Nothing Else Interesting is Going On This Week So Here's My Second Article on Jeopardy

 

 

Did I expect to write about Jeopardy again this soon? No but circumstances do alter cases. As it happens tonight the fourth player so far in Season 41 and the eleventh player since April has punched their ticket to the 2025 Tournament of Champions.

That’s actually remarkable then it seems if you’re a long time fan of the show. Now the fact that in exactly 120 games dating from April 10^th when the long postseason of Season 40 ended, eleven players (twelve if you count Lisa Ann Walter) getting into the Tournament of Champions might not seem as big a deal for those of us who remember the period between from the start of Season 38 when we were granted in succession the presence of Matt Amodio winning the first nineteen games of the season, Jonathan Fisher winning the next eleven and the year ending with Amy Schneider winning 23. In between we first met Andrew He and Sam Buttrey so that was the most significant period in recent Jeopardy history.

But because we were blessed to have so many super-champions on Jeopardy in such a short time (seven players won eleven games or more between September of 2021 to the end of 2022) that it would have been understandable to believe a super-champion was an almost every day occurrence. It isn’t of course: when James Holzhauer exploded on to the scene in April of 2019 it led to a period when we had nine different contestants win eleven games or more in a little more than 3 seasons. We’ve forgotten (though Ken Jennings no doubt hasn’t) that between Holzhauer’s arrival in April of 2019 and the five game rule being scrapped at the start of Season 20 that, with the exception of Jennings there had only been six other players who’d won as many as eleven games. And there had been none at all who won that many from the end of David Madden’s 19 game run in September of 2005 until Arthur Chu won eleven games in February of 2014. No one came close to winning that many games during the intervening 8 and a half years, only two other players won as many as nine.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that it is the norm for Jeopardy to have many players who are ‘only’ very, very good but rare for so many of those players to appear in such a relatively short period. Tonight Greg Jolin became the fourth player in a period of little more than six weeks of regular season play to qualify for the Tournament of Champions. He did so yesterday when he officially won his fifth game in what was the narrowest of runaway victories over Derek Hieronymus and Adrienne Clement. He only did so on the very last clue of Double Jeopardy, giving him $24,600 to Adrienne’s $12,200 and Derek’s $10,600. And after five days he had won $135,002, almost exactly $27,000 a game.

Greg compares pretty favorably with Andrew He. Indeed it’s kind of scary how alike the two are. Andrew won slightly more than him with $157,365 before being beaten by Amy Schneider (he still may not be over it, for the record) Greg ran away with three of his games; Andrew ran away with four of his. Andrew was far better with Daily Doubles than Greg was (he had trouble finding them, let alone making them pay off) but Greg was better than Andrew when it came to Final Jeopardy (Andrew got three correct in his five wins; Greg went five for five) Greg’s wins were generally harder so he just seemed very good.

And it was clear today that his game against Susan Stumme and Sammy Sanchez was going to be tough. In the Jeopardy round, all three of them spent time in the red. Greg went ahead for a bit and had a decent lead at the end of it with $5600 to Sammy’s $3200 and Susan’s $600.

But Double Jeopardy was tougher and neither of his opponents would take their foot off the gas. Sammy got to the first Daily Double in the accurately named TOUGH RHYMING PAIRS. At the time Sammy had $4800, more than half Greg’s total. But he’d been burned on the first Daily Double and just bet $2000:

“Someone who contacts departed spirits & that feeling of boredom.” You could actually see Sammy’s mind working as he came up with: “What are medium and tedium?” He then spent the next few clues chasing Greg but then Susan who’d been quiet for a while, rang in at just the right time and found the other Daily Double in PURE BED-LAM. She had $4200 and bet $3000:

“You can use this cozy 5-letter couch as a bed; it’s also found in the name of a chicken and broccoli dish topped with Hollandaise.” Susan hesitated and somehow came up with: “What’s divan?” She jumped up to $7200.

The rest of the game was a back and forth between Greg and Sammy for the lead. Sammy took it from Greg on the penultimate clue of the round: $12,400 to Greg’s $12,200. Susan, however, got the last clue of Double Jeopardy correct to give her the very impressive third place total of $9600. It was, as they say, anyone’s game.

