So Let's Talk About That Jeopardy! Episode

This space contains spoilers for the April 23, 2026 episode of Jeopardy. Please do not read further if you do not want this spoiled.

Many people dream of going on Jeopardy. Pretty much no one dreams of arriving and having to face a 29-game champion.

On the plane ride to Los Angeles, I heard a rumor that there was a super-champion as well as a couple known extremely strong players taping the day prior to when I arrived, and my heart sank. I figured I had a decent shot at winning against players that were below the super-champion tier, but the odds would be pretty long against someone of that caliber. At the beginning of the tape day, it was revealed that the super-champ made it through what must have been a pretty tough set of opponents, as Jamie Ding, who had been quietly sitting among the group to that point, was pointed out as the active 26-game winner by the coordinators. 

I don't want to speak for Jamie, but if I were in his shoes, I would probably have been just as quiet. It must be really uncomfortable being amongst 10 new hopefuls who are achieving their lifelong dream and knowing that they're crestfallen that you, one of the best Jeopardy players of all time, are sitting there likely to crush their hopes of becoming a Jeopardy champion. You're not doing anything wrong, just playing your game and competing, but at the same time, your success means everyone else's failure at something they want really, really badly.

I can report that everything you've seen on screen about Jamie's sportsmanship and kindness to his competitors is just as real off-camera. He was helpful to all of us sacks of nervousness in the green room, giving us tips on how to time the buzzer. He didn't want anyone to have a rough go out there. To the extent that being a 26+ game winner can be in a "tough spot," it does make for an awkward situation with the other contestants, but he handled it with grace.

After seeing him win in mostly dominant fashion the first few games of the day, my mindset had completed its shift from the "try to win a few games!" from a few days prior to "just don't make an ass of yourself." Before walking out on that stage, I was ready to accept several versions of getting crushed as an acceptable outcome as the culmination of about eight years of grinding my way up from knowing basically nothing about anything. The thought was depressing.

Making matters worse were the rehearsals from earlier in the day. I was one of the poorer performers in the trial runs that Jeopardy! lets contestants do to warm up and get used to the buzzer system. Jimmy McGuire, the stage manager and former "Clue Crew" member, read off questions from a sample game and I had a real tough time getting in on the buzzer against the other first-timers. The questions they ask you at this stage of the game are similar to what you'd get in the audition and the online tests, maybe like $800-level clues from Double Jeopardy. There were plenty that the other contestants were getting that I didn't know. About my only bright spot was seeing Ken Jennings himself, who came out to give the contestants words of encouragement (while humorously having his phone out and being on hold with his bank).

I was shaking just watching the first couple games of the day and after lunch, I was selected to play the fourth round. I pounded a cup of coffee and after that, despite all the nerves of earlier in the day, I felt...fine. The coffee made me too wired to be super nervous, and that helped out a LOT. The Chicago Bulls intro music played as the contestants took the podiums (I had no idea that Jeopardy did this!), and before long, we were ready to go.

The Jeopardy! Round

To beat Jamie, I was going to need a favorable category selection. I felt like the closer the board stuck to meat-and-potatoes Jeopardy material (science, geography, history, literature, art, classical music, all the classic go-to's), the better chance I would have. Of recurring categories, I struggle most with wordplay, fashion, food, cars, animals, and classic rock / pre-2000s pop music. Fortunately, most of these already appeared earlier in my tape day. Ken revealed the categories one by one.

All things considered, this was great. We've got two pretty straightforward history/science categories and although "Words for the Young" was a vocabulary category in which I did EXTREMELY poorly and never hit the buzzer once, it's just the Jeopardy round, so best to get this one out of the way. More importantly, "Recent Hitmakers" is actually a relative strength for me. I could've been lost on many music categories, but having this come up flipped a nightmare into a category where I may have had an edge over Jamie*. Plus, Big 12 Schools is a nice sports-adjacent category, and if there's gonna be offbeat stuff, sports is hardly a disaster for me. I'd do better with the Big Ten or the ACC, but these are all good things. Overall, a very lucky selection of material.

*It's impossible to "know" this, but I'm basing this on comments Jamie made in the green room earlier in the day and on how the category played out.

