way to go on that final jeopardy question Ken. at least now you have lifetime free H&R block. :WTF:
NEW YORK -- "Jeopardy" whiz Ken Jennings finally met his match after a 74-game run as a pop-culture icon who made brainiacs cool, beaten by a woman whose own 8-year-old daughter asked for his autograph when they first met.
As someone who always has prepared his own tax returns, Jennings was tripped up in Final Jeopardy by this answer: Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year.
Ken Jennings congratulates new champ, Nancy Zerg.
The correct reply: "What is H&R Block?" But Jennings guessed Federal Express, ending his remarkable run as the biggest winner in TV game show history with a haul of $2,520,700.
Having an accountant-friend who's nearly impossible to reach at tax time paid off big-time for his conqueror, California real estate agent Nancy Zerg, who ousted the baby-faced killer competitor in the episode that aired Tuesday.
During his streak that began June 2, Jennings usually had opponents so thoroughly beaten that the Final Jeopardy question was meaningless to the outcome. But Zerg was within striking range at that point, with $10,000 to Jennings' $14,400.
The champion had to think; out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Zerg had quickly written her reply.
"I was pretty sure before the music ended that was the ballgame," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Her correct reply gave Zerg $14,001 to Jennings' $8,799.
Even before that, she had needed an unusual display of Jennings fallibility to stay in the game. He twice answered wrong on Daily Double questions, which give contestants a chance to make big wagers and increase their leads.
Maybe that's why he paused, ever so slightly, when asked in the AP interview Tuesday whether he had lost or been beaten. He then graciously gave Zerg credit.
"I would have dwelt on it if I missed something that I knew or didn't phrase it in the form of a question," said Jennings, a computer software engineer from Salt Lake City. "It was a big relief to me that I lost to someone who played a better game than me."
Zerg, a former actress who lives in Ventura, Calif., told the AP that she psyched herself up before the game by repeating to herself: "Someone's got to beat him sometime, it might as well be me."
Hanging out backstage with fellow contestants, she saw some Jennings opponents had essentially lost before the game. She heard one person say that it looked like he was playing for second, and another just wishing not to be humiliated.
Ken Jennings is a smart -- and now very rich -- man.
"I heard another one say, 'It's no great sin to lose to Ken Jennings,' and they went in and lost to Ken Jennings," she said. "I thought, 'That's no way to play the game.' "
Some stats: Jennings' average daily haul was $34,063.51. He toyed with the previous daily record of $52,000 -- tying it four times -- before shattering it with a $75,000 win in Game 38. He gave more than 2,700 correct responses.
He combined an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, uncanny skill at sensing the precise instant to ring his buzzer, and a sharp competitive instinct hidden behind his grin and polite manner.
It made many of the games boring. But "Jeopardy!" executives aren't complaining; ratings were up 22 percent over the same period last year.
Jennings said he'd been thinking about walking away after some future milestone -- 100 wins, perhaps, or $3 million or $4 million in winnings. He said there were about a dozen games where one reply made the difference between winning and losing.
"The fact that they had all fallen my way was beginning to worry me," he said, "because at some point the law of averages was going to kick in."
He wasn't prepared for how much he'd miss the daily competition, though.
"It didn't really hit me that was going to be the hard part," he said. "I thought the hard part would be the loss."
The loss is actually a distant memory and not really a secret: The show was taped in early September and news leaked right away. Video clips of his loss appeared Monday on the Internet.
Neither Jennings nor Zerg expect the record will be broken.
"It's not because things fell the right way," she said. "It's because he's that good."
Jennings, a Mormon, will donate 10 percent of his winnings to his church -- and a European vacation is planned, "probably a really nice one." He'll hardly slip back into anonymity; he's visiting David Letterman and Regis Philbin this week, has a book deal and is open to any commercial sponsorship opportunities.
He's in a new tax bracket now, and H&R Block is making sure he'll always remember the company for other reasons: It has offered him free tax preparation for life.
NEW YORK -- "Jeopardy" whiz Ken Jennings finally met his match after a 74-game run as a pop-culture icon who made brainiacs cool, beaten by a woman whose own 8-year-old daughter asked for his autograph when they first met.
As someone who always has prepared his own tax returns, Jennings was tripped up in Final Jeopardy by this answer: Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year.
The correct reply: "What is H&R Block?" But Jennings guessed Federal Express, ending his remarkable run as the biggest winner in TV game show history with a haul of $2,520,700.
Having an accountant-friend who's nearly impossible to reach at tax time paid off big-time for his conqueror, California real estate agent Nancy Zerg, who ousted the baby-faced killer competitor in the episode that aired Tuesday.
