As 2024 comes to an
end Jeopardy viewers gird themselves for the postseason that will lead to the
Tournament of Champions in just a few months. Friday night marked the last game
of regular Jeopardy we will be seeing for awhile as on Monday the first of the
Second Chance Tournaments begin.
As Ken Jennings told
us at the start of December contestants this past month are now playing to
compete in the 2026 Tournament of Champions. And as of this writing two
contestants have made those requirements though only one has the blessing of a
“guarantee”. Ashley Chan has won four games and $67,400. And over the past week
Jeopardy fans have seen the rise of potentially the next super-champion in
Laura Faddah who over seven games has won $87,400. Laura is the first player to
win that many games since Isaach Hirsch won nine games last July.
Now in past years I
have commented on how certain Jeopardy contestants have won relatively little
money compared to the number of games won. Indeed my readers will note that I
might have been fairly harshly on Megan Wachspress during Season 39 and Suresh
Krishnan in Season 39, each of whom won six games but comparatively little
money. And considering that Suresh won $96,595 than Laura has to this point my
readers might be expecting a similar chiding of Laura as a player.
However at this point
in Season 41 I find myself being unable to throw stones at this particular
glass house. As I’ve mentioned in my writing about the season to date I have
hinted more than once at how I have been having an immense amount of difficulty
playing along at home. And now that we are readying ourselves for the
postseason (which we have been assured will be less endless than last year) I
think it’s time we talk about it.
Part of me is starting
to think that the show’s writers are taking a secret kind of vengeance on the
contestants, the producers and the viewers this season giving the enormous
difficulty that the contestants and myself are having with so many of the clues
this season, particularly when it comes to Final Jeopardy. Scores through the
majority of the games played have been much lower than usual and players have
been having immense difficulty with Final Jeopardy. And I include myself.
I don’t keep an
official record anymore of how many Final Jeopardys I get right during the
course of a season but I estimate that for roughly the last decade in regular
play (not the postseason) I get somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of all
Final Jeopardys correct. In this past month I’m essentially fifty/fifty – and
I’m not nearly as sure about many of them as I usually am. Let’s look at the
first six games of Laura’s run as an example (I’ll leave out tonight to avoid
spoilers.)
On her first game
Laura was in the lead at the end of Double Jeopardy, narrowly, with $13,600 to
Eric’s $10,000 and Neal’s $9800. The Final Jeopardy category was SUPER BOWL
HISTOR. For the record I liked this category as little as Laura did:
“It’s the only team to
play in the Super Bowl before Neil Armstrong’s Moon walk that has not been back
to the big game since.” No one was close to it and I’m not sure I would have
known either even though I live in the state that houses them. I knew the Jets
had won Super Bowl III but I had thought that it took place in 1970, not
January of 1969. (It’s been a rough fifty-five years as Ken put it.) Laura bet
the least and won with $11,200.
Laura’s first defense
of her title was even closer than her first win and she actually ended Double
Jeopardy in second place, albeit $400 behind challenger Maria Lauro. The scores
were incredibly close with just $1800 separated third place from first. The
category for Final Jeopardy was a strange one as well: MOVIES & THE LAW:
“Drafters…have to have
a little fun sometimes,” said the author of this law when asked if he was inspired
by 1931’s Little Caesar.” No one was close to this one either and I don’t
blame them: the only reason I ended up coming up with the correct answer was
because I knew the film.
You see I remember the
famous line Edward G. Robinson utters at one point: “Mother of Mercy, is this
the end of Rico?” The RICO act,
which anyone who watched The Sopranos or other mob-related films knows,
stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act. (No I didn’t
know the acronym either but I knew the term.) It was a leap I can’t blame either
the contestants or the viewer at home for not getting; this is how tough these
clues can be. Laura, as in the previous day, was conservative in her betting
and finished with $5800, enough to win her second game.
Monday everything went
Laura’s way and didn’t go her opponents, which sometimes happens and she
managed to runaway with it by the end of Double Jeopardy. The Final Jeopardy
category was WORLD LEADERS. Sometimes this is easy; this time it wasn’t.
