Jeopardy!‘s Second Chance finals kicked off on a very, very promising note for one of the contestants returning to the Alex Trebek Stage in Thursday’s (January 2) episode. The two-day, total point competition leg featured the return of newly-minted Second Chance champions Kaitlin Tarr (a ceramic artist from Colorado), Colleen Matthews (a speech-language pathologist from Oregon), and Will Yancey (a history lecturer from Texas). And it was the latter who grabbed and maintained most of the momentum throughout the entire episode.
In the first round, Yancey found the Daily Double really quickly in the “King James Bible” category and wagered the full $1,000 he was able to with only $600 in points in his stash (and on the board at all). In response to the clue, “And there was war again: and David went out, and fought with” this group, “And slew them with a great slaughter,” Yancey correctly deduced that they were looking for the Philistines.
Though he didn’t have the most correct answers for the round — that honor went to Tarr with 12 to his nine — he did have the least incorrect answers and went into the half with $6,400 to Tarr’s $2,800 and Matthews’ $1,800.
In Double Jeopardy, the spread became even more pronounced. Early on in the round, Yancey found the second Daily Double and wagered $2,500 of his $7,200 on the then-new “Tributaries” category. The clue was, “A sheepish response is perhaps best for this, the largest tributary of the Yellowstone,” and Yancey once again got it right by answering with Big Horn. He got over a dozen others correct throughout the round as well.
By the time he found the final Daily Double, he had a whopping $23,700 amassed and risked $3,700. In the category, “Novel Title, Drop a Letter,” the clue was, “An Edith Wharton novel drops a letter and laughter spews from a tube.” Yancey had no clue, jokingly answering with “Hilarious toothpaste” before host Ken Jennings revealed that it was actually, “The Ho[u]se of Mirth.”
That slight drop didn’t make much of a difference, though. Going into Final Jeopardy, Yancey had a runaway score of $20,000 to Tarr’s $6,800 and Matthews’ $4,200. Still, it’s the cumulative score that will make the difference in this two-day event, so the final was of great importance to everyone involved.
For the final clue, the category was, “Science: The ____ of ____,” and the clue read, “4 of these discovered in the early 1600s were given the names of lovers of a mythological deity.”
Only one contestant correctly identified “What are the moons of Jupiter,” and that was Matthews, who added $4,200 to her daily winning for a total of $8,400. Meanwhile, Tarr was way off when guessing, “What are fossils?” and dropped her score to just $1. Yancey also didn’t know the answer and instead used his screentime to pay tribute to a lost loved one (“What is in the memory of Carey Harden,” he wrote), but he bet $0 and kept all $20,000 of his winnings for the day.
With that, Yancey has quite a significant lead going into the second day of the finals, so he’ll have to step on a lot of rakes to lose that lead in Friday’s game.
In response to the game, one fan took to Reddit to question the formatting of the Final Jeopardy clue. As one wrote, “I’m really hesitant about the category title (and with it, specific wording). Not because wordplay can’t be a FJ, but because I don’t know anyone who calls them by the _____ of _____ designation,” adding, “I feel like a different category (heck, use ‘Quartets’ if you want to remain vague) would be better, and this has too much ‘right but wrong’ potential.”
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