As I mentioned
quite a few times in my last article about Jeopardy while we haven’t had the
super-champions that have existed in the post Alex Trebek era throughout the
start of regular game play in 2024 we have had a steady stream of qualifiers
for the Tournament of Champions. In the seventy-eight games of regular season
play during Season 40 seven players qualified for the Tournament of Champions a
remarkably consistent pattern unmatched during the last four years.
Now in only the
first five weeks of Season 41, we have had back to back qualifiers for the next
Tournament of Champions. In fact they’ve both qualified in just the last two
weeks. To be fair only one has ‘officially’ qualified but the Jeopardy archive
the online history of the game (and your humble scribes main source) says both
players have qualified so for the purposes of this article I will take it as
gospel.
Last Monday Ryan
Manton, a systems administrator from Columbus Ohio had one of the most dominant
games of the season so far: 29 correct responses and only two incorrect ones. His
runaway score of $22,200 is all the more impressive because the two clues he
got wrong were both Daily Doubles, each of which cost him $5000. Nevertheless
he won his first game in a runaway and warmed the hearts of Jeopardy fans
everywhere when he wrote down in his first Final Jeopardy: “What is I Love you
Lauren?” This is heartwarming not just because he shows his love for his wife
but because the then Lauren Menke appeared on Season 37 of Jeopardy in what was
the last game Ken Jennings appeared on in his first stint as guest host. (Sam
Stapleton who won the game went on to win two games and qualify for the finals
in Champions Wildcard Spades.)
Ryan managed two
more runaway victories (and each time told Lauren he loved her) and in the
third game managed the narrowest of wins. (Scott Tcheng who just barely lost to
him, will no doubt be invited back to the Second Chance Tournament) That Friday he had a chance to officially punch
his ticket to the Tournament of Champions. Then he ran into Mark Fitzpatrick
and Anne Singleton.
In the Jeopardy
round Anne seemed to have the advantage ending it with $7000 to Ryan’s $4000
and Mark’s $1800. The Double Jeopardy round that followed was the most exciting
of the season. Mark shot to a big lead when he found both Daily Doubles back to
back and got both of them right netting $8000 and taking a huge lead. But
neither Mark nor Anne surrendered. Ryan got 20 correct responses and didn’t
make a single mistake, finishing with $15,200. Anne managed an impressive third
with 10,200. So even though Mark had the lead with $23,400, the game was far
from out of reach for either of his opponents.
It came down to
Final Jeopardy. The category was LITERARY CHARACTERS: “A fragment from a
nautical tool found on a Chilean island in 2005 was likely left by the Scot who
partly inspired this character.” Anne wrote down: “Who is Wallace?” and lost
$5200. Ryan couldn’t come up with anything but assured us he still loved his
wife. It cost him $5201 leaving him with $9999.
That left Mark.
His response was revealed: “Who is Robinson Crusoe?” and that was the correct
response. (For those of you who don’t know – and I suspect only true Jeopardy
fans might – Robinson Crusoe was inspired by the real life exploits of a
stranded Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk. Type in the line “I am the
monarch of all I survey’ on Google and you’ll find the connection.) Mark had
wagered $7001 to make him the new champion with an impressive $30,101.
Ryan put together
an impressive run during his four games, winning $83, 179 during the course of
them. This is at the level of Grant DeYoung, who qualified last year and
considerably more than Amar Kakirde who ‘only’ won $55,899 in four games last
May. And it is considerably more than Ben Goldstein won in five games back in
Season 39 and at least four or five other players who qualified for the 2021
Tournament of Champions. Ryan will be more than up to the challenge. And given
how well she played against two men who are now in the Tournament of Champions
Anne Singleton will definitely be in the Second Chance Tournament and deserve
to be.
Now on to Mark
Fitzpatrick. Mark was a better player than Ryan in that he won more games and
had two runaway victories but like Mark he struggled with Final Jeopardy,
eventually getting four out of six Final Jeopardys wrong. This is not
necessarily a flaw limited to Mark; Final Jeopardys have been particularly
challenging for the contestants – and I must confess to me at home. Credit to
the writers who have clearly upped their game as Season 41 progresses, though I
shudder to think what we’ll get in the Tournament of Champions. (I may save
that for a different article later on.)
A prime example
would come in Tuesday’s game which he spent much of Double Jeopardy fighting
off the challenge of Gino Montoya. At the end of the round he had a narrow lead
with $21,200 to Gino’s $17,400. The third challenger Andrew Miller was alive
with $4600.
