The competition continues to heat up in Jeopardy! Masters as the second week of the Knockout Round games aired Wednesday night (May 7), which saw two impressive runaway victories.
In the first game of the evening, Isaac Hirsch, Adriana Harmeyer, and Neilesh Vinjamuri battled it out. Vinjamuri got off to a hot start, answering 14 correct clues in the first round. However, Hirsch landed the game’s first Daily Double to give him a slight lead heading into Double Jeopardy.
Hirsch, a customer support team lead from Burbank, California, continued his momentum in the next round, finding another Daily Double and securing a runaway. The scores going into Final Jeopardy were Hirsch with 20,000 points, Vinjamuri with 9,2000, and Harmeyer with 7,400.
Host Ken Jennings then read out the final clue: “This saint who helped convert Scotland to Christianity shares his name with the Latin word for an animal sent out 3 times by Noah.”
The correct answer was, “Who is Columba?” Vinjamuri almost got it right but crossed out the correct response and changed it to Columbus. With his wager of 5,601, it dropped him to last place with 3,599, meaning he didn’t earn a point for this game. Harmeyer finished second with 4,400, giving her 1 point, while Hirsch finished first and took all 3 points.
Hirsch then returned for the second game of the night, taking on the other winners of the first-round games, Yogesh Raut and Roger Craig. Unfortunately for Hirsch, he couldn’t repeat his success, as Raut continued his winning ways by absolutely dominating the episode.
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By the end of Double Jeopardy, Raut had answered 26 clues correctly, with only one incorrect. This gave him an insurmountable lead with 25,700 points heading into Final Jeopardy. Meanwhile, Hirsch stood in second with 4,400, and Craig trailed with 2,800.
The final clue read: “‘Hide & Seek’ & ‘The Cradle’ by this French artist were among the 200 or so works shown at a gallery on Blvd. Des Capucines in 1874.”
Only Craig answered correctly with “Who is Berthe Morisot?” giving him a crucial match point for second place. Raut took the 3 points for finishing first, while Hirsch ended with 0 for being in last place.
Below is how the league table is looking so far. As you can see, Raut is the clear leader with 6 points so far, while Craig and Hirsch take up the second and third spots with 4 and 3 points, respectively. Last year’s Masters champion, Victoria Groce, only has 1 point so far, as does Harmeyer and Jeopardy! Invitational winner Matt Amodio.
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Vinjamuri, Juveria Zaheer, and Brad Rutter currently have 0 points and are in danger of being eliminated. After three episodes (two games per contestant), the three players with the least match points will be out of the tournament.
Next Wednesday’s (May 14) match-ups will see a showdown between Groce, Amodio, and Harmeyer in the first game of the night.
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The second game will then see a battle between Vinjamuri, Zaheer, and Rutter.
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Who do you think will win this year’s Masters? Can Raut be stopped? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Jeopardy! Masters, Wednesdays, 9/8c, ABC, next day on Hulu
