Latest news with #FinalJeopardy
USA Today
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
No, 'Jeopardy' contestants weren't the first to make game show history
A post shared by Good Morning America (@goodmorningamerica) This is pretty awesome: Maine resident Jason Singer won on Jeopardy! on July 1 to join the long list of the game show's champions ... which includes his wife Susan McMillan, who won back in 2021. With reports that they may have been the first married couple to both be champs, that's ignited some backlash from former Jeopardy! winner Kristin Sausville who revealed that she and her husband Justin both won, and per some of her research, there were other married couples who were both champions. MORE JEOPARDY: Contestant won thanks to wildest Final Jeopardy coincidence "If you're friends with me, you're probably aware that both Justin and I won; Justin in 2011 and me in 2015," she wrote on Facebook. "But we weren't even the first. As far as I've been able to research, Dan Pawson and Andrea Saenz were the first." Here's more from the post: And between Justin and me and the person who aired yesterday, there were several, including Amy Stephenson and Scott Bateman, as well as David Rigsby and Ryan Alley. There are a decent number of couples who met through J! and later married, particularly through various Teachers Tournaments. But the local media for the guy last night took up the story and ran with it, and then other media picked it up and ran it without checking for accuracy, and now it's everywhere that the guy last night is part of the first married J! champions ever. Now that the bots have the story, it would be impossible to correct them all even if I cared enough to take the time to do so. As Entertainment Weekly added, "A representative for Jeopardy told Entertainment Weekly that the show does not track spousal records for contestants and acknowledged that several contestants had noted that they were also married to champs after Singer's victory." Let's take a sec and acknowledge how cool it is for all these married couples. The record has been corrected!
3 days ago
- Entertainment
Couple make 'Jeopardy!' history with double win
A couple is giving new meaning to "Double Jeopardy." Real estate agent Jason Singer of Portland, Maine, won the July 1 episode of "Jeopardy!" and became a champion four years after his wife Susan McMillan took home the same title in 2021. The "Jeopardy!" team confirmed Singer and McMillan may be the first already-married couple to become "Jeopardy!" winners. Singer won with the answer "Who is Lawrence Olivier?" in Final Jeopardy and earned $22,401 overall. McMillan won $35,600 when she was on the show. McMillan told "Good Morning America" she gave her husband some advice ahead of his big win. "I told him he really needs to be on point with the buzzer timing," said McMillan. "Everyone there knows pretty much all the information." Singer, meanwhile, said simply having his wife nearby before his turn on the game show ended up being the best way to prepare. "Just the fact of being her husband is the greatest preparation one could ever get, because she's so curious and surrounds herself with such interesting and cosmopolitan things all the time that by osmosis, I almost had to get better," Singer said. In his final answer, Singer also added "#BringSusanBack," a nod to his wife. The couple said when they first started dating, they bonded over their love of "Jeopardy!", and 20 years later, they still practice trivia during lunch.
USA Today
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Classic 'Jeopardy' clip revealed wildest coincidence has happened twice
A post shared by Jeopardy! (@jeopardy) A few days ago, we brought you the wildest Jeopardy! coincidence that we labeled as NOT a controversy: a contestant named Emily Croke nailed Final Jeopardy, in part because the answer to the clue was her great-great-great-aunt whom she was named for. While some people questioned if that was fair or not, it was merely an improbable, million-to-one coincidence that has probably never happened before in Jeopardy! history, right? Wrong! Turns out there was another contestant who had a familial connection to a clue. As the game show shared on Instagram recently, back in 2001, a man named Bill O'Donnell rang in on a clue in which the answer was George Ferris, as in the Ferris wheel. And George Ferris turned out to be ... his great-grandfather! Watch this interaction with the great Alex Trebek and enjoy: This is just amazing that it happened not once but TWICE! There should never be any questions about if this is all rigged or something, or if it's unfair. If there just happens to be a family connection, so be it.
USA Today
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Jeopardy! contestant won thanks to wildest Final Jeopardy coincidence
I wouldn't label this a Jeopardy! controversy at all. It's just a crazy coincidence, one that producers and others could never have foreseen. In a recent episode, contestants were given the Final Jeopardy clue of "Collections." Here's the clue: In 1896 the Vassar-educated wife of this man wrote, "Thousands of dollars may be paid for a copy of Shakespeare." We'll give you 30 seconds to answer, as they do on the show. And the answer? Who is Henry Clay Folger? Only Emily got the answer correct, and as Jeopardy! revealed on social media, it turns out that she has a familial connection to the Folger family! The "Vassar-educated wife" was Emily, who was Emily Croke's great-great-great-aunt ... and who she was named after! I love Ken Jennings' reaction in the video above: "Emily Folger, the one we mentioned in the clue, is the person you, Emily Croke, are named after? WOW!" Again: total coincidence, no harm, no foul. It's bound to happen with so many episodes and so many different clues, right? Just wild that it ended up that way.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
West Virginia native wins Jeopardy! in landslide victory
(WBOY) — A contestant who is originally from West Virginia won big on Jeopardy Tuesday night. Matt Massie, an attorney originally from South Charleston, West Virginia, took a commanding lead during the episode that aired on June 10 when he wagered a true Daily Double during Double Jeopardy. He answered the question correctly and doubled his $7,200 winnings to $14,400. By the end of the round, he had more than three times the winnings of the contestant in second place. Massie also answered the Final Jeopardy question correctly, bringing his total winnings to $30,000 for the day. You can watch Massie play again on June 11 at 7 p.m. on WBOY-NBC. WATCH: West Virginia's Fiesta Tableware appears as a clue on Jeopardy! The last West Virginia native champion, Adriana Harmeyer who won 15 games earlier this year, received some criticism in her home state because she never mentioned the Mountain State during her tenure on the show. Massie, on the other hand, was announced as being originally from West Virginia and even shared an anecdote about West Virginia during the contestant interview segment in the middle of the show. Massie said that while he was in law school, he helped sort out an error with the voting and Senate districts in the small unincorporated community of Malden in Kanawha County, West Virginia. He learned that the community had been sorted into the wrong district for the State Senate and had been voting for the wrong candidates for three election cycles. Massie was able to take the problem to the Kanawha County Commission and get it fixed in 2016, he said on the show. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
