Yes I know Jeopardy fans.
Tonight marks the official halfway point of Season 40 and we have yet to emerge
from postseason hell. But the light at the end of the tunnel is finally
beginning to appear.
In exactly one week the long,
long, long awaited Tournament of Champions is finally going to occur. And it
seems that there is going to be yet another format change, though at least the
show has spent the last several months prepping us for it.
This year the Tournament of
Champions will apparently follow the format of Champions Wild Card. We will
have twenty-seven players who will meet in nine quarterfinal games. The nine
winners will then face off in three semi-final matches and then we will have a
two game total point affair resulting in a winner, who will receive a $250,000
and, nearly as importantly, a spot in the upcoming Jeopardy Masters Tournament
which will be coming in just a few months. (I’ll be dealing with that when I
get more information.)
By this point, the average
Jeopardy fan could be forgiven if they had forgotten the names of some of the
participants. There were far fewer super-champions this past season and as some
fans might recall, there were only fourteen apparent qualifiers at the end of
Season 39. Well apparently, Jeopardy has decided to go back to its original
point of allowing three game winners from Season 39 to participate in the
upcoming Tournament. (Of course, if they’d just done that before, as well as
had their College Championship and Professors Tournament…no, we’ll save that
for another article.) One last slot remains to be filled, the winner of the
final leg of the Season 39 Wild Card, which we will learn on Thursday night. So
with that in mind, here are the 25 players who will be participating starting
next week, along with some highlights from their original appearances. I will
proceed chronologically.
Luigi de Guzman, 5 Game Winner,
$140,700
A freelance writer from
Baltimore, Luigi won the final game of Season 38 and the first four of Season
39. Two of his five victories were runaways and his most impressive win, which
netted him $42,400 took place on the first day the show was filmed before a
full studio audience. He played impressively and was actually ahead in his
sixth appearance before being defeated by…
Emmett Stanton, 3 Game Winner,
$72,600
Because of his cautious wagering
Emmett, who was trailing going into Final Jeopardy went on to defeat Luigi and
come from behind twice to win his next two games. He was defeated by Martha
Bath, who had appeared in the Art Fleming version of the show half a century
earlier. (She made it to the Semi-Finals of Group 1 of the 2024 Champions Wild
Card before being defeating.
David Sibley, 4 wins, 78,098
An episcopal priest from Walla
Walla, Washington David won three of his four victories in runaway games. He
looked unbeatable. But on the fifth day he met with…
Cris Panullo, 21 Wins, $748,286
Cris’ is the only comparable
player to any of the three super-champions we had in Season 38, and in 21 games
he won considerably more than Mattea Roach did in 23. He was also basically
even with Matt Amodio and not far behind Amy Schneider at that point in their
runs. Ironically, his original run was interrupted by the 2022 Postseason but
after a month away from the buzzer he showed no rust at all. I’d say he’s the
heavy favorite going into the Tournament, but we saw what happened to Matt and
Mattea last season.
Sean McShane, 3 Games, $80,401
Sean has Jeopardy in his blood.
His cousin Dan McShane appeared on the show way back in 2012, winning four
games and winning $62,001. Dan made it to the semi-finals of the 2013 Tournament
of Champions where he would compete against Keith Whitener, Kristin Morgan and
Colby Burnett, all of whom would eventually become Finalists. (Colby won.)
Sean managed to win more money
than his cousin but fewer games. However, he also has the credit of having
faced off another superb champion in what would be his first win.
Ray LaLonde, 13 wins, $386,400
Ray managed an impressive streak
by Jeopardy standards over the course of Season 39, though by the standards of
players who’ve only been watching the last two years, only a middling one. 13 wins
is an impressive number and he very quickly became a beloved fan-favorite
during his time. Many of his wins were not runaways, Ray had to fight for many
of them.
Ray is also admired for, when Jeopardy
started filming this summer, saying that he would not cross the picket line.
(He works in film and television and was in support of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA.) His
fellow champions agreed with him and the Tournament of Champions had to be
delayed as a result. (I wonder if Ken will bring this up.)
Yogesh Raut, 3 games, $96,403
And here we see the Jeopardy producers
being the bigger people. Yogesh publicly bad-mouths them on the internet and becomes
the most controversial Jeopardy champion since Arthur Chu. Fellow Jeopardy
players champions attack him for his comments. Jeopardy’s producers take the
high road, say they’ll welcome him back to the stage – and now they’ve invited
him back to the Tournament of Champions. Will he be booed when he plays in his quarterfinal
match? I almost hope so.
Troy Meyer, 6 wins, $214,802
It says something for where
Jeopardy is these days that when a player like Troy has the kind of run that
would have been one of the best even five years ago, it’s barely noticed. He averages
more than $35,000 wins a game but because he only won six games, it doesn’t get
the credit it should. Of course he might have gotten further were it not for…
Jake DeArruda, 3 games, $68,601
A delivery dispatcher from
Vermont, Jake bears the dubious distinction of winning all three of his games
and not getting a correct Final Jeopardy in any of them. To be fair, neither
could anyone else. His bad luck continued in Final Jeopardy in his fourth appearance,
but this time Patti Palmer got Final Jeopardy right. If he doesn’t do better in
Final Jeopardy this time, his run’s going to be very short.
