Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and the antepenultimate day of 2021! Here’s today’s Final Jeopardy (in the category The 20th Century) for Wednesday, December 29, 2021 (Season 38, Game 78):
In the morning of April 15, 1912 officer Charles Lightoller became the last of about 700 people to board this ship
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Today’s contestants:
Joanna Wu, a program manager from Boston, Massachusetts
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Ben Walthall, a video game marketer from Brooklyn, New York
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Amy Schneider, an engineering manager from Oakland, California (20-day total: $768,600)
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Andy’s Pregame Thoughts: Yesterday, Amy Schneider won her 20th consecutive game, tying Julia Collins’ win streak from 2014. if Amy wins today, she’ll have won more regular season Jeopardy! games than any other woman in the history of the show. A win today should also put her #5 all time in terms of total money won on the show, passing David Madden, with only the four millionaires—Brad Rutter, Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer, and Matt Amodio—ahead on the table.
I don’t normally talk about categories in the upcoming game in my pregame thoughts, but I look at the J!6 categores every morning before I publish, and there are a couple that I’m looking forward to. Considering the transphobia that is ramping up online, especially as the more bigoted wings of the media are catching wind of Amy’s streak, I’m very much looking forward to the “I Am Woman” category. There’s also the “Speak Like a French Canadian” category which will sadly (but likely) avoid the colorful French Canadian profanity. (For the uninitiated, profanity in Quebec is generally related to Catholicism and the liturgy.)
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(Content continues below)
Correct response: What is the RMS Carpathia?
More information about Final Jeopardy: (The following write-up is original content and is copyright 2021 The Jeopardy! Fan. It may not be copied without linked attribution back to this page.)
When the Titanic sank in the early morning of April 15, 1912, the Carpathia was the ship that rescued most of the survivors from the Titanic‘s life boats. Lightoller was the Titanic‘s second officer, and directed the loading of passengers onto lifeboats on the ship’s port side after the Titanic struck the iceberg and began sinking. Lightoller was the most senior crew member to survive the sinking, and thus became a key witness in the eventual inquiries that took place on both sides of the Atlantic. (The key to this clue is knowing that the Titanic left port a few days before April 15, and that it actually sank on the 15th itself.)
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Looking to find out who won Jeopardy! today? Tonight’s results are below!
Scores going into Final:
Amy $22,400
Ben $2,800
Joanna $2,600
Tonight’s results:
Joanna $2,600 + $2,500 = $5,100 (What is the Carpathia?)
Ben $2,800 – $2,399 = $401 (What is the Lusitania?)
Amy $22,400 + $15,000 = $37,400 (What is the Carpathia?) (21-day total: $806,000)
Scores after the Jeopardy! Round:
Amy $11,600
Joanna $1,600
Ben $400
Opening break taken after: 15 clues
Daily Double locations:
1) A PREFIX MENU $800 (clue #19)
Amy 5000 +3000 (Ben 1200 Joanna 1000)
2) I AM WOMAN $1600 (clue #5)
Joanna 2800 -1000 (Amy 12800 Ben 2000)
3) SCIENCE $1200 (clue #8, $24000 left on board)
Ben 3600 -3600 (Amy 12800 Joanna 200)
Overall Daily Double Efficiency for this game: -76
Unplayed clues:
J! Round: None!
DJ! Round: None!
Total Left On Board: $0
Number of clues left unrevealed this season: 11 (0.14 per episode average), 0 Daily Doubles
Game Stats:
Amy $20,200 Coryat, 28 correct, 3 incorrect, 47.37% in first on buzzer (27/57), 3/3 on rebound attempts (on 5 rebound opportunities)
Joanna $3,600 Coryat, 11 correct, 4 incorrect, 22.81% in first on buzzer (13/57), 1/1 on rebound attempts (on 5 rebound opportunities)
Ben $6,400 Coryat, 9 correct, 5 incorrect, 19.30% in first on buzzer (11/57), 0/2 on rebound attempts (on 6 rebound opportunities)
Combined Coryat Score: $30,200
Lach Trash: $12,200 (on 10 Triple Stumpers)
Coryat lost to incorrect responses (less double-correct responses): $11,600
Amy Schneider, career statistics:
664 correct, 39 incorrect
36/40 on rebound attempts (on 80 rebound opportunities)
50.46% in first on buzzer (602/1193)
34/40 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $104,600)
18/21 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $25,333
Ben Walthall, career statistics:
9 correct, 6 incorrect
0/2 on rebound attempts (on 6 rebound opportunities)
19.30% in first on buzzer (11/57)
0/1 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: -$3,600)
0/1 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $6,400
Joanna Wu, career statistics:
12 correct, 4 incorrect
1/1 on rebound attempts (on 5 rebound opportunities)
22.81% in first on buzzer (13/57)
0/1 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: -$1,000)
1/1 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $3,600
Amy Schneider, to win:
22 games: 91.501%
23: 83.725%
24: 76.609%
25: 70.099%
26: 64.141%
Avg. streak: 31.767 games.
Today’s interviews:
Joanna named her son Leo after a Jeopardy! category.
