close:
Brad was in the lead with $18,400 to Jerome’s $16,400 and Ken’s $16,000.
I should mention that in
the three game final this was the game I did the best in, though that’s
relative. I managed to do well in the category BEFORE, DURING & AFTER
(which is one they only save for these kinds of tournaments) and fairly
decently in categories such as IT CHANGED THE WORLD and MY CATEGORY WITH ANDRE.
This would be the high point of the final for me. It was downhill from there.
On a DVD released in
conjunction with the tournament, the chapter heading for the second game is
‘Brad Takes Over’. This is technically true but wasn’t clear until Final
Jeopardy. The Jeopardy round started with Brad and Ken getting off to a fast
start and Jerome going into the red and never getting out in the course of the
round. The scores at the end were collectively low: Brad was in the lead with
$4200, Ken had $2400 and Jerome was at -$1400.
In Double Jeopardy
Jerome quickly climbed out of the hole when he did well in the category
RICH-ARTS and ROB-ARTS and moved into second place. Brad managed to maintain
his lead while Ken got exactly one correct response the first half of the
round. When Ken found the second Daily Double in CROSSWORD CLUES ‘T’, he
acknowledged: “I gotta make a move.” He had $3600 well behind Brad’s $10,200.
He gambled at bet $3400: “Prehistoric cave-dweller. (10 letters). He knew this
was a troglodyte and went up to $7000. Ken kept challenging Brad the rest of
the game and it was not until Brad got the correct response on the last clue of
the round - $2000 in DESPERATE HOUSEFLIES – that he had the lead for sure. It
was still a close game: Brad had $15,000, Ken had $11,000, Jerome had $8200.
I don’t remember Game 2
being much better for me. I may have gotten six clues right in all of the
Jeopardy round and didn’t do much better
in Double Jeopardy. Final Jeopardy certainly went no better. The category was
LAW & SOCIETY. “This Hollywood legend who died January 21, 1959 supported
placing monuments that have since brought legal troubles.” Brad was the only
player who knew this clue referred to Cecil B. DeMille, the director of The
Ten Commandments. (There were quite a few arguments in 2005 about putting
monuments involving the Ten Commandments in public settings.) Brad gained $5000
to put him at $20,000. After two games Brad had $38,400, Ken had $26,000 and
Jerome was now at $19,600.
I think for all intents
and purposes the tournament was over by the end of the Jeopardy round of Game
3. Brad got off to a lightning quick
start and had $9600 by the end of the round. Jerome wasn’t even able to ring in
until after the commercial break and was lucky to have $2200. Ken had $4600. I
didn’t do much better than Jerome: I think I got five clues right in all of the
Jeopardy round: I may have had $2000.
I actually think Double
Jeopardy was worse: the only category I did well in was GLOVE AMERICAN STYLE
which was a category about sports. Categories involving POETS AND POETRY left
me baffled and LATIN CLASS made me feel dumb. I think I may have made it
through both rounds with maybe $7000 in front of me. I was starting to feel just like Ken and
Jerome did by the end of the round. By that point Brad had essentially locked
up the tournament.
Final Jeopardy was an
exercise, but I thought there might be redemption for me. The category was 20th
CENTURY AMERICANS. “These names of 2 original Mercury astronauts, who orbited
Earth in May of 1962 and May 1963, are also occupations.” I wrote down with
some confidence: “What are Shepherd and Carpenter?” So did Jerome. Wrong. (Alan
Shepherd as Alex pointed out, did not orbit the earth. Brad knew the clue
referred to Scott Carpenter and Gordon Cooper?” He wagered nothing. He had no
need. Brad had amassed enough money to win the $2 million prize.
For the next fifteen
years, even though Ken Jennings was more or less the face of Jeopardy as much
as Alex Trebek was, Brad Rutter was officially the greatest of all time. He’d
already won $3.1 million, more than any player in game show history.
The Ultimate Tournament
of Champions had a major effect on how I viewed the show. I now recognized Brad
was the greatest player of all time and I was truly impressed by Ken in a way
his original run somehow hadn’t. It also more or less began the process that
led to me being a historian of the show. A few years later, the Game Show
network reran the UTC and I ended up recording almost all of it. I knew that
Brad and Ken were the first and second greatest player of all time. There were
now two questions: who would take the position of number three and would they
ever face off?
In the next article, I
will deal with the lead up to and the eventual competition in the Battle of the
Decades in 2014.
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