There are many people
who believe that part of the reason for so many super-champions in the last
three years has something to do with Alex Trebek’s passing. That is in
interesting theory but it is unsupported by the facts.
Looking at the last
seven years before Trebek’s untimely death, it is now clear that a new breed of
dominant winners had been appearing for a while but because there streaks had
not gone on nearly as long as those of the post-Trebek era the fan chose to
write them off.
This is reasonable
because, as I said in the previous article, in the interim between David
Madden’s 19 wins and the Battle of the Decades, no player had one as many as
ten games. But even before Arthur Chu made his first appearance on the show in
February of 2013, there had been signs of change.
Not long after Colby Burnett
won the 2013 Tournament of Champions, two different players – Drew Horwood and
Ben Ingram – each won eight games before the end of Season 29. Neither had won an immense sum of money –
Horwood won $138,100; Ingram $176,413 – but it was the first time since the
2006 Tournament of Champions where there had been as many two winners of at
least games.
Indeed the 2014
Tournament of Champions included a vast array of players who had won more than
five games: in addition to Ingram, Horwood, Arthur Chu and Julia Collins, there
were two six game winners: Sandie Baker and Andrew Moore. In a
long and surprising tournament, the final would end up being between
Ingram, Chu and Collins with Ingram the eventual winner. It was a foreshadowing of things to come.
The following year saw
two of the most dominant Jeopardy players in the post five game era arrive on
scene: Alex Jacob, who in six games managed to win $149,802 – four in massive
runaways and Matt Jackson who managed to win thirteen games and well over $400,000.
Jackson may have been the first player to compare favorably to Jennings in his
original appearance: he was the first player to win $50,000 or more in two wins
since Jennings’ original run and won $40,000 twice more.
No one else was at quite
the same level as Matt or Alex, but two players did win at least six games:
Kerry Greene, who won nearly as much as Matt in her run and Greg Seroka who won
seven games and just over $180,000.
In the 2015 Tournament
of Champions, Matt and Alex would roll to their spots in the finals with Kerry
Greene earning the third spot. But this tournament wasn’t nearly as close as
the year before: Alex Jacob played so brilliantly that Alex Trebek would say
before the last Final Jeopardy was revealed that this had been the most dominant
performance he had seen in any of the tournaments in the past thirty years.
Alex Jacob was profoundly moved when he managed to win.
It would be nearly two
years before the next Tournament of Champions ended up being played and the
caliber of champions within may have been the highest level since the five game
limit had been removed. Nine of the participants had won more than five games
and several of them have earned a place in the Jeopardy lore. It’s actually
worth mentioning that two of the ones that had been the most dominant in that
period – Pranjal Vachaspati and Andrew Pau, who had each won six games would
have been the best in their field in any other year: in the 2017 field, they
were outclassed by three major players, two of whom have become the most famous
Jeopardy champions of all time.
Buzzy Cohen has been
labeled one of the more controversial Jeopardy champions of all time, which I
have never understood. He had a reputation for not taking the game as seriously
as fans might like but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t fun to watch. He managed a
nine game winning streak and over $160,000 in that period.
At the start of the
2016-2017, Seth Wilson became only the fourth player in Jeopardy history to win
12 games and took home $265,002. This was an impressive run by anyone’s
standards but by the time of 2017 Tournament of Champions, another twelve game
winner had stolen his thunder – and put Jeopardy on the map again.
Austin Rogers was named
one of the most interesting personalities of 2017 in large part because of his
performance before every Jeopardy game more than his actual performance. His
humor and panache made him memorable, but they would have meant nothing without
his accomplishments. In twelve games he won $411,000. If anything he had been
more impressive than Matt Jackson two years earlier: he was the first player in
Jeopardy history to have two wins of $65,000 or more.
The 2017 Tournament of
Champions was exciting all the way through and the finals were known as much
for the clowning onstage as the performance of the three finalists: Buzzy, Alan
Lin and Austin. In Game 1, Buzzy was utterly dominated by Alan and Austin, but
he managed a spectacular comeback in Game 2 to manage to end up winning the
tournament. This tournament featured
some incredibly difficult Final Jeopardys in the finals that none of the three
contestants could answer correctly – and neither could I.
