‘Jeopardy!’: 6 Things to Know About Victoria Groce

Martin Holmes April 5, 2024, 10:20 am

Victoria Groce played spoiler on Thursday night’s (April 4) Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament as she eliminated fan favorite Sam Buttrey and the formidable Matt Jackson to secure her spot in the JIT finals.

She now has a chance to cement herself in the Jeopardy! history books when she takes on 2022 Tournament of Champions winner Amy Schneider and TOC runner-up Andrew He. The first to two wins will be crowned JIT champion and earn a spot in Jeopardy! Masters.

A one-day Jeopardy! champion back in 2005, Groce is best remembered for ending the 19-game streak of super-champ David Madden. Still, her inclusion in the JIT after an almost 20-year layoff came as a surprise to many.

So, who exactly is Groce? And why was she picked to return to the Alex Trebek Stage? Here are six things you should know about the JIT finalist.

She Grew Up in Georgia

Groce was raised in Decatur, Georgia, where she performed as a musician for many years. However, during her time in Georgia, she also developed a thirst for academic competition. She participated in the Academic Bowl, Mathcounts, and Odyssey of the Mind while going on to study comparative literature at the University of Georgia.

She Is a World Renowned Quizzer

Groce has been a regular in the international quizzing community since the mid-2010s, competing in various events around the world. She is one of three Americans to make the podium at the World Quizzing Championship, finishing third in 2020. And she’s one of the two people to have finished in the Top 10 of the LearnedLeague Championship in recent years.

In addition, she was part of the winning American team for the 2021–2022 Quizzing World Cup and won the trophy for World Quizzer at the World Quiz Awards in 2021.

“I grew up intending to be a concert pianist, so the idea of being in performance, sitting in front of people is a very natural one for me,” she told TribLive. “It’s much less nerve-wracking than I expected it to be.”

She Joined ‘The Chase’ in 2022

Despite her brief stint on Jeopardy! in 2005, Groce continued to show off her quizzing prowess in competitions all over the globe. In 2022, her reputation eventually landed her a spot as one of the Chasers on ABC’s The Chase, alongside fellow Jeopardy! alum James Holzhauer, Brad Rutter, Brandon Blackwell, and Buzzy Cohen.

Nicknamed “The Queen,” Groce faces off against teams of contestants to try and stop them from winning big money prizes.

She Has a Husband and Daughter

These days, Groce lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Phil, their teenage daughter, and their two cats.

As she told TribLive, she took a break from quizzing after her first Jeopardy! appearance to raise her family before returning to the field about a decade ago.

She Suffers From Chronic Migraine

In a 2022 interview with the What It Takes to Know Everything podcast, Groce revealed that after she had her daughter at 23, “I actually spent most of my twenties really quite ill.”

She went on to reveal she suffers from “chronic migraine,” which she said “varied from being an annoyance to being pretty debilitating through most of my adult life.”

As she explained, this condition changed her career path. “I initially intended to become a genetic counselor… I wanted to do vaccine development for emerging viral diseases. But in 2015, my migraine prophylaxis basically completely failed. I had days where I had to take sick days off work because I couldn’t manage the 15-minute walk from the parking to my office.”

“I had started dipping my toes back into trivia a couple years prior to that,” she added. |I had time and I had space and I had not a lot of ability to do much of anything else. So, I gradually started just doing more and more.”

Her Key To Success Is Flashcards

When talking about how she preps for quizzes, Groce revealed she has around 160,000 flashcards containing various facts and information.

“I am very vigilant about not adding information that I already know,” she said. “So, if I add something, it’s something that I’ve deemed worth learning. And something that I hope I don’t already have… When you go from the process of make a flashcard, to learn a flashcard, you’re basically doing all three pieces of the process of building a memory.”

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