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Greatest of All Time on ‘Jeopardy!’: Who Won Game 2?
Greatest of All Time on ‘Jeopardy!’: Who Won Game 3?
(about 16 hours later)
As in the opening match of the tournament to crown the greatest “Jeopardy!” player of all time, the winner of the second match, which aired on Wednesday, was in question until the final clue, keeping viewers on the edge of their sofas.
The third “Jeopardy!” match between the show’s three most celebrated players on Thursday had all the excitement of the previous nights but less of the drama, as the winner was clear before the host Alex Trebek revealed the final clue.
This time, the category was 19th-century leaders and the clue was: “Tall, lanky Joel Barlow was an ambassador carrying messages between these two world leaders, both mocked for being short.”
Ken Jennings shot ahead early in the match with a Daily Double asking him to name the 1832-33 crisis that ended when South Carolina backed down from its efforts to void federal law. (“What is nullification?”) Jennings maintained his significant lead when the Final Jeopardy clue again tested his knowledge of United States political history, asking him and his opponents to name the two now-defunct parties that each gave the country four presidents in the 19th century. (“What are the Democratic-Republican and Whig Parties?”)
As in the first match, James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings each had a chance to win. The third contestant, Brad Rutter, was eliminated from the Final Jeopardy round because he had a negative score for the game, having missed a few questions.
Before the second game (each match comprises two games), Trebek warned viewers against the assumption that Jennings’s lead from the first game was too large to beat (he had 51,200 points to James Holzhauer’s 27,200 and Brad Rutter’s 17,600). But Jennings continued to lead the pack during the second game, especially after Holzhauer’s momentum was slowed by a missed Daily Double about a birthstone used for polishing that doubles as a color representing Florida State University. (“What is garnet?”) In a rare moment of frustration, Holzhauer grimaced when Jennings beat him to the buzzer on a clue about a “Star Wars” movie.
Jennings incorrectly responded, “Who are Napoleon and Monroe?” (James Monroe was one United States president too late.) Holzhauer’s correct answer allowed him to win the match: “Who are Napoleon and Madison?”
By Final Jeopardy, Jennings was too far ahead to beat, so Holzhauer used his answer board to honor Trebek, calling him the “GHOST,” or “greatest host of syndicated TV,” while Rutter used his space to cheer on Jennings and the Philadelphia Eagles. Jennings tried to answer the clue, but got it wrong: “These two foreign-born directors have each won two best director Oscars, but none of their films has won best picture.” (The correct response is at the bottom of the article.)
With that, the two men were tied at one match apiece.
With Thursday night’s win, Jennings leads Holzhauer two matches to one, and closes in on a tournament victory. If he manages to triumph in the next match, which airs on Tuesday, he’ll claim the $1 million prize and the title of “greatest of all time.” If he does not win the next match, the tournament will continue until someone wins three.
Holzhauer was able to build leads on Wednesday by landing on Daily Doubles during both rounds of Double Jeopardy and betting all he had. In the first game (each match comprises two games) he doubled his points to 27,200 by recalling the name of the second-largest port of France (“What is Le Havre?”), and later scored big after he was able to produce the name of a capital city near where visitors can go rhino tracking at the Mokolodi Nature Reserve. (The answer to that clue is at the bottom of this article.)
All three players hold top slots in the “Jeopardy!” hall of fame, and this tournament is meant to determine which one can fairly be called the best. Holzhauer holds the record for the highest single-game winnings, Jennings has the longest winning streak and Rutter has amassed the most money won during his “Jeopardy!” run.
Jennings kept pace by betting all of his points on a Daily Double clue about a German mathematician who developed calculus (“Who is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz?”), but his narrow miss on the second Final Jeopardy, about the 19th-century leaders, kept him from notching his second win of the week. In the end, Holzhauer’s match score of 82,414 separated him from Jennings by more than 25,000 points. Even if Jennings had answered the final clue correctly, he could only have won had Holzhauer gotten the answer wrong.
But Rutter has fallen behind early in games, often by missing Daily Doubles, leaving Jennings and Holzhauer to duke it out.
In a series of prime time hourlong episodes that began airing on ABC on Tuesday, the three men, who have each won at least $2.5 million playing “Jeopardy!” are competing against one another in two complete “Jeopardy!” games each night. Each contestant’s combined score in the two games determines who wins the match, and the tournament will continue until someone wins three matches. The champion will receive $1 million and the sweeping title of “greatest of all time.” The runners-up will each receive $250,000.
