‘Jeopardy!’ Fans React to ‘Weirdest’ Runaway Game With 3 Strong Players

Carol Ritchey, Adriana Harmeyer, and Matthew Kahn on 'Jeopardy' June 3
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the June 3 episode of Jeopardy!]

It was a close game throughout most of the June 3 episode of Jeopardy!, though by the time Final Jeopardy came, it was a runaway for one of the players.

Adriana Harmeyer, an archivist from West Lafayette, Indiana, returned with a three-day total of $71,600 to face off against Carol Ritchey, a retired letter carrier from Eastpointe, Michigan, and Matthew Kahn, an IT docketing assistant from San Diego, California. And by the end of it, Harmeyer had added to her total and was a four-day winner. But it wasn’t easy.

The three competitors seemed evenly matched, with their scores throughout the Jeopardy! round close; Carol did lead at the first break and at the end of the round, but there was only a $400 then $2700 difference between her and the third place scores. Then, in the Double Jeopardy! round, it was an incorrect answer on the last Daily Double of the game by Ritchey—she lost $7,600 in the category “Bodies of Water” with the clue, “The Sinai Peninsula lies between 2 gulfs, the Gulf of Suez on the west & this one on the east”—that allowed for Harmeyer to end the round with a runaway going into Final Jeopardy: She had $22,600 to Kahn’s $6,000 and Ritchey’s $5,900.

No one was correct in Final Jeopardy!, with the clue in “Colleges” reading, “Of the Seven Sisters colleges, this one located in a place of the same name is the farthest south.” The answer was Bryn Mawr, and Kahn left off the second R. Harmeyer ended the game with $20,200, giving her a four-day total of $91,800.

As one fan noted on the Reddit thread for this episode, “One of the weirdest runaway games I’ve seen in recent memory, given the perfect first round and the mostly evenly matched gameplay between Adriana and Carol, but congrats to Adriana for taking advantage of the situation and turning it into a hard-earned fourth win.”

Quite a few also noted that the game was played entirely top-down, and the person who put together the Reddit thread wrote, “Perhaps [that] assisted the contestants in having no Triple Stumpers in round one.” And while strategically it’s not the best move, “as a viewer, it’s my preference as well,” commented one viewer.

For more than one fan, this was a game with “three strong players,” with one writing, “It’s crazy how this game turned around in double jeopardy.” And in reply, another commented, “Matt was really strong in the beginning. Then Carol turned it on. Adriana was quiet for first part of the game. All three were really strong at different times.”

What did you think of the game? Let us know in the comments section, below.

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