Matthew Marcus, 4 wins, $114, 200
Matthew won his first game the
day after Jake lost and he won big: $42,400. He played exceptionally for all four
wins that came after. He is also known for his admiration for Oscar Wilde,
which led to some controversy on his fourth match, which was irrelevant to his
winning the game. But a wager in his fifth math on a Daily Double dropped him
out of contention behind Dan Wohl, and he went home after five.
Brian Henegar, 3 wins, $68,202
Poor Brian had the misfortune of
earning the hatred of Jeopardy fans because he has a mustache that makes him
look like Hitler. Worse, he actually was the punchline on SNL on one of the
last show’s they did before the Writer’s Strike. He was actually ahead going
into Final Jeopardy for Game 4 but the clue was a tough one that no one got
right and his wager put him second place. I look forward to seeing you Brian. I
hope you kept the mustache.
Stephen Webb, 8 wins, $184,881
Stephen’s total is better than
it looks. Six of his eight victories were runaways but in many of them he
either got Final jeopardy incorrect or didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver in
his routs. He won two very impressive come from behind wins but neither got
noticed as much. I actually think he could go pretty far.
Justin Bolsen, Winner of the
High School Reunion Tournament
The only ‘special’ tournament to
take place during Season 39 Justin, a semi-finalist in the 2019 Tournament of
Champions played extremely well in his quarterfinal match and kind of backed
into winning his semi-final. Dropping behind at the end of Game 1 of the final,
he came from behind to triumph in the final to win $100,000. Justin is the
first former Teen Tournament Player to participate in any Tournament at all
since Leonard Cooper played for Team Austin in the Jeopardy All-Star Games in
2019 – and like Cooper at the time, Justin is currently attending Brown.
Melissa Klapper 3 games $59,700
Melissa’s first victory game the
day after Stephen Webb was defeated. She was very lucky to have a chance in Game
3: her challenger Karen Morris had an insurmountable lead when she found the
last Daily Double, lost $10,000, which put Melissa back in contention. Karen
got Final Jeopardy incorrect and Melissa was able to advance. Her luck ended
after she got two Daily Doubles wrong and lost a total of $8000 on them. The
Daily Double giveth and it taketh away.
Kevin Belle, 3 Games, $42,798
With Kevin I kind of think their
stretching it. None of his three victories were particularly dominant and he
got three of four Final Jeopardys wrong. Though, to his credit, he lost his
third game to…
Hannah Wilson, 8 Games, $229,801
Like Amy Schneider, Hannah
Wilson is a transgender woman, something that Amy made note of during her run. Hannah
didn’t get nearly as far as Amy, but she was extremely good, winning four
runaways and winning $40,000 twice. She might have gotten further had it not
been for…
Ben Chan, 9 games, $252,600
Ben won three games in early
April and then the next day wasn’t there. He was suffering from Covid and could
not travel for an extended period. When he returned on Hannah’s 9th
appearance, he picked up right where he left off, putting the exclamation point
on a return the way he follows his name on the lectern.
All nine of his wins had been
routs, which is Ken Jennings territory. Then in his tenth victory, he was in a
close match for the first time against Lynn DeVito and controversy ensued. In a
clue that had to deal with Shakespeare, Ben wrote down: “Who is Beatrice and
Benedict?” Mayim Bialik responded it was unacceptable because the spelling was
Benedick. The outrage from the net was vast even though Mayim was following the
rules the show has had for forty years. They don’t penalize for misspelling
unless it creates a different word, which is what happened here. Ben could go
pretty far.
Jared Watson, 3 wins, $56,202
Jared played very well in his
three wins, but got Final Jeopardy incorrect in his fourth and was defeated by…
Suresh Krishnan, 6 wins, $96,595
Suresh won six games and with
one exception, didn’t really play well in any of them. The problem was neither
did any of his opponents
Ben Goldstein, 5 Wins, $49,298
All right, now I get why Jared
Watson is here. I’ve seen less impressive five game winners in Jeopardy but not
many. Sorry, just being honest.
Now let’s deal with the four
wild card players.
Josh Saak, SPADES
3 WINS, $66,405 in his original
appearance. And considering Matt Amodio beat him I can see why they invited him
back.
Emily Sands, Diamond
3 wins, $73,000 in Season 37.
Under normal circumstances she’d have been invited back too.
Nick Cascone, CLUBS
Not entirely comfortable with a
one game winner
Yungsheng Wang, Hearts
He was an alternate for the 2022
Tournament of Champions. Honestly he shouldn’t have had to fight to get here.
And finally:
Juveria Zaheer, Second Chance
Winner, Wild Card Group 1
All right. Considering how
dominant she was not only in her Second Chance wins but everything she did to
get to the Wild Card and considering she lost to Hannah Wilson, I’m almost willing
to rethink my opinion on the Second Chance Tournament.
Now there is one more player who
has qualified technically, but I remain uncertain this individual will even
show up. I will refrain from mentioning who he is until the Tournament actually
happens.
For all the labor that has gone
into it, I have to be honest I’m impressed even with the caliber of most of the
Wild Card Winners. Many of the players in this tournament are genuinely very
good at a collective level we rarely see in Tournaments of Champions. It may
not have the same quantity of super-champions but there’s actually a more
accurate balance then we usually get in these tournaments. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that whenever the next
Tournament of Champions takes place, the show should go back to the original
format. But I have enough fond memories of this group of players to look
forward to seeing them against each other and to see who comes out on top. I
have my favorites, as do you all, but I also know that accounts to nothing
after the first round of play. Anyway, I will get back to you on this subject
when the Tournament of Champions is underway.
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