Now, we’re up to Jeopardy! Masters, featuring Holzhauer — the professional sports gambler — and Jennings is the host. James ended up winning one of the rounds, but before he did, he trolled Jennings with his Final Jeopardy answer, and it was very funny.
Instead of answering the clue that would have gotten you “What is the Manhattan Bridge,” Holzhauer wrote down, “Stop ducking a rematch Ken.” And their exchange is delightful:
What to know about Jeopardy!’s latest tournament of stars.
Welcome to FTW Explains, a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. We here at For The Win are big Jeopardy! fans, and the Jeopardy! Masters tournament is no exception. What’s that? Glad you asked.
Monday kicks off the first episode of the Jeopardy! Masters tournament, which will pit some of the shows most successful candidates against each other to see who will become a different kind of Jeopardy! champion.
Holzhauer will be squaring off with fellow Jeopardy! heavyweights like Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, Mattea Roach, Andrew He and Sam Buttrey, with former Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings hosting the shows.
Well, Holzhauer found a hilarious way to warm up his intimidation tactics by roasting Jennings’ standing as host.
First, Holzhauer takes aim at the way that the game shows are being marketed with Jennings front and center. He compares it to the NFL advertising a Super Bowl with a referee as the main draw. Ouch.
Jeopardy: “Masters is our Super Bowl” Also Jeopardy: “Make sure all our ads place the referee front and center” pic.twitter.com/3mRRyH2e4p
Having to answer clues in the form of questions while ringing in before your fellow contestants is hard as heck already. But having to do math, too? We’ve seen that be really hard for others in the past, and in Wednesday’s episode, we saw a rough wagering moment.
Contestant Karen was up to $21,800. She got a late Daily Double, a huge thing considering the others had $7,100 and $6,400 respectively. The move here is to make a small wager so that when Final Jeopardy comes up, it’s impossible for the others to win.
But, no. Karen bet a whopping $10,000 and missed the clue. Later, she missed Final Jeopardy and finished in third place.
And fans were not happy.
You can see it all go down around the 15-minute mark here:
Did… did I just witness a modern day Cliff Clavin blunder on today's Jeopardy??
If you’re a Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn or Georgia Tech fan, you’re probably getting pretty tired of hearing about how the Georgia Bulldogs are back-to-back reigning national champions.
It’s everywhere you look. And on Thursday, it was even featured as answer to a question on ‘Jeopardy!’.
“Who are the Georgia Bulldogs?” would have been the correct answer to Thursday night’s Jeopardy clue that read: “This SEC school won the 2023 NCAA Football Title Game in Convincing Fashion with a 65-7 Drubbing of TCU”
Georgia strength and conditioning coordinator Scott Sinclair tweeted the question on Thursday.
Jeopardy! betting can get weird sometimes, and I’ll fully admit that if I was at the podium, I might get nervous trying to figure out the correct wager in certain game situations.
But: This wasn’t good.
Here’s the situation: Steve Clarke was in the lead with $20,000 heading into Final Jeopardy. The second-place contestant, Ben Coller, had $10,000.
The correct move here is for Coller to go all-in with $10,000 to have a shot at tying Clarke … that is, if Clarke decided to wager $0.
But neither of them did that and it baffled everyone watching.
So let’s break down exactly what happened and the reaction:
However, the Jeopardy! contestants during the episode that aired Thursday pretty impressively tackled the NASCAR-themed category — even if the answers seemed obvious to diehard racing fans. (At least they didn’t mistake the Indianapolis 500 for the Daytona 500.)
In the opening Jeopardy! round, contestants — three-day winner Yungsheng Wang, Heather Brown and Brian Ahern — in Thursday’s episode gave the correct question (or response) for three of the five answers.
The video clues for the category, “From The Speedway,” were presented from Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Here they are, per J-Archive.com. See how many you know, and the answers are at the bottom.
$200 — The Las Vegas Motor Speedway track, like most NASCAR tracks, is made of this paving material, also called blacktop, but specially formulated as it has to stand up to 150-degree temperatures.
$400 — Yes, there are speed limits in NASCAR; at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, it’s 45 miles per hour on this road where cars are serviced.
$600 — The era of one-company sponsorship for the championship of NASCAR began with this tobacco brand in 1971.
$800 — 2019, the Vegas Speedway was the site of aerodynamic testing, including a longer splitter, the front end equivalent to this rear piece; by increasing downforce, it reduces lift & maintains traction.
$1,000 — The purpose of drafting, or following closely behind another car, is to create this between his tail & your nose; so he pulls you along as your draft is reduced substantially
The contestants in Thursday’s episode correctly responded to all but the $600 and $1,000 clues — both triple stumpers.
(Carol Kaelson/Jeopardy Productions, Inc. via AP)
Here are the correct responses:
$200 — What is asphalt?
$400 — What is pit road?
$600 — What is Winston?
$800 — What is a spoiler?
$1,000 — What is a vacuum?
While Yungsheng had the lead going into Final Jeopardy, Brian emerged the victor as the only contestant to get the final clue correct:
Per Guinness, this character who debuted in 1887 is the most portrayed human literary character in film & television.
But he went into Final Jeopardy in third place on Monday and missed the clue. The other two contestants nailed it, including new champion Jonathan Fisher.
Here’s that moment:
It’s goodbye to Amodio for now, though I’m hoping we see him on future Tournament of Champions.
Let’s review his stats:
He won 38 straight games, besting James Holzhauer’s 32-game streak. That’s the second-longest streak in show history, 36 games behind Ken Jennings.
His $1,518,601 regular-season winnings are third-best all time behind Holzhauer and Jennings.
That number is the fourth-most in all-time winnings, including tournaments behind Holzhauer, Jennings and Brad Rutter.
Matt Amodio, the 28-time (!!!)Jeopardy! champion, accomplished something only two other contestants can say they’ve done: He passed the $1 million mark last week in regular-season winnings.
He joins James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings with that feat, and on the all-time earnings list WITH tournaments, he’s joins Brad Rutter as well.
What’s even wilder is he’s just four games away from tying Holzhauer in consecutive nights won — if he keeps winning this week, he’ll do it on Thursday.
Of course, Holzhauer made twice as much money over that 32-win period, but let’s not diminish what Amodio’s done and continues to do. It’s amazing!
Seriously, this is wild stuff:
Even Matt Amodio is relieved to have finally crossed off the incorrect response! pic.twitter.com/ScXXDlW0Hm