The 2017 Tournament had
taken place in Jeopardy’s 34th season. I thought that if history was
any indication there would be some kind of super-tournament for Jeopardy’s 35th
season. I was right but I don’t think anybody could have predicted the format
that would be involved or the players invited back.
The producers decided
for the first time in the show’s history they would try what amounted to a team
Tournament. There would be six captains and twelve individual players who the
captains would draft to play on their teams.
In each game, one player for each team would go out for one of the
rounds – Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy.
If this sounds
complicated, trust me I haven’t gotten to the hard part. The tournament would involve four sets of
matches, each two games with the player with the highest score of each match
becoming an automatic finalist. The three high scorers of the two matches who
didn’t win would end up facing off in a wild card match, with the third team
going home with $50,000 to split between them. The losers of the wild card
match would each split $75,000 and then the three finalists would play in a two
game match for a million dollars.
From the moment this tournament was announced, I thought it
would be unwieldy and ridiculously complicated.
This opinion was affected nearly as adversely when I learned who the
eighteen competitors were. None of them had played Jeopardy prior to 2000
season (and there were only two players who went that far back). This struck me
as an odd decision for an anniversary tournament. I think the reason for this,
in hindsight, was because of the format. All eighteen players were relatively
young – Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, who were
each around forty, were the oldest members of the group – so I assume
that they didn’t want an issue of reflexes hurting one team over another. That’s not a great argument for this kind of
tournament to begin with.
Now to be fair, the large majority of the participants were
more than qualified to be considered among the all-time greats, even if the
majority had only been so in the last decade. Certainly the six captains –
Brad, Ken, Austin Rogers, Buzzy Cohen, Julia Collins and Colby Burnett - were among the greatest champions of all
time. And more than a fair number of the participants were more than qualified
to be ranked among the greats. Roger Craig, Alex Jacob, Ben Ingram, Matt
Jackson and Seth Wilson had more than demonstrated it over the years. David
Madden had been invited back to compete after declining to participate in the
Battle of the Decades. Larissa Kelly and Pam Mueller had more than demonstrated
that they were formidable competitors. And considering that Alan Lin had
already competed against Buzzy and Austin in the most recent Tournament of
Champions and done well against them both, few would question his
qualifications.
But the three remaining
players qualifications for the tournament then and now was extremely
questionable, especially when there were several other more qualified players
from the seasons that they had competed in. Each had been the winner of one of
the special tournaments that had taken place in the previous five years but it
was hard to really consider any of them one of the greatest.
Leonard Cooper had won
the 2013 Teen Tournament. Now I had been upset when the winners of Teen
Tournaments had been ruled ineligible to participate in Tournaments of
Champions after 2000. And I was all for a representative of that tournament. It
was that it was Leonard being asked that bothered because I had seen quite a
few Teen Tournament players in the last decade alone who were clearly better
than him. In the 2012 Teen Tournament alone, Elyse Mancuso had managed to outdo
the $75,000 minimum and win $79,600.
Leonard, I believe, was
chosen because in his Final Jeopardy response he had managed to go viral when
he wrote won of the most hysterical joke responses in Jeopardy history. He was
not a particularly good player in his tournament (in fact, he had only managed
to qualify because one semi-final had producer no winners and he had the second
highest score of the winners in the third semi-final). My opinion of his
abilities would change in this tournament but I will never be convinced there
weren’t more qualified Teen Tournament winners who could have done just as well
in his stead.
Another dubious
contender was Monica Thieu, who had won the 2013 College Championship. While
several College Champions have done well in the Tournament of Champions, Monica
had not been one of them. Indeed, the winner of the Tournament before her Erin
McLean had gotten to the semi-finals in the previous Tournament of Champions as
had Terry O’Shea the in the Tournament after Monica’s. If there is a reason Monica was more
qualified than either of them, the transcript doesn’t show it, although as with
Leonard, she was superb in this Tournament.