The tournament was given a rare prime time slot on ABC, and viewers are watching in large numbers. The opening match on Tuesday drew 14.4 million viewers and helped boost the show in the time slot that came afterward: the sitcom “Mixed-ish,” which received 4.8 million viewers, giving the show its highest ratings to date, according to Nielsen data.
“I think it really is a tossup between the three players,” Andy Saunders, who runs a website called The “Jeopardy!” Fan that tracks players’ statistics, said before the first match aired. “All three of them have strengths and weaknesses. You never know what might happen.”
The rules are the same as always, but these are not your average games of “Jeopardy!” The stakes are much higher and even the low-value clues are difficult. Because all three contestants are walking Wikipedias, they have to rely on quick buzzer reflexes to get ahead.
The matches, which were prerecorded, continue on Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, 7 Central and Mountain and 8 Pacific. The tournament will continue into next week, with match 4 airing on Tuesday.
More than usual, Trebek has been using multimedia to introduce clues, like clips from the Netflix show “The Crown” and the film “Jerry Maguire,” as well as numerous prerecorded video clues read by celebrities.
Here’s a look at each player.
Bryan Cranston read the category about chemists, a nod to his role in “Breaking Bad,” and Jimmy Kimmel introduced a geography clue about a Montana River near Bozeman on which he enjoys fly fishing. (That one stumped all three contestants. The correct response: “What is the Gallatin River?”)
Twenty years ago, Rutter left the “Jeopardy!” studio having won more than $55,000 and two Chevy Camaros. Rutter hadn’t lost a match, but at that time, contestants were kicked off after winning five straight games.
Then there was the anchor David Muir, who gave a not-so-subtle plug for his nightly news show on ABC by introducing a category of clues based on his reports on subjects in world news, such as the hunt for ISIS fighters in Iraq.
So Rutter went back to his job at a record store in Lancaster, Pa., gave the green Camaro to his brother and kept the silver one for himself. But Rutter would eventually return to “Jeopardy!”: In 2001, he was invited back to compete in the Tournament of Champions; then again, in 2002, for a separate series. He would go on to amass $4.7 million in winnings, the most overall for any contestant.
The celebrity cameos and intense game play have been punctuated by a few lighthearted moments between the contestants. During Wednesday’s match, Jennings landed on a Daily Double clue asking him to name the German mathematician who developed calculus. When he said he was planning to bet all of his points, Trebek asked if he wanted to try Holzhauer’s trademark hand gesture of pushing a pile of invisible poker chips to the middle.
Because he was limited to five games at first, Rutter didn’t get the same fanfare in the media as Holzhauer or Jennings, who appeared on the show after the victory limit was eliminated. As a result, his name is sometimes forgotten in conversations about the “Jeopardy!” greats. A win during this tournament would certainly change that.
“Has James copyrighted this?” Jennings asked, to which Holzhauer responded, “One-time use only, you’re good.”
“It bothers my friends a lot more than it bothers me,” Rutter, 41, said in an interview on Monday. “They’ll go ballistic about it.”
When Jennings got the clue right (“Who is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz?”), he exclaimed, “It works!”
Rutter quit his job at the record store after he won his first “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions in 2001, taking home $100,000. The next year, he multiplied his winnings at the show’s Million Dollar Masters tournament at Radio City Music Hall. He took home $1 million, the largest prize in the show’s history at that point.
At another point in the show, during Jennings’s enthusiastic, accent-appropriate performance of a quotation from the film “Midnight Cowboy” (“What is ‘I’m walkin’ here!’?”), he pounded his hands on the desk in front of him, joking that he had broken his buzzer in the process.
The tournament invites kept coming — as the show’s biggest cash winner, Rutter was a natural choice.
“The fact that they’re able to fool around onstage and have fun with it while still playing at such a high level goes to show how comfortable they’re feeling,” said Andy Saunders, who runs a website called the Jeopardy! Fan that publishes statistics on the contestants.
“Every time a new challenger comes up, if someone gets hot in the media again, that probably means they’ll have another big all-star tournament, so I’ll get to play,” Rutter said.
