[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the September 13 episode of Jeopardy!]
The semi-finals for the first week of Jeopardy!‘s Second Chance Tournament are complete, and the Wednesday, September 13 game delivered a Final Jeopardy upset that saw the third-place player pull ahead for the win.
Competing in tonight’s game was Hari Parameswaran, a hardware engineer from Cupertino, California; Donna Vorreyer, a writer and retired educator from Willowbrook, Illinois; and Matt Wierman, an aerospace engineer from La Palma, California.
At stake for the winner was the last slot in the two-day finals, where the winner will play against the September 12 winner, David Maybury, and the September 11 (Season 40 premiere) winner Jill Tucker. Whomever has the highest dollar amount in winnings after the Friday, September 15 game wins Week 1 and will return to compete against the winners of Weeks 2 and 3.
After some early moments in the red, it looked as if Matt would walk away victorious. He was in the lead with $15,000 heading into Final Jeopardy, with Donna in second place with $8,200 and Hari in third with $7,800. Hari was the only player to answer the final clue correctly.
The category was artists, the clue: “On October 26, 1886 he said, ‘The dream of my life is accomplished… I see the symbol of unity and friendship between two nations.” The correct response was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty. With his $7,800 wager, Hari took the lead with $15,600. Donna cheekily wrote “Who is the Statue of Liberty guy?” Close, but not quite! She was left with $799.
Matt answered with Edouard Rene de Laboulaye (who helped the Statue of Liberty come to life but didn’t design it himself), leaving him with $13,299. Hari will be seen again in the first round of the Second Chance Tournament finals on Thursday, September 14 alongside Jill and David.
Matt took to the Jeopardy! Reddit page to explain his thought process behind his answer.
“In Final Jeopardy, it took me a bit to realize it was asking about the Statue of Liberty artist,” he wrote on the Reddit board. “I flashed through all the names I know associated with it. Came up with Eiffel (structural engineer), Lazarus (poet), Cleveland (Persident), Laboulaye (misspelled on my part, Statesman). I could not recall Bartholdi. I remember Laboulaye from National Treasure 2 and went with that. The moment I saw Hari’s response, I knew that was the name I forgot.”
“It was a blast getting to go back and meet all the other excited Second Chancers!” he added. “Everyone was cheering in the Green Room for the other contestants. I think we all would have played all day for fun if they would have let us.” Every Jeopardy! lover would likely agree.
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