Jennifer Giles, the
winner of the 2015 Teachers Tournament – if there’s a viable reason she was
asked back for this tournament, I have yet to find it. I will admit she played
very well when she won the Teachers Tournament but so have countless other
winners of Tournaments during that decade.
Perhaps I am being a
purist but the All-Star Challenge didn’t entirely live up to its name. Even if
you wanted to focus on players primarily from the past decade, I could have
thought of at least a half-dozen infinitely more qualified players that the last
three I mentioned. The decision to omit Arthur Chu and Kerry Greene, who were
the only finalists in the 2014 and 2015 Tournament of Champions who were
excluded from the tournament in favor of any one of these three players looks
glaring in retrospect. I thought that before the tournament took place and despite
their abilities in that, my opinion remains unchanged.
In order to determine
which players ended up which team, Jeopardy held a draft live on Facebook. The
system for selecting players was based on a system the NFL used: the captain
who got the first pick would get the twelfth pick, the captain who got the
second would get the eleventh and so on.
The teams make up would break up as followed:
Buzzy got the 1st
and 12th pick.
Austin got the 2nd
and 11th picks.
Ken got the 3rd
and 10th picks.
Julia got the 4th
and 9th picks.
Colby got the 5th
and 8th picks.
Brad got the 6th
and 7th picks.
Buzzy made his choice
looking for a ‘fast buzzer’. He selected Alex Jacob, calling him one of the
most dominant players of all time.
Rounding out his team was Jennifer Giles.
Austin decided to choose
Roger Craig and Leonard Cooper ended up being selected as his last pick.
Ken, saying that he
respecting a long streak, chose Matt Jackson as his third pick. He chose Monica
Thieu and his second pick.
Julia, who had become
friends with Ben Ingram in the years since his defeat of her in the 2014
Tournament of Champions chose him as her first choice. Her second choice was
Seth Wilson.
Colby thought that Pam
Mueller, who he’d played against in the Battle of The Decades, would be a good
teammate. He chose Alan Lin to round out his team.
Brad got back-to-back
picks and chose first Larissa Kelly and then David Madden.
The All-Star Games began
on February 20, 2019. The teams to play in the first game were selected by
random draw: Team Buzzy, Team Colby and Team Brad. Segments of team strategy
session were filmed and excerpts were shown before each match. Brad decided
early on that it would probably be best for his team if he went out for the
Jeopardy round in one game and Double Jeopardy in the other. (Considering his
mixed track record on Final Jeopardy that was a wise decision.) The members of
Team Colby knew this was a tough draw, so Colby went out of the Jeopardy round.
Team Buzzy thought that Alex Jacob should out for the Jeopardy round.
Throughout the
tournament, all of competitors in the Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy rounds
started at the bottom of the board hunting for the Daily Double. Alex got off
to a lightning fast start in the round and at one point had a lead of $6200 to
Brad’s $2600. Unfortunately for the other two teams, the Daily Double was in a
$400 clue and Brad managed to get to hit. He wagered the $3200 he had and that
was enough to move him ahead of Alex. He led his team to a superb finish with
$8400 to Alex’s $6600 and Colby’s $3200. (Colby did not have an easy time
against the two buzzsaws.)
The Double Jeopardy
match of Game 1 was played the next day. (As I said, it was unwieldy.) Buzzy
went out for his team, Alan went out for Team Colby and Larissa went out for
Team Brad. Larissa continued the fast play that Brad had done in the Jeopardy
round in the first half of Double Jeopardy. But halfway through Double Jeopardy
Buzzy found the other Daily Double in POLITICANS. At the time, he had $12,800
to Larissa’s to $23,000 so he chose to bet $10,000:
“Before going to the
Supreme Court, he made history by winning 3 straight California gubernatorial
elections.” I knew that this was Earl Warren and so did Buzzy. The rest of the
match was a back and forth between Buzzy and Larissa for the lead and Larissa
finished ahead with $29,800 to Buzzy’s $26,200. Alan who had struggled
throughout had just $6400.
