How was your Thursday night? Pretty normal? Have any crushing embarrassments? If your answer was no, then you probably weren't on Thursday night's episode of Jeopardy, where the questions were so difficult that only one contestant made it to the Final Jeopardy round. Yikes. I didn't quite realize this was a thing, because it happens so rarely, but it turns out that, if you're in the negative, dollar-wise, by the time the last buzzer sounds, you don't even get to compete for the final question. And Thursday night that pesky little rule took out not just one, but two of the three players, leaving just the returning champion, Kristin Sausville, to compete.
Even then, the question was so tough that she didn't even get it right and left with only $6,800 for the day. (And a two-day total of $31,601.) So low for the winner! But at least she didn't have the stress of trying to outmaneuver anybody else with her wager; she'd already won before they even announced the category. Right after the buzzer sounded, with fellow competitors Brad and Stephanie at -$200 and -$6,800 respectively, host Alex Trebek joked:
This was not one of our greatest days. Kristin, I think you're going to win.
But not everyone was that calm about it. According to Sausville, everyone on-set was pretty blown away:
The vibe in the studio was shock. I hadn't realized that both of the other contestants were in the negative. My husband Justin was in the audience and later told me that there had been a lot of questions as to whether it had happened before.
Yup, I was wondering the same thing — and it has! But just once, and to a player whom Sausville's own husband had encountered in the Tournament of Champions, oddly enough.
What a world, y'know? What a world. Really rocked the world of a bunch of dads nationwide, mine very much included.
Image: YouTube