The Final Jeopardy
category was not one to inspire confidence WORLD FLAGS: “The 12 stars on its
flag symbolize perfection, not geographic or political units.” Andrew guessed
Australia, Mark Liberia and Gino couldn’t come up with anything. Ken admitted
it was tough because “it’s not actually a nation of the world; we’re talking
about the flag of the European Union, those 12 stars in a circle.” Gino lost
everything. Mark lost $13,601 but that left him wit $7599, enough for his third
victory.
On the game that
he officially clinched his spot in the Tournament of Champions he spent a great
deal of time going back and forth with Mike Obstgarten for the lead, finally pulling
ahead for good when he responded correctly on the last Daily Double. He led
with $18,600 to Mike’s $12,800. The Final Jeopardy category was MOVIES: “More
than 25 cast members from this 1990 film drama would later appear on an HBO series
with a similar theme.” Both Mike and Mark knew the correct film: “What is Goodfellas?”
(For the record I knew there were a lot of actors who were in that film on The
Sopranos; I didn’t know Michael Imperioli was one of them.” Mark won $25,601
to cross the $100,000 threshold.
However Friday
Mark suffered from what had been his great strength to that point in his run:
the Daily Double. In the previous five games he’d found thirteen of the fifteen
Daily Doubles and had done extremely well on them getting eleven correct.
However when he found the first one on the second clue of the Jeopardy round he
was already at -$1000. The category was 18th CENTURY HISTORY: “This
North American colonial empire seen on 16th century maps as Gallia
Nova ended with the fall of Quebec and Montreal.” Like Mark I had never heard
of New France. It is credit to Mark that at the end of the Jeopardy round he
was on the positive side; at one point he actually had -$2600.
In Double Jeopardy
it looked like he was turning things around quickly when he got the first three
clues correct on the bottom of the board and jumped up to $5800. Then he found
the first Daily Double and wagered everything: “You can breathe easier knowing
that Terry McMillan wrote a sequel to this novel called Getting to Happy.”
Mark didn’t know this referred to Waiting to Exhale and went back to
zero. Around that time his challengers Eamonn Campbell and Dot White began to
get hot and Mark was in a distant third with $2800 when he found the third and
last Daily Double in TERRITORIAL GOVERNORS. This time he had no choice but to
bet everything: “Frank Franz served as an Indian agent of the Osage Agency
before becoming this territory’s last governor in 1906.” Mark knew it was Oklahoma
and doubled his score.
But he couldn’t
turn the tide on what had been a dreadful game: he managed fifteen correct
responses but eight incorrect ones. Despite that he was still in contention at
the end of Double Jeopardy with $4800 to Dot’s $10,400 and Eamonn’s $12,200.
It came down to
Final Jeopardy. The category was a tough one: WORLD POLITICAL HISTORY. The clue
even more challenging: William Whitelaw and John Peyton were also-rans in a
1975 leadership vote with this victor.” Mark had no clue and wrote down: “What
is thanks for a fun day?” However he lost nothing, so he was still alive. Dot
was next and couldn’t finish her response: “What is Washing?” But it cost her
just $599. It was all on Eamonn. He wrote down: “Who is Thatcher?” That was the
correct response. After Edward Heath lost the 1974 election for the
Conservatives, there was a leadership vote that made Margaret Thatcher head of
the Party and that set her up to become Prime Minister four years later. Eamonn
was already going to win and he added $1500 to his total, making him the new
champion with $13,700. Mark went home with $107,201.
That means that as
of this writing nine players have officially qualified for the Tournament of
Champions. (Ten if we include Lisa Ann Walter and we all know we will going
in.) As of this writing Mark is exactly in the middle in terms of money won,
right between Alison Betts with $121,500 and Amy Hummel with $100,994.
I think the term
of the roster of the Tournament of Champions right now is solid. We’ve been
spoiled the last two years by having so many super-champions that we’ve forgotten
that the average Jeopardy champion is just very, very great. All six players
who have won 5 games or more have won at least $100,000 which for those of us
who’ve been watching Jeopardy in the last 20 years is well above the norm for
most of our winners. The rosters already at the level of the 2021 Tournament of
Champions (the last under the old rules) and that one only had seven
contestants who’d won at least five games.
Then too there is
the fact that in little more than a hundred games since the Season 40 ‘postseason’
ended we already have a very good roster of contenders and as I mentioned quite
a few three game winners who will either be in the Tournament in some form, via
natural or Wild Card. (We’ve actually had one more possibility join the roster
but I’ll save him for later this season.)
We may not be in
quite the era of Peak Jeopardy any more, in the sense that there has yet to be
a contender the likes of Cris Panullo or Matt Amodio. But given the increased
caliber of the writing so far this season and the listing of champions we
already have, I doubt the show will start to lose fans or complain any time soon.
I’ll be back when the next qualifier for the Tournament appears.
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