Jennifer, Pam and David
came out for their respective teams for Final Jeopardy to deal with AFRICAN
GEOGRAPHY. Team Buzzy chose not to wager anything; by necessity Team Colby
thought that they had to be everything and Team Brad decided to gamble and bet
big in Final Jeopardy. “The 7-letter
names of these western- and easternmost mainland countries begin with the same
letter.” David was the only one who came up with the correct response: “What
are Senegal and Somalia?” He wagered $20,000. Team Brad ended Game 1 with a big
lead with $49,800 to Team Buzzy’s $26,200 while Team Colby was at zero.
In the Jeopardy round of
Game 2 Team Buzzy came out swinging
early and David Madden for Team Brad didn’t do as good a job as he could
have. Alan Lin helped slowly but surely
build a lead for Team Colby and by the end of the Jeopardy round they were
ahead with $5000 to Team Buzzy’s $4000 and Team Brad’s $3800.
The Double Jeopardy
round of Game 2 was the worst game that Brad Rutter had played in a Jeopardy
tournament in nearly fifteen years. Just as he had in the Jeopardy round of
Game 1, Alex Jacob dominated and this time Brad could not redeem himself by
either of the Daily Doubles. Alex found both of them, but they amounted to a
zero sum gain: he lost $100 on the first and gained $100 on the second. He
didn’t need them. He played brilliantly and gave just one incorrect response
(besides the Daily Double) and Brad played so poorly that he apologized to his
teammates before Final Jeopardy for his bad play. He should have. At the end of
Double Jeopardy Alex had brought Team Buzzy into a commanding position with
$16,800 to Brad’s $4200. Pam Mueller had gotten Team Colby to $11,000 but they
were in no position to hunt for anything but a wild-card. Team Brad would be moving on no matter what
happened in Final Jeopardy, but there was a huge difference between moving to
the finals and the wild card spot and both teams knew it.
It came down to Final
Jeopardy. The category was WOMEN IN U.S. HISTORY. I had not been playing particularly well in
either game, but I didn’t think my score should count the same way because I
was playing every round. Still I took Final Jeopardy seriously: “In 1901 this
activist was jailed for inspiring the assassination of William McKinley, but
the charge was later dropped.” Like Larissa and Colby, who came out for their
respective teams, I knew the correct answer: “Who is Emma Goldman?” Buzzy,
however, thought it was Susan B. Anthony.
He had wagered everything to force Brad’s team into a position to be to
cover. It didn’t work. Team Brad automatically moved on to the finals while
Team Buzzy and Team Colby had to wait for the wild card match.
I won’t go into great
detail about the second match: Ken Jennings’, like Brad, chose to play in the
Jeopardy round in Game 1 and Double Jeopardy in Game 2. His performance, more or less, was the
impetus for complete and other domination by Team Ken. I had come to expect as much from Ken over
the last ten years. Instead, I will focus on the surprises from the other
players on the other teams.
Going into Game 2, I had
thought Team Julia would be in a better position to go to the finals. Instead
they did poorly largely because of Julia herself. In the sole competitive round
in which she played – the Double Jeopardy round of Game 2 – she was only able
to give two correct answers. Ben Ingram and Seth Wilson played very well in
both matches but Julia ended up being the Achilles Heel of her team.
I was equally surprised
about certain aspects of Team Austin. Going into the Tournament, I had thought
that Roger Craig would be one of the determining factors for it. Instead in his
first appearance – the Double Jeopardy round of Game 1 - he was a millstone around Team Austin’s neck.
He gave four incorrect responses that round. By contrast, in the first game of
match 1 all three teams combined gave exactly one incorrect
response. Team Austin was already in
third place when the Jeopardy round of Game 1 ended, by Double Jeopardy, it
looked very much like Team Austin was going home first.
The fate of Team Austin
more or less turned on Final Jeopardy of Game 1. It involved two shocks: the
poor play of Julia in Final Jeopardy and the biggest surprise how good a player
Leonard Cooper was.