Punch and Counterpunch

Jamie found the Daily Double in the American history category right out of the gate, which wasn't too discouraging because a superchampion can absolutely bury you if they find one late in the round. At this point, my mindset was just to try to stay in the game, and a simple $1,000 head start for Jamie wouldn't be too demoralizing.

A patented Jamie Ding "knight move" clue selection then got us over to the bottom-row clue in the Hobbies & Pastimes category, which wound up being one of the most important clues of the whole game for me.

Ikebana. I knew this one, and was happy about that because historically on Jeopardy, it's played as a tough response. Looking back at the J-Archive, over half the time they've expected the contestants to pull ikebana, it's gone as a triple stumper. After all the discussion in the green room and at rehearsal about Jamie's mastery of the buzzer, my biggest fear was that even if I knew things, I wouldn't be able to get in. While Ken was reading this clue, I looked over at Jamie (note: not a good habit while playing Jeopardy!) and saw him confidently nodding along, so I operated under the assumption that he knew this one too. It was going to be a timing contest. I mashed the buzzer on Ken's last syllable.

The red lights on my podium went on. Almost confused as to how this was possible, I responded to Ken's prompt.

"What is ikebana?"

I was on the board with $1,000, and it felt better than it would have if Jamie hypothetically didn't know it. This told me it was possible to ring in ahead of him. And in my first opportunity to speak, I had answered a tough clue on Jeopardy. Finally, after all the turmoil and fear of the early parts of the day, I had convinced myself that I was here to play. 

Game on.

Thanks in large part to some clues in the aforementioned pop music category that went my way, I was able to amass $4,000 by the first break and had already let go of all worries about being embarrassed. I was trailing Jamie, but it was close. I knew that as long as I kept myself in the mix and those Double Jeopardy Daily Doubles were still in play, I'd have a shot.

What is Kansas.....State?

The bottom row clue in the Big 12 Schools category wound up being a wild one for me.

I recognized "Manhattan" as a city in Kansas and successfully buzzed in. The problem is, my brain got scrambled in the moment. If I had like fifteen seconds to collect myself and think, I would have remembered that the University of Kansas was in Lawrence. You don't have that kind of time under the lights, and I just sort of blurted out "What is Kansas?"

Ken paused for a bit upon hearing my response, which told me I had made a mistake. I had to pivot quickly to try to avoid losing $1,000 for my blunder and I added "State" right around the time Ken ruled against me. I didn't know at the time with 100% confidence that Kansas State was correct, but as there's no other school starting with "Kansas" in the Big 12, that was the only addendum I could possibly tack on that could turn my wrong response into a correct one. After Ken's ruling, my score dropped down and the clue mercifully timed out without either of my opponents grabbing the rebound.

Then, a very interesting process ensued. The producers stopped the game. 

They wanted to listen to a replay to see if I had gotten the word "State" out before Ken ruled against me. The contestants had to face away from the board, basically staring at a wall, to make sure that if a mistake was made with the game board during the review, it wouldn't spoil the match. I honestly had no concept of whether I was in ahead of Ken's ruling. It was super close. Fortunately, I got to hear an audio replay when we got back to the podiums and my "State" follow-up had pretty clearly just made it in. Ken ruled upon review that I had corrected myself in time. That $2,000 swing gave me enough juice to keep things close with Jamie as the Jeopardy round moved toward its conclusion.

The Double Jeopardy! Round

With the game this close, much hinged upon the Double Jeopardy categories...

...and again, this was a great draw for me. American Lit, Art for Art's Sake, and Teeny Tiny Countries are as mainstream Jeopardy as you can get. "I Have a Lot of Grey Friends" is a tailor-made themed potpourri category. We have the Word Origins nightmare (ugh, more vocab in round 2), and Celebrity Chefs isn't exactly a strength of mine, but overall, this is a pretty great draw. I caught another break.

The Cram Pays Off

The Double Jeopardy round opened with a couple triple-stumpers followed by Jamie pulling away a bit by getting a couple big-value clues. However, I was able to get myself back into it with a three-clue blitz.