Jennings and Holzhauer have also been playfully taunting each other on Twitter while the tournament is airing, without revealing who won (it was recorded in December). In one exchange, Holzhauer mocked Jennings’s botched attempt to draw a hammer and sickle next to a Final Jeopardy response about the Communist Manifesto.
“Jeopardy!” likes to say that Rutter has never lost to a human opponent, referencing his loss to I.B.M.’s Watson computer in 2011.
In this tournament, Saunders said, success with Daily Doubles has led to victory in the match. Jennings had the most successful Daily Doubles in the first match and then went on to win; same with Holzhauer in the second match. Rutter scored on two Daily Doubles in the third match, and Jennings scored on one, but it was the biggest of the night, giving him 9,200 points on one question.
Eventually, Rutter left Pennsylvania to pursue acting and producing in Los Angeles. He was involved with a couple of television pilots that never got picked up, like one about the misadventures of the employees at a poorly run fitness club. Rutter was also an executive producer on “The Bitter Buddha,” a documentary about the comedian Eddie Pepitone, which was selected for several film festivals.
The contestants have risked all of their points on every Daily Double. To Saunders, that pattern shows that Jennings and Rutter have taken note of Holzhauer’s tendency toward high-value bets, saying, “It’s obvious that Ken and Brad have adapted their strategy to James’s aggression.”
With his frequent attendance at “Jeopardy!” tournaments, Rutter has the advantage of having faced some of the best players that “Jeopardy!” has ever seen, according to Saunders. But he also tends to win in narrow scrapes. At the 2002 tournament at Radio City, Rutter won by $1 after all three contestants got the Final Jeopardy question correct.
(Correct response: “Who are Ang Lee and Alfonso Cuarón?”)
Jennings, 45, is known for his endurance. His 74-game winning streak in 2004 remains unsurpassed.
Jennings, whose fans call him “KenJen,” has also held onto his record for the most winnings during a regular season, having amassed $2.5 million. Holzhauer could have overtaken Jennings on his 33rd game had Emma Boettcher, a University of Chicago librarian, not defeated him.
Saunders has noticed that Jennings is particularly adept at more complex clues that require the contestant to make multiple connections in mere seconds. His weakness tends to be Final Jeopardy, which proved to be his downfall during his 75th game.
The clue that felled him: Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year. (The correct response: What is H&R Block?) is at the bottom of the story.) Jennings answered incorrectly, giving up his title to Nancy Zerg.
Apart from his regular participation in “Jeopardy!” tournaments — which has increased his total winnings to $3.4 million — Jennings has turned his game-show stardom into the writing career he dreamed of when he was a 29-year-old working as a computer programmer to pay the bills. He has written a book about trivia culture, a history of humor, a children’s guide to Greek mythology and more.
“The main thing that the show got me, honestly, is that I don’t work a 9-to-5 anymore,” Jennings told The New York Times last year.
Holzhauer, 35, holds the other major “Jeopardy!” record: most money won in a single game ($131,127), and he also has the next 15 highest totals, all accomplished during his 32-game winning streak last year.
Fresh from playing dozens of games just last year, Holzhauer has a natural edge. His most recent performance, in which he won a rematch with Boettcher, aired in November, and this tournament was prerecorded in December. (Jennings and Rutter also appeared on the show in 2019 during the All-Star Games.)
It was Holzhauer’s ability to hunt down the Daily Doubles and successfully bet all of his money that seemed to fuel his streak. A hand gesture — as if Holzhauer was pushing his poker chips into the middle — came to signal to the host Alex Trebek that Holzhauer was going all in.
Another thing that sets Holzhauer apart, Saunders said, is his buzzer strategy. Jennings and Rutter have both said that they track the cadence of Trebek’s voice to know when to push the hand-held button, but Holzhauer has said he focuses on visual cues — waiting for the lights on the sides of the game board to turn on, which indicates that the contestants can buzz in.
That approach — which comes from the book “Secrets of the Buzzer” by Fritz Holznagel, another repeat “Jeopardy!” winner — could be advantageous when Trebek gives unusually short clues that defy the usual cadence of the question, Saunders said.
Since winning big — he has earned $2.7 million in total — Holzhauer returned to his day job of sports betting in Las Vegas.
But, like the game-show greats who came before him, Holzhauer may be ready to expand his celebrity past the “Jeopardy!” stage, noting in a recent tweet that his noncompete agreement with the show runs out this month.
The correct response: What is Gaborone? (the capital of Botswana)