The category was EUROPEAN
ARTISTS. Leonard said upfront he didn’t love the category to his teammates, but
that he could answer some questions on it. I don’t know what surprises me more:
that he knew the correct answer or that Julia didn’t. (I certainly didn’t)
“His seldom-used last
name reflects his birth near the mouth of a river that flows from the Alps to
the North Sea.” I think I wrote down Donatello. Julia was thinking of another
famous Ninja Turtle, Michelangelo.
Leonard, however, knew what river they were talking about in this
context when he wrote down: “Who is Rembrandt?” For those of you (like me) who
didn’t know his full name is Rembrandt van Rijn (pronounced Rhine).
Leonard bet modestly $1200. But Julia’s wager of $11,200 took her team down to
zero at the end of Game 1 and put them at a deficit they would never come back
from. The fact that Leonard (and Monica,
who came out for Final Jeopardy) knew this was the first sign they had
demonstrated they belonged in this term. Leonard in particular would prove it
throughout the rest of Team Austin’s run and because of his play, by the end of
Double Jeopardy of Game 2, Team Austin knew they didn’t have to take Final
Jeopardy because they would finish ahead of Team Julia and (even though they
were unaware of the scores of the previous match) they were guaranteed a wild
card spot. They were and Team Julia was the first to go home.
In my opinion the Wild
Card match justified the All-Star Challenge’s existence, if not its format.
Both Team Colby and Team Austin, having been badly beaten in each of their
respective matches, chose to alter their approaches when it came to order. In
Game 1, Pam Mueller went out for Jeopardy, Colby for Double Jeopardy and Alan
for Final Jeopardy. Roger went out for the Jeopardy round for Team Austin,
Austin went out in Double Jeopardy and Leonard went out for Final Jeopardy.
Because Team Buzzy had come so close to upsetting Team Brad, they chose not to
alter their strategy for either game. It almost ended up working for them.
The Jeopardy round was a
back and forth battle until Alex Jacob found the Daily Double in the category
GO PLAY. (In a satire of the tournament, the two categories which proceeded it
referenced Smash Mouth: YOU’RE AN ALL-STAR, GET YOUR GAME ON.) Alex chose to
wager everything and moved Team Buzzy into a lead that they would not
relinquish for the remainder of the round. They had $8800 to Roger’s $5600
while Pam was at $2600.
By chance, all three
team captains were out for Double Jeopardy in what was very much the highpoint
of the tournament. Colby found the Daily
Double on the first clue of the round in TRIOS (another clear in-joke). He
chose to go all in: “Submerged in China: Qutang, Wu & Xining” Colby paused
before guessing: “What are the Three Gorges of Three Gorges Dam?” and doubled
his score.
Not long after Austin
went on a run in which he got four of the remaining $1600 clues correct and put
his team into the lead with $12,800. Colby who had been silent for that period,
got a $1200 clue in TAXONOMY right, and not long after found the second Daily
Double in another Jeopardy only category UNPHAROHS. This time he bet $4000:
“The Bible says Pharaoh
Shishak raided Jerusalem and the temple, taking the gold shields this king had
made.”
Colby reasoned it out:
“This king, so the temple, I’m gonna say Who is Solomon?”
He picked the right king
and went up to $13,600, putting his team in the lead for the first time in the
game.
Just then Buzzy came to
life and went on a run of his own which would include three of the five
remained $2000 clues. There were very few mistakes made in the round by the
three captains – indeed in the entire first two rounds combined both teams only
gave four incorrect responses. When it was over, the three captains had played
exceptionally: Colby had $19,600, Team Buzzy had $17,200 and Team Austin had
$15,600.
The Final Jeopardy
category for Jennifer Giles, Alan Lin and Leonard Cooper was BRITISH
LITERATURE. Everyone chose to bet fairly
high. The clue for Final Jeopardy was probably the toughest one of the entire
tournament:
“A chapter of The
Jungle Book” has this double-talk title, echoing the opening line of a
Brit’s poem some 100 years prior.”
