‘Jeopardy!’: 6 Things to Know About Champ Stephen Webb as Regular Show Returns
After the excitement of the High School Reunion Tournament, hosted by Mayim Bialik, regular Jeopardy! is back today, Friday, March 10. Ken Jennings is the host, as he will be through April 28, when Mayim takes over again for the remainder of the season until summer recess.
The return of regular Jeopardy! means that fans will be seeing reigning champion Stephen Webb for the first time on the show since February 17. His first challengers are Jannette Peterson, a graduate student originally from Minneapolis, and Nick Lauber, an attorney from Sherman Oaks, California. How will Stephen do against them? To get you back in the groove ahead of the show, here are 6 Things to Know about reigning champ Stephen:
1. He’s Made an Impressive Start to His Time on ‘Jeopardy!’
The Longmont, Colorado, data scientist has already won three games and amassed a whopping $80,631. He needs to get to five wins to be guaranteed a place in this year’s Tournament of Champions. “We’re looking forward to seeing if Stephen’s streak can continue,” said show producer Sarah Foss on the podcast Inside Jeopardy!
2. Stephen Has Watched the Show Pretty Much All His Life
According to the Longmont Leader news-site, the 38-year-old has been a fan of the show for 25 years “but he never imagined that he would be on the other side of the television.” Stephen took an Anytime Test – the official Jeopardy! qualifier exam – in spring 2020 after his wife urged him to give it a go. “My wife and I started watching Jeopardy! every night and, you know, she kind of noticed that I knew all the answers,” says Stephen. So he took the test, went through rounds of interviews and Zoom meetings before he finally got to appear on the show three years later.
3. His Last ‘Jeopardy!’ Appearance Produced a Big Fail
Stephen’s last appearance on the show on February 17 set tongues wagging among the always opinionated Jeopardy! community when he missed what many viewers thought was an easy Final Jeopardy. The selected category was “National Parks” and the clue was: “It’s named for a river indigenous people call MI TSE A-DA-ZI, translated by French-speaking trappers as ‘Pierre Jaune.'” Stephen failed to guess “Yellowstone,” leaving a somewhat bemused Ken Jennings to point out, “That’s literally what ‘Pierre Jaune’ means in French.” Commenters on reddit were quick to chime in about the fail with one describing it as “embarrassing” and declaring the question was “the easiest fj ever.”
4. What He Found Hardest About Competing on Show
‘Winning a game of Jeopardy! is frankly quite hard,” he told the Denver Gazette. “Every single person who gets to the stage of Jeopardy! has the knowledge to win a game.” But he admitted one thing was hardest above all: “The buzzer,” he said. “There is such a timing element to when the host finishes asking the question to when the light goes on to indicate time to answer. When you see players struggle sometimes, it’s not because they don’t know the answer – it’s the timing. If you lose that, you have to get it back. And you have to do it on live TV while opponents continue to answer questions. The buzzer is the hardest and it’s the hardest to study for, too.”
5. How He Is Coping Being on TV
Stephen set up a Facebook page for family and friends to follow him on Jeopardy! and he told them after he first appeared on the show that he was sworn to secrecy as to how he did. He has noticed how the sweaters he has worn on the show have been getting comments on social media and some fans have picked up on his puzzled looks and the “umm” sounds he makes when thinking of a Final Jeopardy answer. “So far no one has recognized me ‘in the wild’,” he said. “Like some random stranger in the grocery store saying they saw me on television.”
6. He Has Plans on How to Spend His Winnings
Webb, who has a PhD in physics, and works for a finance technologies company called Emburse, says he plans to travel and fix up his house with his Jeopardy! winnings. “I’m not going to lie, the money is not bad, but I’d do it all again for no pay,” he told the Denver Express. “You get to meet smart people from all over the country who have a shared passion for Jeopardy! Everyone’s got a great sense of humor.”
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