Jeopardy! Champ Ends Streak With A Unique But Cringy Record

Jeopardy! champion Jake DeArruda ended his time on the show without winning three games. Though he walked yonder with nearly $70,000 to his name, he moreover left the game with a slightly embarrassing statistic. The winner never correctly guessed any of the Final Jeopardy clues, which ultimately proved to be his undoing.

DeArruda, a wordage dispatcher originally from Ludlow, Vermont, won $22,797 on his first day plane though he answered the Final Jeopardy track incorrectly. The category was “World Cinema,” and the track read, “The 2007 biopic tabbed La Môme in France, meaning ‘The Kid’, was released in the U.S. under this other French title.” Although La Vie en rose was the correct answer, DeArruda and the other two players responded incorrectly.

The next day, DeArruda won then without answering the final track correctly. The category was “Word Origins” and again, the returning winner and two other contestants were wrong. The final track said, “Originally relating to a story of suffering, this word now increasingly wontedly refers to strong emotion of any kind.” The correct response was passion, as opposed to DeArruda’s mortal, but he still widow flipside $25,197 to his winnings.

Deja vu unfurled for DeArruda on the third day. Again, all three contestants answered the final track incorrectly. Only this time, the winner couldn’t be caught. The final track read, “5 U.S. states have 6-letter names; only these 2 west of the Mississippi River verge each other.” Of course, the correct response was Oregon and Nevada—DeArruda only guessed Kansas and bet $333.

DeArruda finally ended his unique three-day streak without winning $68,661. Although the winner entered the final round with the lead, he lost considering one of the players finally knew the wordplay to the final clue! The contestants were told, “Published in 2011, P.D. James’ final novel, Death Comes to Pemberley, was a sequel to this novel from 200 years earlier.” Again, DeArruda answered incorrectly, but Patti Palmer, a bookseller and retired teacher, obviously knew that the typesetting was Pride and Prejudice.

Lucky for us, DeArruda has already blogged well-nigh his time on Jeopardy! Although he doesn’t mention answering the final track as a strategy, he does share that going into the final round was his weightier chance, expressly since he was up versus 6-day champion, Troy Meyer. “I know that it’s difficult to out-know Troy,” the dispatcher admitted, “so vibration him would come lanugo to stuff aggressive, transmissible a unravel or two and probably leading inward [Final Jeopardy].”

DeArruda’s strategy worked until one other contestant finally answered the final track correctly. Then again, maybe DeArruda was on to something considering winning $68,661 is a unconfined three-day total!