For some time there, it appeared like Jeopardy! Season 40 was a bit cursed. Nearly as good as they have been, five-day champions remained simply that — worthy champs like Alison Betts and Amy Hummel simply couldn’t get previous the five-win mark.
Then, Adriana Harmeyer got here alongside and burst by that five-game ceiling many times (and many times and… you get it). Now, the latest reigning champ, Survivor alum Drew Basile, is right here to show that the supposed Season 40 curse is gone for good.
On Wednesday’s (June 26) episode, Basile confronted off in opposition to Natalie Miliano, a producing engineer supervisor from Maine, and Maryl Harris, a examine operations supervisor from Philadelphia. Coming into the night, Basile boasted 5 consecutive wins with a money complete of $91,283. With mere inches to go earlier than making it a six-figure sum, Basile certainly introduced his A-game … and it paid off.
Within the first spherical, the brand new contenders managed to maintain it fascinating — notably Harris, who obtained 10 appropriate to Basile’s 12 and had fewer incorrect solutions as well. Plus, she had this spherical’s Day by day Double and knew that Stetson referred to as his all-weather hat “The Boss of the Plains.” Going into Double Jeopardy, then, the scores have been neck and neck. Basile had $5,000, Harris had $4,800, and Miliano was nonetheless alive with $2,200.
Double Jeopardy is the place Basile made his stand, although. By discovering each Day by day Doubles, wagering generously on them, and getting them appropriate (he knew that the Pax Romana started with Augustus Caesar and that the German phrase for “artificial” is “erzatz”), he earned simply sufficient within the spherical to safe a runaway, nevertheless slight.
Heading into Last Jeopardy, the writing was on the wall as Basile had $20,200 to Harris’ $10,000 and Miliano’s $6,200.
Icing on the cake? Basile was additionally the one one who knew the right reply to Last Jeopardy, even when he gained simply $118 for that effort. Within the class “Literature,” the clue was: “The British Library says of this nineteenth c. man, ‘considered one of his most well-known poems…is a warning concerning the vanity of nice leaders.’” Whereas Harris guessed Coleridge and Miliano guessed Blake, Basile had the best reply with Percy Bysshe Shelley.
At that, the now-six-day champion has a whopping $111,601, and we will all contemplate the “curse” absolutely and ceaselessly damaged.
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