In the weeks leading up to appearing on the show, I studied my entire existing deck of flash cards and added about 3,000 new ones by studying old games. To stay motivated, I told myself that all this work would be worth it if it meant I was able to buzz in just one more time than I would have otherwise. I didn't know how right I was.

Before getting the call to come on the show, I had never heard of "The Great Santini," nor its author, Pat Conroy. I had heard of another of his books, "The Prince of Tides," but I couldn't have told you anything about it. Not only was this my third consecutive correct response (ignoring a triple-stumper in the middle), it kept my control of the board, allowing me to investigate the $1,200 clue in the Teeny Tiny Countries category....

All-in

In an amazing stroke of luck, and at the perfect moment in the game, I ran into the first Daily Double of the round in a category I was comfortable with.

I've been asked about the decision to bet everything in this moment and the truth is, it was really no decision at all. There's several ways I can explain it.

1. In game theory, when you are the weaker player, you want to increase the variance to improve your chances of winning. 
2. I am playing against one of the best players of all time and have a rare opportunity to add five figures to my score without him being able to do anything about it.
3. I like the category, and was getting close to 80% of Daily Doubles correct over a decent sample near the end of my training, so it makes sense to maximize the value of a very fortunate situation.
4. The simplest -- and best -- explanation. An all-in bet is 100% the absolute last thing that Jamie Ding wanted to hear, and that is why you do it.

Now, knowing the correct strategy is one thing and actually following through on it is another. That's the only reason that I just didn't blurt out the words "all-in" the second Ken asked for my wager. There was this "are you srsly going to do this right now" internal monologue that I was contending with, knowing that I could easily have bet smaller, kept myself in it the rest of the way, and lived to play another clue no matter what.

Fortunately, here was our clue.

There's a LOT to go on here. We've got Italian-sounding stuff. We've got the fact that it's landlocked. We know from the category that it's a tiny country. Honestly Vatican City seems at least a little plausible here except there aren't separate "towns" in Vatican City and Vatican City isn't named after a 4th century holy man. So there's really only one choice.

"What is...San Marino?"

I now have an absolutely huge lead.

The Wrong Choice

After the Daily Double, I cleared out the $1,600 clue in the "I Have a Lot of Grey Friends" category and was left with a choice to make as to where to go next. Observant viewers may have noticed my hesitation before selecting the bottom-row clue in the literature category. At that point, I figured there were two clues that were most likely to hold the game's final Daily Double: the one I picked, and the $2,000 clue in the Art category. I felt slightly more comfortable with Literature and went that way. The clue:

Uh oh.

I didn't have any idea here at all, so I was helpless as Jamie pounced on it. This was what I would call a hard-but-gettable clue, I just didn't know enough about Guys and Dolls to connect to Damon Runyon. He took control of the board and then pivoted to the bottom-row art clue that I almost selected, I could hear the Daily Double sound effect in my mind before it was actually revealed. 

I was pretty sure when Ken finished reading the clue that Jamie was going to get it. I needed a pretty weird and obscure question to appear, and this wasn't it. However, Jamie hesitated just enough to give me a sliver of hope. Was there going to be a miracle here? A miss would almost certainly get me to a lock-game win by the end of the round...

"Who is Chihuly?"

Dammit.

I put up a fight to close the gap the rest of the way, but Jamie answered the bell every time. Leighanna was a significant factor down the stretch, as she found her timing and pulled several clues that might have been able to help me catch up (though to be fair, they could have just gone to Jamie instead, too). In the end, I wound up trailing Jamie heading into final, but I was close enough to force him to get it right no matter what.

About that Final Jeopardy.....

If I were a rational person, I'd be nothing but proud of how I performed on the Alex Trebek stage, but I walked away still overly focused on how bad I screwed up Final Jeopardy. Those who know me already understand that's par for the course for the way I approach things.

