Warning: This post contains spoilers.
In her first competitive appearance in the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, record-breaking contestant Amy Schneider owned the game from the start.
She led her competitors, Tyler Rhode and Maureen O’Neil, from the very first question. While Rhode managed to get in a decent number of correct responses, Schneider had doubled her closest competitor’s score by the first commercial break.
Surprisingly, all three missed a $600 clue in the category of “Supreme Court Cases,” which related to abortion, one of the major issues in Tuesday’s mid-term elections: “Dobbs v. this city’s Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade.” The answer was Jackson, Miss.
By the conclusion of the Jeopardy! round, with the help of a Daily Double, Schneider had accumulated $12,600, compared to $4,200 for Rhode and $400 for O’Neil.
In the Double Jeopardy! round, viewers were stunned that none of the contestants gave the correct answer to the $1,200 clue in the category of “3-Named People”: “She’s the first Black woman on the Supreme Court & the first justice to have been a public defender.” Some tweeted about it.
How could none of the people on #jeopardy know that Ketanji Brown Jackson was the eeeh…question?
— asia (@_takeAgLANCE) November 10, 2022
Amy knew those cases though… disappointed no one rang in for Ketanji Brown-Jackson
— K1P2 ???????????????????? (@willcharmom) November 10, 2022
Rhode himself tweeted that the players could only come up with two of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s names.
That triple stumper stung, but with the category being “Three Named People”, you usually have to list all three names – after the game, Amy, Maureen and I discussed that we all could pull 2 of the 3… not good enough – sorry Justice Jackson! #Jeopardy #JeopardyToC
— Tyler Rhode (@tylerthinksthis) November 10, 2022
In the second round of the game, Schneider picked another Daily Double — O’Neil found the other one — and was winning with a cool $19,600 by the time the board was cleared. After a correct answer in Final Jeopardy!, Schneider ended up with $19,664, to defeat Rhode, who finished with $7,000, and O’Neil, who won a total of $600. The runners-up were rewarded with an additional $10,000 each.
Fans were ecstatic for Schneider.
While Schneider ended up winning the game handily, she was undoubtedly worried about how she’d fare when the game began. She came in third in an exhibition game that aired Tuesday. Champions Matt Amodio, who had previously won 38 games of Jeopardy!, and Mattea Roach, the winner of 23 previous games, both beat Schneider, despite her having led after the first round.
Schneider will now get a break, as Jeopardy! viewers watch other semifinalists for the rest of the week. She’ll join the finalists, who go head-to-head beginning Nov. 14, as she continues to compete for this year’s $250,000 prize. The money goes to the first contestant to win three games.
