Everyone's already spoiled it, so screw it, here's the Jeopardy! champ update
[Spoilers for today’s episode of Jeopardy! if you haven’t seen it yet—and honestly, this early in the day? There’s almost no chance you have, we’re sorry to say.]
Looks like we’re really going all-in on the backlash against “no spoilers,” huh? Jeopardy! is filmed weeks in advance, and so it’s not exactly shocking the results of a single episode got leaked early. Still, the way in which news outlets fell over themselves to spoil one of the game’s most exciting winning streaks in history in their headlines within minutes of the episode’s official airing today is more than a little obnoxious. The syndicated series airs at a variety of times throughout the country, and since the earliest is a 9:30 a.m. CT screening in Alabama, 9:31 a.m. is apparently the acceptable time at which to ruin the results for everyone.
And here those results are, from a daily Jeopardy! viewer who would’ve at least liked the opportunity to intuit what happened from a headline, rather than have it confirmed in detail: James Holzhauer’s reign at the top has come to an end. His 32-game winning streak—which, it should be emphasized, stopped a mere $58,484 shy of besting Ken Jenning’s all-time regular play winnings record—stopped after competitor Emma Boettcher entered her “Final Jeopardy!” round $3,200 ahead of Holzhauer, so even if he had bet it all (he didn’t), she would’ve won by a dollar, with a total of $46,801. The final question, about a 16th-century English poet (answer: “Who is Kit Marlowe?), was correctly answered by everyone, so Boettcher beat James fair and square in the realm of correct answers, though it was her early doubling down on a Daily Double that put her in position to do so.
Of course, these are the details. If you just wanted the ending ruined, you could read Sports Illustrated’s headline:
Spoiler Alert: Jeopardy! James Holzhauer Loses, Fails to Beat Ken Jennings’s Record
Which, if you’re putting the very thing that constitutes a spoiler in the fucking headline, maybe your little “spoiler alert” is a total waste of time, huh? Anyway, if you want to see a clip of the loss before getting to the rest of the episode, have at it. The Jeopardy! king is dead, long live the Jeopardy! king. He leaves behind $2,464,216 in winnings, the second-place earner in regular-play history.