The first two-day winner of the season has officially arrived on Jeopardy!
Will Weiss, a technical program manager from New York, managed to notch a second victory on Wednesday (September 11) night’s new episode, defeating challengers Kristen Robinson, a history instructor from Michigan, and Ben Gagne-Maynard, an education consultant from Wisconsin.
It wasn’t the cleanest win, though it does follow a certain unusual pattern for Weiss so far: For the second night in a row, Jeopardy! ended with a triple stumper and all three daily doubles being answered incorrectly.
This time, Gagne-Maynard did not correctly guess that Hayastani Hanrapetut’yun was another name for Armenia in the first round, and he also missed in the second round by not knowing Williams Jennings Bryan was a thrice-presidential election loser to other William candidates. Then, this game’s William missed the third Daily Double, which was about Black Panther being the source of some STEM donation altruism from Disney/Marvel.
For Final Jeopardy, the category was “World Borders,” and the clue was: “After Canada & the U.S., these 2 countries share the longest land border at more than 4,700 miles.”
Weiss and Robinson both guessed that the answer was Russian and China, while Gagne-Maynard incorrectly chose Chile and Argentina. The correct answer was actually Russia and Kazakhstan. However, Weiss had a runaway going into the final clue anyway and bet zero, keeping his haul of $13,600 to make his two-day total $27,600.
This turn of events, with so many big opportunities missed by the contestants, left some fans a bit unimpressed by the first stretch of Season 41.
“Oh man, this season has gotten off to a slow start,” one fan wrote on Reddit about the episode.
Meanwhile, another complimented the two-time champion for being a “good” player who is “accurate, knowledgeable, and strong on the buzzer” but added that his apparent strategy of letting other players hunt down the daily doubles will come back to bite him — when someone else gets them right for a change, that is.
We’ll have to wait and see whether the third time will be a charm for Weiss and his challengers when it comes to Thursday’s Daily Double and Final Jeopardy clues.
Jeopardy!, weeknights, check local listings
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