CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA: 'Jeopardy!' season 39 is coming to a close as it moves into its final week. The viewers are on the edge of their seats to see if a contestant is set to make it big on the game show and the current champ Taylor Clagett seems like a potential candidate just for that!
Clagett managed to retain his title as the 'Jeopardy!' champ for another day with a big win on the show. He previously dethroned one-day champ Nik Berry and was successful in defeating Simona Fine, a grad student from New York and Ian Foutz, a teacher from Camarillo, California.
How did Taylor Clagett become 'Jeopardy!' champ?
Clagett proved his trivia expertise by again triumphing over the Final Jeopardy round while also leading throughout the episode. The champ stumbled initially as his score started from a negative because of some wrong answers. But he was quick to pick it back up in the first round and even doubled his score after landing on a Daily Double clue. Clagett was able to extend the gap between his and his fellow contestants' score by many thousands. He moved into Final Jeopardy with an impressive score of $17,500, while FIne and Foutz were still on four-digit figures.
The Final Jeopardy clue for this episode was from the 'African Geography' category. Host Ken Jennings read out the clue, "The only country in Africa with Spanish as an official language, it lies mostly between 1 & 2 degrees north latitude." Both Fine and Foutz failed at correctly guessing the clue, while Clagett was the only one to pen down 'Equatorial Guinea'. He wagered $3,500 for the final round, making his winnings for the day add up to $21,000.
Ken Jennings expresses concern over short-lived champs
At the beginning of the episode, host Jennings expressed concern over the fact that 'Jeopardy!' has not seen an extended run of any champ in a while. "You know over the last few weeks we've had a series of one and two-game winners," he said after joining the Alex Trebek stage, adding, "But no one has been able to string together a nice long run."
While Clagett seems like a potential big winner, the previous promising champs have lost out on the title because the luck just wasn't on their side. Jennings continued, "Let's see if our new champ Taylor Claggett can do just that or one of our challengers Simona or Ian. Which of these three will be Jeopardy champion at the end of the game and hey who knows maybe even at the end of the week?"
