The “curse” is broken on Jeopardy! Throughout the season, fans have noticed that even the most successful champions haven’t been able to get past five wins — until now, that is.
On Wednesday night’s episode, Adriana Harmeyer became a six-game champion in a stunning runaway, leading one former “curse” victim to cheer for her success.
Harmeyer, an archivist from West Lafayette, Indiana, came into the game with a five-day cash winnings total of $116,200 and was the third five-day champion of the season, following Alison Betts and Amy Hummel. She faced a new pair of challengers in Allee Mead, a writer from Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Kyle Sorlie Titlow, a geographer from Washington, D.C.
In the first round, Harmeyer had some solid competition from Mead — the latter was just one answer shy of tying her correct answers score of 10. Ahead of Double Jeopardy, Harmeyer had $5,800 to Mead’s $5,400 (with Titlow well behind at $1,600).
Double Jeopardy, however, was a very different story for Harmeyer. She found both Daily Doubles (and gave modest $2,000 wagers, so that even when she got one of them wrong, she ended up with even money and edged out her competitors for a chance to score big bucks). Plus, she just plain ran the board with correct answers.
Before Final Jeopardy could begin, she’d already had the win in the bag, with $19,400, which was more than double Mead’s $9,400 (while Titlow had just $2,400).
All three contestants got the right answer — Bath was the answer to this clue in the “British Places” category: “This city owes much of its early history to a temple dedicated to Sulis Minerva & a ‘sacred spring’ found there.” But Harmeyer wisely bet just $500 so as not to sabotage her own assured victory, adding $19,900 to her winnings for a six-day total of $136,100.
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Weighing in on this big win was Alison Betts, who wrote on Reddit, “Woohoo, she did it, she broke the 5 day curse!!! I would like to nominate Adriana to be captain of the ToC Ateam. (Please do not take this as willingness on my part to play the role of Bosco, I could not rock that hair.”
Meanwhile, another commented that Harmeyer “is making this look easy!” And one fan wrote of her gameplay skills, “Adriana is a sneaky ice cold player. She’s not DD-hunting that much and not very aggressive with her wagering but by the end of DJ, she has a runaway game! Just pure buzzer skill and huge knowledge base. I hope she continues her streak, I would love to see how far she takes this!”
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