All three players were
stumped: Leonard and Alan could not come up with in and Jennifer’s response of
king king was clearly a blind guess. My
guess at home was water, water (I was thinking of Coleridge) but I was just as
wrong. The poem in question was William Blake’s The Tyger. And if you know your
poetry, the chapter referenced it: “Tiger! Tiger!” Everybody lost big: Team Buzzy lost
everything, Team Colby lost $12,000 and Team Austin lost $10,400. At the end of Game 1, it was still anybody’s
game to win.
Oddly enough, though
Team Colby and Team Austin altered their lineups from the way they had
approached their initial matches, the same lineups that had contended in every
round of Game One were all contending in the same lineup in different rounds of
Game 2. Leonard, Alan and Jennifer went
out in the Jeopardy round for their teams; Alex, Pam and Roger went out in Double
Jeopardy and the captains went out in Final Jeopardy. (Confused? Welcome to the
All-Star Games.)
In the Jeopardy round
Alan and Leonard got off to a great start for both their teams, dividing most
of the clues on the bottom of the board until the first break when Jennifer
finally got on the board. They were tied at $4200 apiece to Jennifer’s $1600.
Leonard had moved ahead with $5000 when he found the Daily Double in THEIR IVY
LEAGUE ALMA MATER. He bet $2500: “Brooke Shields (class of ’87 with honors) and
F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Leonard guessed Columbia instead of Princeton. His score
dropped in half. By the end of the round Alan had built a lead with $6000 to
Jennifer’s $2200 and Leonard’s $2100.
Early in Double Jeopardy
Alex seemed to build Team Buzzy an insurmountable lead when he found the first
Daily Double in ‘E’ PONYMOUS. He chose to bet the $7400 he had: “The plane
truth is that this 2-word branch of math is named for a Greek who lived around
300 B.C.” Alex knew it was Euclidean geometry and put his team at $14,800.
In the next few clues,
Pam managed to get two $2000 clues right and a $2000 and $1200 clue wrong. Roger
had gotten three $1200 clues right and a $2000 clue wrong. Alex had gotten a
$2000 clue wrong and a $1200 and $1600 clue right. (For the record they all got
the same $2000 clue wrong in a category I’m going to get to.)
When Alex found the
other Daily Double, he had $15,600 in front of him and a more than $10,000 lead
more than either of his opponents. Then he made a move similar to Bob Verini’s
in the final game of Million Dollar Masters and Roger Craig’s in the final game
of the Battle of the Decades, only given the circumstances it was more
inexplicable. Admittedly if it had worked I’d think about it differently but if
he’d wagered cautiously his team would have a better chance to win. Instead, he
chose to bet everything again in ON THE SOUNDTRACK:
“1994: ‘Son of a
Preacher Man”, “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon.”
I can’t tell you how
agonizing it can be for the viewer at home when you know the correct response
to a Daily Double in this situation and the contestant involved doesn’t. Alex
guessed: ‘What is Pretty Woman?” It’s actually Pulp Fiction. He dropped
to zero. There was still enough money left on the board for him to try and at least
catch up but despite a valiant effort he could not recoup his losses. By the
end of Double Jeopardy, Alex had $3600 and the last spot in the final was down
to either Team Colby at $7600 and Team Austin at $8900.
If anything Final
Jeopardy was actually more maddening to me considering how it went. Now there have been occasion in tournaments
when I have known the correct response and none of the three players have
gotten it. I just found it bizarre given the clue and the context that three of
the greatest Jeopardy champions of all time had no idea what it was.
The category was
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEARS: “Prior to 2016 it was the last election year in
which the winning candidate had never held public office.”
Now some times when
players write down their responses for Final Jeopardy you can at least guess
why they wrote them. In at least one case it was inexplicable. Buzzy Cohen
wrote down: “What is 1868?” Clearly he was thinking of Grant, which was the
right idea, but it was incorrect. His team lost everything. Colby, who had
taught history wrote down: “What is 1956?” That’s closer to the right answer,
but it’s also incorrect.” His team bet carefully and lost only $101. Austin
wrote down: “What is 1836?” I honestly don’t know who he was thinking of, considering
Martin Van Buren won that year, and he’d been Jackson’s vice president.
