‘Jeopardy!’ Visually Impaired Contestant Shares How Crew Was ‘Helpful’ To Him

Darian Lusk October 9, 2024, 12:10 pm

Jeopardy! contestant Andrew Miller came in third place on Tuesday, October 8’s episode, but he held his own and personally triumphed over a serious visual impairment.

The auto claims adjuster from Bristol, Connecticut, faced off against returning champ Mark Fitzpatrick and Gino Montoya. Andrew finished with $4,183 — a respectable score given he was caught between two buzzsaws in Mark, who entered Final Jeopardy with $21,200, and Gino with $17,400 (the former winning his third game for $58,000 total).

Most viewers were unaware of Andrew’s diagnosis as he didn’t share it with Ken Jennings during the show, but he opened up about it, and how accommodating the quiz show was, in the Reddit thread for his episode.

“Andrew here!” he began. “Haven’t watched yet but just want to say this was the best experience of my life. The crew on set was amazing; I’m visually impaired and they made helpful accommodations to the gameplay and were chill about me knocking stuff with my cane all day.”

He also took the loss in stride, adding: “These were definitely not my categories which made it easy to cope with the L knowing my opponents had played so well on such a challenging board. GG boys!”

While Andrew didn’t detail exactly what tweaks producers made for his taping, fans and fellow players praised him in the replies, one writing: “You did great out there!” Opponent Gino buzzed in to say: “Hello Andrew. Great game all around and I’m really glad to have been up there with you and Mark! I hope you’re well and enjoying fatherhood!”

Andrew has X-linked Retinitis Pigmentosa (XLRP), an incurable genetic disease that eventually causes blindness in men, affecting one in 15,000.

According to Beacon Therapeutics, XLRP: “Starts with night blindness in early adolescence and gradually worsens, leading to a narrowing of the peripheral field of vision. Most patients eventually become legally blind in their 40s.”

Andrew is quite active in the R/RetinitisPigmentosa Reddit community, earlier describing being diagnosed when he was 13, getting corrective surgery three years ago, and offering advise to others.

“I was diagnosed at 13 and had mild symptoms like some night blindness and some peripheral vision loss but nothing crazy and nothing that stopped me from driving or doing most things normally until I was around 25,” he wrote in a previous post.

“That’s when ‘suddenly’ I couldn’t drive at night anymore, started noticing I was tripping a lot more, missing handshakes, couldn’t catch a ball, bumping people more, etc… That’s when things finally started feeling real and I realized I couldn’t just ignore the diagnosis forever.”

He also shared his corrective surgery: “Already improved my vision from how it was before. I still won’t be ‘cured’ but I’m definitely seeing significantly clearer in all lighting conditions and not having as much of an issue with light sensitivity and adaptation. I wasn’t blind though so yeah restoring completely lost vision is gonna be a bigger challenge. Hopefully at least with this gene therapy future generations can get it before they ever lose that much vision in the first place.”

In a third post, he shared his day-to-day advice: “I may be impaired but I can still do pretty much everything I’ve always done just with some assistance from time to time. Just be honest when you need help, be open about what you can/can’t see, and don’t try to do things you can’t do safely.

“Move to a place where you don’t need to rely on a car (or find a partner who can drive you around) and try to find a job where you can work remote permanently.”

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Jeopardy! has been great about accommodating players in other ways, no questions asked, in recent months. Four-day champ and upcoming ToC contestant Grant DeYoung competed sitting in a chair given he had back arthritis.

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