Warning: This page contains spoilers for the November 9, 2022, game of Jeopardy! — please do not scroll down if you wish to avoid being spoiled. Please note that the game airs as early as noon Eastern in some U.S. television markets.
Here’s today’s Final Jeopardy (in the category Contemporary Authors) for Wednesday, November 9, 2022 (Season 39, Game 43):
A trip to El Paso with his young son & wondering what the city might look like years into the future inspired a novel by this author
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Today’s Jeopardy! contestants:
Tyler Rhode, a director at a start-up from New York, New York
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Maureen O’Neil, an executive assistant from Cambridge, Massachusetts
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Amy Schneider, a writer from Oakland, California
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Andy’s Pregame Thoughts:
There are now 9 contestants in the running to win the 30th Tournament of Champions. By the end of today, we will be down to 7. The first semifinal is between Amy Schneider, Maureen O’Neil, and Tyler Rhode. The matchup definitely worked in Amy’s favor—but I must reiterate, these matchups do appear to have been done by seeding; today’s match was 1–6–9, Thursday’s was 2–7–8, and Friday’s was 3–4–5. It’s also a matchup algorithm I personally agree with. This is also the tournament’s first match where the prediction model has given a player more than a 50% chance of winning. I think that in spite of Amy’s having mentioned that she hasn’t prepared for the tournament as much as she would like, she will pull through and pick a victory today.
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(Content continues below)
Correct response: Who is Cormac McCarthy?
More information about Final Jeopardy:
(The following write-up is original content and is copyright 2022 The Jeopardy! Fan. It may not be copied without linked attribution back to this page.)
Cormac McCarthy was inspired to write his post-apocalyptic novel The Road after a 2003 visit to El Paso, Texas, with his young son, picturing “fires on the hill” after a mass extinction event. The book won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; the El Paso visit inspiration story came from McCarthy’s 2007 interview with Oprah Winfrey after the book was selected for Oprah’s Book Club.
We have many new offerings at The Jeopardy! Fan Online Store! Proceeds from the sale of the “Doctor Oz’s Fast-Acting Snake Oil Elixir” T-shirt are being donated to The Trevor Project:
Game Recap:
Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: Supreme Court Cases; Shakespeare Just Kills Me; Chess For Champs; Travel; I’m “En” It!; Stanford Athletics)
The first 15 clues belonged to Amy and Tyler; Tyler jumped out to a lead, but Amy bounced back to take a lead after 15 clues—which wasn’t helped by Tyler having a response overruled by the judges. Coming out of the break. Amy picked up 9 correct, including the Daily Double, to have three times Tyler’s score. Maureen got in on the buzzer once.
Statistics at the first break (15 clues):
Amy 7 correct 1 incorrect
Tyler 6 correct 1 incorrect
Maureen 0 correct 0 incorrect
Statistics after the Jeopardy round:
Amy 16 correct 1 incorrect
Tyler 10 correct 2 incorrect
Maureen 1 correct 0 incorrect
Double Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: River Run; Geology; 3-Named People; International Film Style; Frontier Folk; Onomatopoeia)
Double Jeopardy! saw a lengthy search for the Daily Doubles as Maureen and Amy finally got to them on clues 24 and 27! That was enough to cement Amy’s runaway in this game. Going into Final, the scores were Amy at $19,600, Tyler at $7,000, and Maureen at $600.
Statistics after Double Jeopardy:
Amy 26 correct 4 incorrect
Tyler 17 correct 4 incorrect
Maureen 3 correct 1 incorrect
Total number of unplayed clues this season: 12 (0 today).
Amy and Tyler got Final correct—Amy’s now a finalist!
Tonight’s Game Stats:
Looking to find out who won Jeopardy! today? Here’s the Wednesday, November 9, 2022 Jeopardy! by the numbers:
Scores going into Final:
Amy $19,600
Tyler $7,000
Maureen $600
Tonight’s results:
Maureen $600 – $0 = $600 ($10,000) (Who is ?)
Tyler $7,000 + $0 = $7,000 ($10,000) (Who is Cormac McCarthy?)
Amy $19,600 + $64 = $19,664 (Who is Cormac McCarthy?) (Finalist)
Scores after the Jeopardy! Round:
Amy $12,600
Tyler $4,200
Maureen $400
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Opening break taken after: 15 clues
Daily Double locations:
1) SUPREME COURT CASES $400 (clue #22)
Amy 7200 +4000 (Maureen 0 Tyler 4000)
2) RIVER RUN $800 (clue #24)
Maureen 3600 -3000 (Amy 17400 Tyler 5800)
3) FRONTIER FOLK $800 (clue #27, $1200 left on board)
Amy 18200 +1000 (Maureen 600 Tyler 6200)
Overall Daily Double Efficiency for this game: -22
Unplayed clues:
J! Round: None!
DJ! Round: None!