Austin’s wager was irrelevant as Team Colby’s combined two day total was
$15,099 and even if Austin had bet nothing, it wouldn’t have been enough to
beat them.
I knew the correct
response was 1952, when Eisenhower was elected. (Eisenhower won reelection in
1956, but Colby was wrong because in that election, Eisenhower was the
incumbent.
In any case Team Colby
won the wild card and moved on to the finals. Team Buzzy and Team Austin each
split $75,000 as they went home.
When the Final took
place two thoughts occurred to me at the time. The first was that Pam Mueller,
who had been battling in Jeopardy Tournaments nearly as long as Brad Rutter, was
finally in the finals and competing against her rivals Brad and Ken Jennings.
The second related thought was that, regardless of which team ended up winning
the tournament, for the first time in Jeopardy history a female contestant would
end up sharing in the million dollar prize.
Very quickly it became
clear that Team Colby would not be that team. By the end of the Double Jeopardy
round of Game, Team Colby had been so utterly dominated by Team Ken and Team
Brad that they only $4000 compared to Team Ken’s $25,000 and Team Brad’s
$22,800. The highpoint for Team Colby would come in the Jeopardy round of Game
2 of the Final when Alan managed to put his team ahead of Monica Thieu for
second place.
As had been the case for
the last fourteen years the 2 game finals became what amounted to a war of
attrition between the first and second biggest money winners of all time. In
their initial face-off in the Jeopardy round, Ken managed to get ahead of Brad
on the last clue $8000 to $7200. In Double Jeopardy, Larissa Kelly would put
Team Brad into an early big lead before Matt found the second Daily Double in
THE SEA’S THE LIMIT and after a series of correct answers in COMPUTER SCIENCE
built up a margin that Larissa couldn’t overcome. The wagers in Final Jeopardy
(which all three players got right) gave Team Brad a small lead with $35,000 to
Team Ken’s $32,500. Team Colby was at $8000.
David Madden would give
Team Brad an early lead in the Jeopardy round of Game 2. However, before the
Jeopardy round was a third over, Brad had found both Daily Doubles and added
$15,000 to his total. Team Brad was at $28,400 and despite Ken’s best efforts
to close the distance the rest of the way, he could not make up enough ground.
By the end of Double Jeopardy, Team Brad had locked up the tournament.
Final Jeopardy was an
exercise but it was an interesting one because it was Jeopardy’s acknowledgement
of why they were holding this tournament. The category was CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
MATH: “Total of the numbers of the amendments banning state-sponsored official
religion, ending slavery, and repealing prohibition.” All three players came up
with the correct number: “What is 35?” (1 + 13 +21) Alex acknowledged: “It’s a
very significant number for those of us here at Jeopardy, because this
tournament was our way of celebrating our 35TH Anniversary. The results were known before Final Jeopardy
was given Team Colby split the third prize of $100,000, Team Ken split the second
prize of $300,000 and Brad, David Madden and Larissa Kelly split one million
dollars.
This tournament was also
significant because at the end of it, not only did Brad Rutter remain the sole
undefeated player in Jeopardy history but with Larissa Kelly’s share of the
prize money, she would move ahead of Julia Collins for most money won by a
female contestant. Her collective total of more than $660,000 would be the
benchmark for a female contestant until Amy Schneider shattered it in 2022.
(Mattea Roach also surpassed it over the last two years.)
As unwieldy and messy as
this tournament had been, I enjoyed it as much as I did so many others. Within
a month, however, the Jeopardy would was shaken to its core when Alex Trebek
announced his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. The Jeopardy world would never be the same –
for more than reasons than one.
And one month after Trebek’s
announced his diagnosis, another force would enter the world of Jeopardy that
was as much of a signifier of the new age of super-champions. In the final
entry in this series I will deal with the arrival of James Holzhauer and the
end of the Alex Trebek era.
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