Joey DeSena may have missed his own Jeopardy! viewing party because he was too busy taping his Champions Wildcard episode, but he was definitely on hand to share in the fun with fans after his victory on Thursday’s (January 16) episode.
DeSena, a development engineer from North Carolina, competed in the fourth night of the wildcard games alongside North Carolina attorney Eamonn Campbell and Washington-based software engineer Mehal Shah.
He and Shah made it something of a horse race throughout the entire game. In the first round, he earned $6,200 to Shah’s $6,600 (and Campbell’s $2,800) — thanks, in part, to him wagering all he could, $1,000, on the Daily Double when he found it right away. (He correctly guessed that Galileo was the one who told a papal tribunal in 1633, “I abjure, curse & detest the aforesaid errors.”)
Then, in the Double Jeopardy! round, he and Shah were both aggressive with their Daily Double wagers, and it paid off for each. First, Shah doubled his $7,800 by correctly guessing that Huntsville was the Alabama city with the memorabilia-stacked space and rocket center. Then, DeSena netted $11,000 by remembering that the Pope’s public advice for the 2024 U.S. presidential election was to pick the lesser of two evils.
Heading into Final Jeopardy, Joey DeSena had $24,000, while Mehal Shah had $19,600 and Eamonn Campbell had $9,600.
Surprisingly, the last clue proved to be a triple stumper, where they were all three on the same page. In the category “Trees,” all three contestants thought laurel was the answer to, “Order Arecales, this tree gets its name from Roman times; a leaf from one was placed in a victor’s hands after a contest was won.” It didn’t matter, though, thanks to each of their wagers. Campbell lost it all, while both DeSena and Shah wagered nothing, which means no matter if they all got it right, the order wouldn’t have changed.
In the end, it was DeSena who punched his own ticket to the semi-finals by earning $24,000, with Shah just behind him at $19,600 and Campbell at $0.
On Reddit, DeSena addressed several issues related to the episode. He first wrote that his colleagues in the game were “tremendous competitors (and more importantly, great people)” who he enjoyed playing Contact with and watching The Princess Bride during their shared sequestration.
He also revealed that he was unaware of Shah’s prior claim to fame — that is, boasting the record for the highest Daily Double wager of the season — adding, “I’m super glad I didn’t.” According to DeSena, it was Shah’s boldness in his own wagering that prompted him to do the same. “I don’t know why I bet so much on that Daily Double in Double Jeopardy — but hopefully it made for good TV. I think Mehal’s big wager right before that got me spooked, as was likely his objective.”
DeSena also revealed that even Ken Jennings was stumped (pardon the obvious pun there) by the Final Jeopardy clue and that the “Lorelai” he was giving a shoutout to in his Final Jeopardy answer was his four-month-old daughter “so that she might see it years in the future and smile.” D’aw.
Perhaps the most touching bit of DeSena’s list of post-game tidbits was this one: “Bonus tidbit about my ‘piece of flair’: the Navy pin I wore during this game belonged to my father. He died almost exactly 10 years ago. Unfortunately, we were never particularly close, but did bond anytime we watched Jeopardy together. He was always so proud when I answered a clue correctly as a kid, and encouraged me to never stop learning – this was my little way of paying tribute to him on the Alex Trebek Stage. I made it, Dad.” What a story!
Elsewhere in the Reddit thread, fans critiqued the game in some very intriguing ways.
One person, for example, slammed the show for “randomly putting super easy clues in the $2000 spots … ‘Speeds up a chemical reaction’ = catalyst last week and now ‘inclination of a line in math’ = slope.”
Another user took major issue with the framing of the Final Jeopardy clue, writing, “As an ecologist, I’m really annoyed by FJ. Palm trees are not in fact trees, making an already-difficult question almost impossible. The quiet reference to hands was the only link to the right answer and that’s very weak imho.”
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