The absolute most positive thing I can say about Final Jeopardy is that it was never going to matter whether I got the question right or wrong. This may not be immediately obvious to those who aren't religious fans of the show, but I was in what's called a "four-fifths" wagering scenario, meaning I was close enough to Jamie's score that I could bet in such a way that I could exceed his total if he made a defensive wager while still leaving myself with plenty of money if he made the cover bet (which he did) and missed. I also had enough cushion over third place to ensure I could lose my bet and still have more than double the third place score. Jamie needed to bet close to $25,000 to lock me out, which turned the game into a binary situation. If Jamie got the question right, he'd win no matter how I answered. If Jamie got the question wrong, I'd win no matter how I answered.

However, despite the apparent meaninglessness of me even writing anything down at all, I made three mistakes on Final Jeopardy.

Mistake 1) Getting the question wrong (obviously)

By this point in the game, my senses were overloaded and I was stunned into inaction. I took so long to lock in my wager that the coordinators almost concerningly asked me if I was still working on it. I had no idea they were waiting on me and thought that they took the same amount of time between Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy regardless. Those five or whatever minutes were a blur. The only real memory I have was Jimmy saying to either the staff or audience, "This is a big moment in Jamie's run" as a preface to some sort of instruction, but I honestly have no idea what he said next. I was practically dissociating from the moment.

I think that mind melt situation was a factor, but even disregarding that, I have two major problems with how I approach Final Jeopardy questions. The first is when I think I know the answer but talk myself out of it because I convince myself a minor detail in the question's wording does not fit my answer. The second is when I latch onto the wrong idea immediately and even though I know my answer isn't great, my brain struggles to reverse course. In this game, it was the first scenario.

Especially in the context of my tape day (which featured what I thought were three extremely hard Final Jeopardy questions out of five), this was a gettable final. When the clue was first revealed, I saw the words "safe and effective" and thanks to the COVID years, my brain immediately went to vaccines. No vaccine was more prevalent in the 1950s than the polio vaccine. Boom. Write that down. Done. Right?

Wrong.

The last portion of the clue hints at a "significant American death from 1945." So what does my boneheaded mind think of that?

"Well, Jonas Salk (inventor of the polio vaccine) didn't die in 1945."

I was so damn convinced that the hint to the person who died was the inventor of whatever we were talking about. I was so locked onto this that I never even considered FDR (I guess you could say my second Final Jeopardy problem started to creep in here as well). So I thought of another major advance in medicine, penicillin, which I knew was invented decades prior but possibly took awhile to be considered safe and effective. I didn't know where Alexander Fleming was from (Scotland!) or when he died (1955!), but I figured the fact that I knew Jonas Salk was still alive well past 1945 ruled out the polio vaccine.

I wrote my answer in a hurry near the end of time because it dawned on me about 20 seconds in that I had to stop debating and put down *something.* Since I thought of Fleming's antibiotic more recently in the Think! music and had a regrettable mindset of "oh well this doesn't matter anyway," I wound up choosing wrong.

I've played trivia long enough to understand that you can get the same question on different days in different mindsets and different physical states and wind up getting it right sometimes and wrong other times. I knew that my answer on Final didn't matter, and I think there's at least some chance that after the weeks of cramming, the emotional earlier parts of the game, and understanding I'd now reached a point where there was no longer anything I could do to improve my chances, my thinking and focus was impaired.

And that's the story of how penicillin (the Final Jeopardy! answer) was invented.

Mistake 2) The wager

Conventional wisdom suggests that if all that matters is winning the game, I needed to bet between $5,601 (covering the very unlikely scenario of Jamie making a safe bet equal to $1 less than the difference between our scores) and $17,199 (the maximum I could wager without risking falling below a double-up from Leighanna). Under that logic, my $10,000 wager was fine.

However, if we also consider that I want to maximize my earnings in the event of a win, I made an error in judgment. What I was thinking in the moment was, "I get more than half of Final Jeopardy questions right, so my expected value goes up if I bet more." That logic was horribly flawed. In order for the amount of money in front of me to matter, I have to win, and for me to win, Jamie has to get the question wrong. Because Jamie is such a strong player, it's significantly more likely for both of us to miss (due to a really hard final) than for him to miss and me to get it right (which would require a great player missing something I could get). 

This means that I will win this game more often while getting Final Jeopardy wrong than while getting it right. 