“In 2009 this leader
gave Barack Obama the book ‘Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the
Pillage of a Continent.” I figured it was a South American leader but I wasn’t
sure of the correct answer: ‘Who is Hugo Chavez?” Laura put down: “Who is
Fujimori?” the former socialist leader of Peru which wasn’t a bad guess. She had
now accomplished the somewhat dubious distinction of having won three
consecutive games and not having gotten a single Final Jeopardy correct –
though to be fair none of her opponents had either.
On Christmas Eve I was
relatively sure that Laura’s number was up. Challenger Jenna Hayes dominated
the game pretty much from start to finish and fellow challenger Harry Jarin was
just as good. At the end of Double Jeopardy Jenna had a big lead with $18,200,
Harry was next with $13,200 and Laura was in a distant third with $5200. I didn’t
think she had a chance going into Final Jeopardy, particularly considering the
nature of the category: GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC AWARENESS:
“As individuals, only
Santa Claus and this public service ad icon introduced in 1944 have their own
ZIP Codes.”
Laura wrote down what
I was pretty sure was the correct answer: “Who is Smokey the Bear?” (Apparently
he used to get a lot of mail from children.) Laura bet $5000. Harry wrote down
a good guess: “Who is Uncle Sam?” It cost him everything but a dollar. Jenna had written down Rosie
the Riveter (who was created during World War II as well) She lost $9000 and
Laura had her own Christmas miracle.
On Christmas Day Laura
started out very strong and her two challengers Mathiew Farhoud-Dionne and
Amber Gamrat did very poorly; in fact Mathieu was at minus $1200 at the end of the
Jeopardy round. But he came back swinging in Double Jeopardy and a mistake by
Laura on the last clue before the end of round buzzer rang gave him the lead
with $13,400 to her $13,200.
The Final Jeopardy
category was U.S. PLACE NAMES. “A trio including Andrew Jackson founded this
city with a name that evokes a great city of ancient world.” In a stroke of fate
that some times blesses Jeopardy contestants Laura comes from Memphis, Tennessee,
which was the correct response. No one else knew it and she managed to win
$18,00 officially clinching her spot in the 2026 Tournament of Champions.
Yesterday’s game was
much closer but Laura pulled ahead to a big lead halfway through Double
Jeopardy and on the penultimate clue of that round, clinched a runaway with
$20,400. The Final Jeopardy category was MOVIES & THEIR SOUNDTRACKS.
“’Catch It’ was a
tagline for this 1970s film whose iconic soundtrack became one of the
bestselling albums of all time.” I like all three contestants knew the correct
response: “What is Saturday Night Fever?” I mention this because it’s
the first time in Laura’s run that all three players got Final Jeopardy
correct. Nor is that an anomaly to this month or this season: Final Jeopardys have been tough
all this period - and I should ad the
few times everyone’s gotten Final Jeopardy correct, just as often I’ve gotten
in wrong.
Indeed it was seen in
Ashley Chan’s fourth victory. The Final Jeopardy category was FICTIONAL
CHARACTERS – usually an easy one for me. “Dressed in white in her first scene,
this play character says her name means ‘white woods’. “ I must not have seen Streetcar
Named Desire in a long time because somehow I’d forgotten – but all three
players knew – that this refers to Blanche DuBois.
I’m still trying to
figure out what’s up with the writers. Does it still stick in their craw how Season
40 took place with the producers bragging about using ‘replacement clues?” Have
they decided that there have been too many super-champions in recent years and have
taken it upon themselves to restore equilibrium? Did winning their first
prime-time Emmy give them a new sense of being reinvigorated? Or are they just
being pricks?
I have no answer to that
quandary (nor will I attempt to alter my phrasing) but as someone who has spent
much of the last decade trying to wonder if the clues are getting easier or I’m
simply getting smarter, it’s clear to me at this point in Season 41 the clues
are definitely getting tougher across the board. I’m not saying this is a bad
thing; the last thing Jeopardy needs to be accused of complacency and it’s
probably better for the show long-term if the show remains challenging to the
viewers as well as the contestants. What will that mean for what is to come in
the postseason?
Next week we start
finding out. On New Year’s Day I will begin my coverage of the Second Chance
Tournament which, for a change, I’m looking forward to this year.
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