Total Left On Board: $0
Number of clues left unrevealed this season: 12 (0.28 per episode average), 0 Daily Doubles
Game Stats:
Amy $15,800 Coryat, 26 correct, 4 incorrect, 43.86% in first on buzzer (25/57), 1/3 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
Tyler $7,000 Coryat, 17 correct, 4 incorrect, 35.09% in first on buzzer (20/57), 1/1 on rebound attempts (on 2 rebound opportunities)
Maureen $3,600 Coryat, 3 correct, 1 incorrect, 5.26% in first on buzzer (3/57), 0/0 on rebound attempts (on 6 rebound opportunities)
Combined Coryat Score: $26,400
Lach Trash: $16,800 (on 13 Triple Stumpers)
Coryat lost to incorrect responses (less double-correct responses): $10,800
Amy Schneider, career statistics:
1379 correct, 87 incorrect
64/78 on rebound attempts (on 167 rebound opportunities)
51.90% in first on buzzer (1267/2441)
68/78 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $215,200)
29/43 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $26,233
Maureen O’Neil, career statistics:
91 correct, 18 incorrect
10/14 on rebound attempts (on 38 rebound opportunities)
22.72% in first on buzzer (87/383)
1/2 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: -$1,000)
4/6 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $6,800
Tyler Rhode, career statistics:
168 correct, 20 incorrect
12/13 on rebound attempts (on 28 rebound opportunities)
36.04% in first on buzzer (164/455)
3/3 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $11,000)
5/8 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $14,475
Remaining Players’ Tournament of Champions Chances (after 100,000 Simulations)
Amy Schneider: 34.280%
Matt Amodio: 20.642%
John Focht: 7.648%
Sam Buttrey: 6.067%
Mattea Roach: 7.071%
Eric Ahasic: 12.464%
Andrew He: 11.828%
Today’s interviews:
Tyler was banned from a Sixers podcast for not naming it.
Maureen moved from New Hampshire to Massachusetts.
Amy got her check the day she lost.
Andy’s Thoughts:
- As there’s some confusion (still?) on this point: The final will be between 3 and 7 games; regular play resumes at some point between November 17–23.
- Today’s box score: November 9, 2022 Box Score.
Final Jeopardy! wagering suggestions:
(Scores: Amy $19,600 Tyler $7,000 Maureen $600)
Amy: Bet no more than $4,599 and enjoy your win! (Actual bet: $64)
Maureen: Bet whatever you like. (Actual bet: $0)
Tyler: Bet between $0 and $5,799 and enjoy second place. (Actual bet: $0)
Contestant photo credit: jeopardy.com
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Nope. I guessed Orwell (thinking of an author who was writing about the future).
Yes, the definition of “contemporary” will vary from person to person … alive, dead for X years …
I kind of remember the film with Viggo Mortensen (from promos only, I never saw it), but I knew nothing about the book it was based on :/
Current FJ streak: 2L
Went to Orwell immediately. Oops!
Just out of curiosity, did the prediction model take into account Amy’s buzzer performance from yesterday’s game in that ~55% chance of her winning today’s match?
The prediction model has so much data on Amy at this point; it was taken into account, but it had a very minute influence.
I wonder what others think about Jeopardy! raising the level of difficulty for FJ (and all categories in general) when in the later stages of a tournament.
I feel this is problematic. As the level of difficulty rises, the odds that a contestant knows the answer because they have a general knowledge of information lessens, and the odds that a contestant just randomly knows a piece of information, whether because of complete randomness or because of circumstance (i.e. if a contestant today would be from El Paso) significantly rises.
For the Single and Double Jeopardy rounds, this isn’t as big of a concern as the overall number of questions will negate a single question’s effect on the outcome (aside from possible consequences of DDs, however, they can’t be answered by anyone but the choosing player anyways). But for FJ, this could cause the entire game to be won or lost on circumstance rather than the randomness of broad knowledge.
How else are you otherwise supposed to differentiate between the best of the best?
I couldn’t agree more. This would be true in any season, but this season in particular, when the level of skill and performance have been stratospheric, how else would you have it play out?
Make it super hard, hand them all buzzers, and let the players find their natural levels.
I was wondering why Tyler lost 2000 on the judges ruling on the mispronounced answer. None of the answers are worth 2000 in Jeopardy.
To go from a correct response (+1000) to an incorrect one (-1000) you lose 2000.
Kinda shrug, FJ is always like that. It’s part of the game. Besides, this (originally) El Pasoan did not get to this in time. (“It’s the guy who wrote No Country! Your parents gave your husband a Spanish language copy of Meridiano de sangre! WTF is his NAAAAAAME???”) After time, yes. But not in time.
Glad this wasn’t my game!