During his streak that began June 2, Jennings usually had opponents so thoroughly beaten that the Final Jeopardy question was meaningless to the outcome. But Zerg was within striking range at that point, with $10,000 to Jennings' $14,400.
The champion had to think; out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Zerg had quickly written her reply.
"I was pretty sure before the music ended that was the ballgame," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Her correct reply gave Zerg $14,001 to Jennings' $8,799.
Even before that, she had needed an unusual display of Jennings fallibility to stay in the game. He twice answered wrong on Daily Double questions, which give contestants a chance to make big wagers and increase their leads.
Maybe that's why he paused, ever so slightly, when asked in the AP interview Tuesday whether he had lost or been beaten. He then graciously gave Zerg credit.
"I would have dwelt on it if I missed something that I knew or didn't phrase it in the form of a question," said Jennings, a computer software engineer from Salt Lake City. "It was a big relief to me that I lost to someone who played a better game than me."
Zerg, a former actress who lives in Ventura, Calif., told the AP that she psyched herself up before the game by repeating to herself: "Someone's got to beat him sometime, it might as well be me."
Hanging out backstage with fellow contestants, she saw some Jennings opponents had essentially lost before the game. She heard one person say that it looked like he was playing for second, and another just wishing not to be humiliated.
"I heard another one say, 'It's no great sin to lose to Ken Jennings,' and they went in and lost to Ken Jennings," she said. "I thought, 'That's no way to play the game.' "
Some stats: Jennings' average daily haul was $34,063.51. He toyed with the previous daily record of $52,000 -- tying it four times -- before shattering it with a $75,000 win in Game 38. He gave more than 2,700 correct responses.
He combined an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, uncanny skill at sensing the precise instant to ring his buzzer, and a sharp competitive instinct hidden behind his grin and polite manner.
It made many of the games boring. But "Jeopardy!" executives aren't complaining; ratings were up 22 percent over the same period last year.
Jennings said he'd been thinking about walking away after some future milestone -- 100 wins, perhaps, or $3 million or $4 million in winnings. He said there were about a dozen games where one reply made the difference between winning and losing.
"The fact that they had all fallen my way was beginning to worry me," he said, "because at some point the law of averages was going to kick in."
He wasn't prepared for how much he'd miss the daily competition, though.
"It didn't really hit me that was going to be the hard part," he said. "I thought the hard part would be the loss."
The loss is actually a distant memory and not really a secret: The show was taped in early September and news leaked right away. Video clips of his loss appeared Monday on the Internet.
Neither Jennings nor Zerg expect the record will be broken.
"It's not because things fell the right way," she said. "It's because he's that good."
Jennings, a Mormon, will donate 10 percent of his winnings to his church -- and a European vacation is planned, "probably a really nice one." He'll hardly slip back into anonymity; he's visiting David Letterman and Regis Philbin this week, has a book deal and is open to any commercial sponsorship opportunities.
He's in a new tax bracket now, and H&R Block is making sure he'll always remember the company for other reasons: It has offered him free tax preparation for life.
I was just reading comments on Ken Jennings on another site and couldn't believe the bonehead comments about his run being rigged. Came over to the RX for what I thought would be intelligent comments about Jennings and there seems to be more of the same. Amazing that people simply can't believe that Ken Jennings is a super-smart guy who was simply way better at the game than everyone he faced.
When they decided two years ago to stop capping winners at 5 wins, it was predictable that eventually someone would go on such a run. Does anyone remember Chuck Forrest? Or how about the NY cop Frank Spangleberg (sp)? These guys destroyed their opponents in similar fashion, but had to retire after 5 shows because of the limit.
But aside from being good at Jeopardy, Ken will be the first to admit that he was also very liucky to see his streak extend to 74 games. There were a few times he needed to pull a Final Jeopardy out of his ass to stay champ and he did. He got 51 out of 75 Final Jeopardy questions right during his run, so he was beatable on a number of shows, but generally it was difficult for anyone to stay even close to him.
And to those that think he was too smart to have missed the final question, Final Jeopardy is generally not a knowledge question, but rather one you need to figure out using logic and intellect. For example, who knows that HR Block has 70,000 seasonal workers? Or that most work 4 months of the year? Most do not know this......it's not the kind of stuff you retain in your head. But using reasonable logic, you can figure it out. The problem Ken had is that he most likley focused on Christmas, given the reference to "seasonal", in the clue, and failed to make the connection to tax time.
To suggest that his entire run was rigged like the scandal in the 50's defies logic. Why would King World risk their entire company on proping up a long term Champion when it was predictable that one would come along anyway given the new format?