The Final Jeopardy category was a very tricky one: 1960s INVENTTIONS. The clue even trickier: “Poly-Para phenylene terephthalamide was 1^st intended to reinforce radial tires but the lifesaving polymer aka this would have many uses.”  Susan’s response was revealed first. She wrote down: “What is Kevlar?” That was correct. She added $3000 to her total putting her at $12,600. Greg’s was next. He gave his first incorrect Final Jeopardy response in his run: “What is Styrofoam?”  It cost him $70001 putting him at $5199. It was up to Sammy. His response was revealed: “What is WD-40?” Also wrong and he lost $12,0001. And Susan Stumme unseated Greg Jolin.

Now would be as good a time as any for me to mention that the writers for Jeopardy have clearly upped their game this year, certainly when it comes to Final Jeopardy. You have no reason to take my word for this but I’ve been having far more trouble with them than I have in a long time. So far I’ve only gotten half of them correct this season, and if I’m being truly honest, at least four of those have been extremely lucky guesses. All of this is a way of saying Jeopardy writers, you’ve earned your raises from the strike.

Greg’s qualification for the Tournament of Champions comes less than a week and a half after the most recent one. The alliteratively named Will Wallace (no as far as I know he’s not from Scotland) had a four game run in which he managed to earn $79,998. This game had the misfortune of coming in the night of a clue that has already received controversy “COMPLETE THE RHYMING PHRASE”  “Men seldom make passes at…” Will rang in with: “What is girls who were glasses?” Even Ken acknowledged it was problematic, especially since one of the contestants, Heather Ryan, was wearing glasses. I’m not the kind of person who usually takes the show to the task but yeah, this one should have been cut in rehearsal.

In keeping with how difficult Jeopardy clues have been this season Will managed to win four games and only gave two correct Final Jeopardy responses. Not throwing stones I didn’t get a single Final Jeopardy response that entire week, so I’m kind of impressed Will got that many right. Indeed it completed one of my sorriest stretches on Jeopardy in recent years when I knew exactly two Final Jeopardy responses in ten games. All of which is to say I’m not entirely shocked there haven’t been any super-champions so far in Season 41. I’ve been watching the show for thirty years and I’m having as much trouble as the contestants with Final Jeopardy…if not more so.

But honestly I’m kind of liking the way Jeopardy has been in the last six months. We’re getting a lot of very, very good Jeopardy players. As I’ve mentioned in some of my previous articles in past years we’ve had more than our share of players who’ve won five or even six games during the past two seasons who didn’t come close to touching the $100,000 mark. Greg Jolin, by contrast, is the seventh player in six months to cross the $100,000 threshold and four of them needed only five games to win that much.

Honestly we’ve got a more balanced crop of qualified players for this year’s Tournament of Champions than we have in the post-Trebek era. Not that a player winning 20 games or more necessarily wins the Tournament of Champions (Cris Panullo can painfully testify to the reality of that fact) but the presence of a super-champion in the field often makes it seem going in like there’s an overwhelming two or three favorites. By contrast most of these players are fairly evenly matched and with the exception of Adriana Harmeyer and Isaac Hirsch, there’s no overwhelming favorite. And as anyone who watched the show last season knows there’s already someone in this tournament who beat Adriana and has proven, well, he’s  a survivor.

I was contractually obligated to make that joke. Perhaps I can redeem myself in your eyes by letting you know that Greg has actually won more money in five games than Drew Basile did in six. That makes Greg to date the third highest money winner so far for the upcoming Tournament of Champions. He said he was afraid of facing off against any of the participants, so he might be shocked to know he’s actually as good as many, if not most of them.

We’re less than six weeks away from the postseason officially beginning. I don’t know how many more players will qualify for the Tournament of Champions between then and now. Maybe none will; maybe three or more will. I do know two things: it will probably be a thrilling Tournament of Champions and I don’t want to think what the kind of clues will get for it. Rest assured you’ll hear from me once or twice before then.