Honestly felt the material in this game (including the final) was no more difficult than the quarterfinal games on average. Maybe even a bit easier.
not really any different than FJ regular season many times.
for instance how Mattea lost because FJ was about the Atlanta airport, and one of the challengers that day was FROM the Atlanta metro area
Looking forward to watching this game tonight after last night’s exhibition game was preempted by election coverage. Based on these stats, it looks like Amy is still in good form!
I just got an email from J! saying that the exhibition match has been posted to their YouTube channel, at:
It was enjoyable, and while it looked like Amy and Matt may not have taken it as seriously as Mattea appeared to, from what I read above about Amy’s performance on today’s show she was still able to bring her ‘A’ game when it mattered.
Thanks.
I can[t recall the name of the book but the character mccarthy seems to be familiar to me. Amy still had dominated this game and tyler did the same thing. A good game today by the semifinalists. I still think Amy has a good shot at taking the 250K
The book in question had no character names — just like “the man” and “the boy” — McCarthy was the author, which was the desired response to the clue. Maybe you were thinking of Dwight McCarthy (one of the principal characters in Frank Miller’s neo noir Sin City writings, which was not futuristic but more “timeless” and maybe a little bit apocalyptic).
I see that they are letting Amy finally show off her tattoo!! I am glad that she won today’s game.
I had thought maybe John Crichton because of Westworld or Philip K. Dick because of Blade Runner. I know a bit about Cormac McCarthy since he was raised kind of “in my neck of the woods”, but I never would have put 2 and 2 together from the clue and what I had known of his books (and, honestly, I find his name hard to remember).
I kept thinking Cormac McCarthy… McCarthy… Why does that name ring a bell? Then I remembered this guy, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/318238.Cormac_Mac_Art, a less known creation of Robert E. Howard’s.
I was heavily into pulp fiction when I was younger😉
Cormac McCarthy had changed his first name from Charles for his writing career (so he would not be confused with the ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy), so I’d wondered if maybe he picked the name Cormac from Howard’s earlier work, but he was Irish and being called Cormac appears to just come from that.
Problem in Albany, NY was that WTEN failed to mention that Jeopardy was being moved to WXXA due to WTEN showing a Red Carpet Show for the CMA Awards. In other circumstances, WTEN would announce the move in a crawl on the bottom of the screen, which didn’t happen here.
It’s such a pleasure to watch Amy play. It really wouldn’t have felt like the finals without her.
Your turn, Matt.
This was a very disappointing semifinals, matchup-wise.
But that’s appropriate for any tournament. You never have the top seeds meet until the very end, most often in the finals.
If Andy is correct about the seedings, it would not be a balanced algorithm:
1 + 6 + 9 = 16
2 + 7 + 8 = 17
3 + 4 + 5 = 12
That means the average quality of the players is notably higher in the third semi-final than in the first two. A more balanced (and fairer) seeding arrangement would be:
1 + 5 + 9 = 15
2 + 6 + 7 = 15
3 + 4 + 8 = 15
I think that Jeopardy! would be worse if it implemented your suggestion. I believe that “balanced” matters much more in 2-player games than it does 3-player games.
If I am the #5 player in this arrangement, I would MUCH rather prove myself by playing against 3 and 4 than having to play against the #1 seed.
It may look “fairer” at first glance, but I think that makes for a much better tournament overall to pair 1-6-9, 2-7-8, 3-4-5.
1 and 2 have already likely proven themselves. Let 3 through 5 battle it out against each other to earn that last spot.
As Andy said, “the El Paso visit inspiration story came from McCarthy’s 2007 interview with Oprah Winfrey”, but this was referenced in an NPR interview with his editor less than 3 weeks ago (when his most recent book was being released), so this is in keeping with Jeopardy!’s propensity to make Final clues from fairly current events.
[I did not know of either interview until I ran across that tonight when I saw he had two new books coming out in October and December 2022.]
Unfortunately, I was unable to see this match do to my locl station prempting Jeopardy to carry the President’s news conference, and, not showing at what time it would be shown (if it all,) like it usually does. Like many other stations that carry Jeopardy and Wheel, my station is an ABC affiliate,but unlike many other stations, Jeopardy, and, Wheel, bookend an two and a half hour local, and, national,news block. From Andy’s comments, it looks it it would have been interesting to see Amy build her lead into an runaway.
As for Tuesday’s Final Jeopardy, unfortunately, I’m not well enough read to even have an intelligent guess at the correct reponse.
I got this one instantly. I’d like to thank my Contemporary Literature professor in college for making me read The Road back when it first came out. I don’t think I would’ve gotten it otherwise, because it’s only obvious if you know what the book is about.
Amy definitely got the most favorable draw in the semis and thus crushed this game. Her dex checks were on point with the buzzer, which I presume is rhythm from the exhibition game. I think the same-day recording helped her a ton, so Matt, Mattea, and Sam can carry that too. These next two matches will likely be far more entertaining than this one was.