When they decided two years ago to stop capping winners at 5 wins, it was predictable that eventually someone would go on such a run. Does anyone remember Chuck Forrest? Or how about the NY cop Frank Spangleberg (sp)? These guys destroyed their opponents in similar fashion, but had to retire after 5 shows because of the limit.
But aside from being good at Jeopardy, Ken will be the first to admit that he was also very liucky to see his streak extend to 74 games. There were a few times he needed to pull a Final Jeopardy out of his ass to stay champ and he did. He got 51 out of 75 Final Jeopardy questions right during his run, so he was beatable on a number of shows, but generally it was difficult for anyone to stay even close to him.
And to those that think he was too smart to have missed the final question, Final Jeopardy is generally not a knowledge question, but rather one you need to figure out using logic and intellect. For example, who knows that HR Block has 70,000 seasonal workers? Or that most work 4 months of the year? Most do not know this......it's not the kind of stuff you retain in your head. But using reasonable logic, you can figure it out. The problem Ken had is that he most likley focused on Christmas, given the reference to "seasonal", in the clue, and failed to make the connection to tax time.
To suggest that his entire run was rigged like the scandal in the 50's defies logic. Why would King World risk their entire company on proping up a long term Champion when it was predictable that one would come along anyway given the new format?
I would have to agree with simpleton. I am not sure who here is being serious and who is just kidding, but the extent of the conspiracy theories in this thread are incredible. If somebody succeeds, it must be because of corruption or cheating. What retards.
If you seriously believe that any part of the show was rigged, get help. And to even think that Jeopardy would possibly have him lose on porpuse, when their ratings with him on were through the roof, is assinine.
If you seriously believe that any part of the show was rigged, get help. And to even think that Jeopardy would possibly have him lose on porpuse, when their ratings with him on were through the roof, is assinine.
LOL @ the morons on this thread who think that just because they're dense, everyone else has to be.
"He got too much a that book learnin'! Sheeeee!"
I'll try and phrase this as simply as possible considering the target audience -
The Van Doren scandal in the 1950s led to a Federal Law being instituted that barred any televised game show from pre-arranging the outcome or feeding contestants answers. That means that any investigation leading to discovery of game show fraud leads to time in federal "time out" buildings. Like, you know, prison.
Aside from that, the insinuation that King World (Jeopardy's distributor) would risk a multi-billion dollar empire in order to boost ratings for one of their shows is retarded.
King World has four of the top ten syndicated shows on the air, including Wheel of Fortune. Any scandal would completely destroy the integrity of any KW product, erasing them from the dial. In terms you can understand, this would be similar to you laying -3000 to win $100 when you already have a million in the bank. It. Makes. No. Sense.
Jeopardy tapes multiple shows in a day, meaning that it's entirely possible that by the fourth or fifth show, Jennings could have been mentally fatigued enough to give an incorrect answer. What's more, just because you have knowledge of arcane material doesn't mean that you're incapable of missing what appears to be a simple question. I've watched Jeopardy hundreds of times and can recall several instances where a contestant buzzed in for a totally obscure topic and then missed something I figured "everyone" should know. You can't know everything.
I'm happy for Ken and happy that some people can admire an intellectual accomplishment in an age where most dopes can only appreciate some arrogant jerk athlete putting a ball through a hoop.
"He got too much a that book learnin'! Sheeeee!"
I'll try and phrase this as simply as possible considering the target audience -
The Van Doren scandal in the 1950s led to a Federal Law being instituted that barred any televised game show from pre-arranging the outcome or feeding contestants answers. That means that any investigation leading to discovery of game show fraud leads to time in federal "time out" buildings. Like, you know, prison.
Aside from that, the insinuation that King World (Jeopardy's distributor) would risk a multi-billion dollar empire in order to boost ratings for one of their shows is retarded.
King World has four of the top ten syndicated shows on the air, including Wheel of Fortune. Any scandal would completely destroy the integrity of any KW product, erasing them from the dial. In terms you can understand, this would be similar to you laying -3000 to win $100 when you already have a million in the bank. It. Makes. No. Sense.
Jeopardy tapes multiple shows in a day, meaning that it's entirely possible that by the fourth or fifth show, Jennings could have been mentally fatigued enough to give an incorrect answer. What's more, just because you have knowledge of arcane material doesn't mean that you're incapable of missing what appears to be a simple question. I've watched Jeopardy hundreds of times and can recall several instances where a contestant buzzed in for a totally obscure topic and then missed something I figured "everyone" should know. You can't know everything.
I'm happy for Ken and happy that some people can admire an intellectual accomplishment in an age where most dopes can only appreciate some arrogant jerk athlete putting a ball through a hoop.
