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
The permanent hosting job ended up belonging to executive producer Mike Richards … until Friday, when he stepped down as host after a report from The Ringer revealed sexist and offensive comments he made on his podcast.
It was also on Friday that an interview between Rodgers and Mad Dog Sports Radio’s Adam Schein ran beforethe Richards news dropped, and here’s what he said about the host gig:
"Yeah, I definitely would have. If they would have figured out a way to make it work with my schedule, yeah, for sure."
It looks like the quest to find a Jeopardy! successor for Alex Trebek after his passing is back on.
Mike Richards, the executive producer who they landed on as the host, is stepping down from the show effective immediately. Richards has been in the spotlight this week for all of the wrong reasons.
On the podcast, Richards made derogatory remarks about women and commented on their weight, calling them things like “frumpy.” He also called his co-host and former assistant Beth Triffon a “booth ho,” “booth slut” and “boothstitute” as she described her work as a model.
Yeah, that’s pretty awful stuff.
Richards released a statement announcing his decision to step down on Friday.
BREAKING: Mike Richards has stepped down as the host of Jeopardy! Official statement via Sony: pic.twitter.com/eJSwyBOXwN
“As I mentioned last week, I was deeply honored to be asked to host the syndicated show and was thrilled by the opportunity to expand my role. However, over the last several days it has become clear that moving forward as host would be too much of a distraction for our fans and not the right move for the show. As such, I will be stepping down as host effective immediately. As a result, we will be canceling production today.”
People were absolutely right to be outraged by this. When you make comments like this, there are consequences.
Throw in the fact that Richards’ name is also in multiple discrimination lawsuits from his time at The Price is Right, per Entertainment Weekly, and it becomes pretty clear he was never the right host and shouldn’t have been chosen in the first place.
This, ultimately, was the best decision for everyone. Hopefully, Jeopardy! doesn’t make this mistake again and chooses a viable host this time.
But there’s a reason for that … and it makes a whole lot of sense.
In an interview with the website for Yale’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, he revealed his secret: it’s so that he can concentrate more on the rest of the clue and not focus on which part of speech to use. It’s kind of brilliant, isn’t it?
Here’s the Q&A:
Your answering style prompted some controversy, but Jeopardy! producers defended it.
Yes, I have a strategy where I form all of my questions with a “what’s” at the beginning – then, I can focus on the rest of the clue. Other people have been very upset about me being robotic instead of forming a question differently each time. I was glad that Jeopardy! said this was perfectly within the rules. I’ve watched Jeopardy! every day of my life, so I knew it was OK.
You’re just eliminating unnecessary mental labor.
That’s the kind of thing we do in computer science all the time. You have a section of your program and it does “A” or it does “B” and it has to decide which. Then you realize “Wait, we never actually need to do ‘B,’” so you cut that off and just leave a smaller bit of program. It’s cleaner and where there are fewer things moving, there are fewer things that can go wrong.
Despite crossing out the right answer on Final Jeopardy (it was “Who is Magellan?” and hey at least he writes the answer grammatically correct in the final round!), he is now up to $440,600 in earnings so far.
That already put him fourth on the all-time regular season winnings list, just under $100,000 behind Jason Zuffranieri. If he wants to crack the top-two? That might take a while given James Holzhauer’s $2,462,216 won.
He’s also sixth in win streaks, five games behind David Madden’s 19 contests won in 2005 and Zuffranieri’s same streak in 2019.
So yeah, he needs to be listed among the all-timers already … and there might be more wins in store for the Ph.D student at Yale.