Ben lost a bet with roommates had had to run a half-marathon.
Amy originally wanted to be a civil engineer.
Andy’s Thoughts:
- Amy becomes only the 4th person to win 21 or more regular-season games on the show, surpassing Julia Collins for the longest win streak by a woman.
- Amy moves to #5 all-time in terms of winnings on the show, including tournaments, passing David Madden.
Contestant photo credit: jeopardy.com
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The last time Carpathia was the final jeopardy answer, it was a triple stumper. I am guessing not so today.
It was also a final jeopardy answer at least one time before the triple stumper. All three contestants got it that time. Both final questions were not worded the same as today’s final.
The last time carpathia was the final jeopardy answer was during Jason’s sixth game in 2019. Glad Amy and Joanna got this one. Although the daily doubles didn’t work out for the opponents, the titanic sinking has been in the minds of everyone since there was a movie on that as well. Happy for amy winning game 21
Your coverage seems a bit, err, slanted today, Andy. 😉
Historic win on multiple counts! Big congrats to Amy. It’s not the same by any means, but whenever someone from a marginalized group succeeds in a field generally reserved for white guys (of which I am one), I’m reminded of Jackie Robinson, the abuse he took, and how much better he had to be than his white peers to get recognition. It takes courage just to appear on Jeopardy (with its admittedly reactionary audience) as a trans person, let alone to pile up with after win and shrug off the inevitable online abuse with such grace. Amy is truly a remarkable human.
Speaking of shows with toxic fanbases, I would kill to see Matt Amodio on The Bachelor, aww-shucks-ing his way into the hearts of America. They’d have to ditch a lot of the artifice and superficiality, though.
Amy has the benefit of having done the shows months in advance allowing her only to focus on the show and not any online bullying. Now I’m dying to see a Matt, Jonathan, and Amy ToC finals. That would be amazing.
Great point, Diana. I’m an Andrew He truther myself. Would love to see him face off against Amy again.
I see the point of the boarding of the Titanic being a few days before the sinking, but with several tragedies having occurred in the “teens” of April, it would be easy to forget exactly what day the sinking was. So I see the key to this clue being the “700 people” since the number of passengers and crew of the Titanic was over 1,000. So if one is able to recognize that April 1912 (and “boarding”) probably means it has to do with Titanic, they probably know there were over 1,000 people on board even if they don’t remember exactly how many.
whew I always worry about starting a new losing streak the next day after I get FJ wrong, but I remembered the Carpathia right away.
Amy seemed a tad hesitant today… not as sharp on the buzzer, a few wrong answers, missed extending her winnings in FJ. I hope she’ll get back on track tomorrow.
This also got a little press after the Movie Dunkirk. Lightoller was living in England at the time of Dunkirk and took his private motor yacht over to the beach and Dunkirk and safely evacuated a number of British Soldiers. By all accounts, he was a brave and gallant sailor.
Categorizing winners into male and female gender categories is outdated. We don’t look at player success by geography, age, educational background, height, weight, etc. Then why gender? All players should be ranked equally on their performance statistics . I propose gender be eliminated as a means of separating players, and all players be evaluated and ranked on performance.
Thank you for all the work you do on the sensational site.
Larry:
It’s a lot more complicated than you make it out to be, and people within the Jeopardy! community even have disagreed in the past on what to do.
In this specific case, I think that making that distinction is important, especially considering that there are still major representation issues in quizzing in general.
I think Larry’s point is valid and eloquently stated. But it’s hard not to look at the inequity among Jeopardy winners and ask why so many are white men. In my opinion, the show should continue to focus on getting a diverse slate of candidates, if only because kids are watching, and it’s important for them to see people who look like them competing on Jeopardy.
Here’s the thing:
The first female contestant to win 7 games was disappointed that Jeopardy didn’t make a note of that when she won her 7th game.
So, in response to this, a few years later, the show did make a note of this when Julia Collins went on her run — and Julia wasn’t as appreciative of the distinction. (She gave talks about it, I’m not sure if any are still online).
So, in my opinion, it’s a matter on which reasonable people disagree.
Again, in this case, I have my reasons for choosing to make this distinction.
(I also don’t think that further discussion on this is going to be particularly productive.)
Interesting, Andy, thanks for sharing.
I tend to agree that this is a topic ripe for hijacking by misogynists. Appreciate the response, though.
Since Ben didnt answer the clue about the governor of his own state, I’m going to assume he was nervous. Although to be fair, I think a lot of people in NYC don’t have much consciousness of being residents of New York state.
And that’s what got Ed Koch into trouble in the 1982 Democratic Primary for Governor, when he lost to Mario Cuomo, after he stated that anything above NYC is farmland.
As a retired Civil/Structural engineer, I feel the need to respond to Amy’s description of a Civil Engineer’s job. She stated that Civil engineers are those in construction trailers wearing hard hats. In fact, Civil engineers design the facilities that get built. Most of them work in office settings, not in trailers wearing hard hats. There are some Civil engineers who work on construction sites, but most of the staff in construction trailers are managing the construction project and are not Civil engineers.