I should therefore be making the minimum rational wager. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion in my mind that Jamie would bet to cover in this situation, so it wouldn't have been too crazy to bet zero. It also would have been fine for me to wager $2,801 to cover Jamie betting zero. At maximum, it would have been OK for me to wager $5,601 as described above to cover Jamie's defensive bet. But betting $10,000 is way too much and a really negative expected value move.

Mistake 3) I didn't write a message to my kids

I told myself I'd write a little note to my children to give them a little extra excitement during Final Jeopardy when the show aired. However, because I took so long to deliberate on my response, I ran out of time and was unable to do this. Given that the first two things ultimately didn't matter for anything besides my own self-esteem, this is the mistake I regret the most.

****

At the end of the day, in order to beat Jamie, one of the five strongest players in the entire 42-season history of the show (and climbing), I was going to need a lot of luck, and the crazy thing is, I actually got it. I was randomly selected to be part of the fourth episode on my tape day, by which point I had calmed down a lot. I was shaking more in the green room during the first two games of the day than at any point during the one I actually played. I got generally favorable categories with a few deep cuts I knew that allowed me to solo buzz several times. I landed on a gettable Daily Double after having built up a five-digit score.

After that stroke of luck, there were a few different ways that I could have won this game, even if we assume I get Final Jeopardy wrong regardless of circumstance.

• The first would have been to select that art clue containing the game's final Daily Double rather than the fateful pivot to literature. I would have known it (it's been less than seven months since I was physically inside that Dale Chihuly museum), and I'd like to at least tell myself I would have had the fortitude to bet the $14,000-ish that would have helped me lock Jamie out before Final Jeopardy. 
• Second, that art Daily Double could have instead been an impossible land mine of a clue like a couple Daily Doubles before it on my tape day, which would have dropped Jamie down to zero and given me the lock. Even the greatest players still miss 15% or so of Daily Doubles. 
• Third, Final Jeopardy could have been extremely difficult like a few others during my tape day that Jamie missed (I missed them too; in fact I was 0-for-5 that day), which would have allowed me to win on his lockout wager. Even the greatest players still miss 25% or so of Final Jeopardy clues (possibly more).

That just goes to show how incredible Jamie Ding is at Jeopardy. I had so much break my way for me to put up the fight that I did, and I still wound up one significant stroke of luck away from getting the job done.

****

After the game, Ken asked me a couple questions about the all-in wager and the Daily Double question. I told him that I wanted to be able to look back and say that I took my shot. Once Ken wrapped up the postgame interviews, Jamie, ever the good sport, came over and gave me a big hug. I got a handshake and a "Good job" from Jimmy and headed back to the green room to get my things all packed up before joining my little cheering section in the crowd to watch the last game of the day.

I had been warning my wife for weeks about the intense depression that would set in if I went on Jeopardy and lost my first game. It's not that there's any shame in losing; anyone can lose at any time. It's just that I knew that ending years and years of preparation without Ken Jennings saying the words "Patrick Nolan, you are a Jeopardy champion!" would absolutely crush me, and I'm not wired to handle such a defeat in any way besides "poorly".

However, this loss was different. I can keep my head held high. I went toe-to-toe with one of the best players to ever play the game. I played basically as well as I would have if I were sitting at home on my couch, and that's about all I could ask for. I made two mistakes (the Baylor buzz, and obviously Final Jeopardy), but neither wound up mattering at all (but oh man, what if I answered that on Final from first place......I'd never live it down). I was one big break away from shocking the world. We gave 'em a thrill.

And, despite the loss, I did get to walk away with a Jeopardy! record, albeit a really weird one. I now hold the record for the highest 2nd-place score entering Final Jeopardy (just ahead of the mark set by the great Tom Devlin in his first win). Before me, everyone who had cleared $28,000 through the end of Double Jeopardy was in first place heading into Final. For at least a little while, I'll hold that extremely specific piece of history.

And of course, Jeopardy's introduction of the annual Second Chance Tournament means there's hope that my Jeopardy journey hasn't reached its conclusion. At the beginning of the next episode, Ken teased that I'd be back for it, and I feel like I've made a strong case. This story may yet have another chapter, and I can't wait to see how it all unfolds. Stay tuned all, and thanks for reading.