Warning: This page contains spoilers for the March 6, 2023, 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 U.S. History) for Monday, March 6, 2023 (Season 39, Game 126):
An 1869 presidential pardon was granted to this man, due in part to a plea by the Medical Society of Harford County, Maryland
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Today’s Jeopardy! contestants:
Claire Sattler, a senior at Yale University from Bonita Springs, Florida
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Stephanie Pierson, a junior at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill from Macon, Georgia
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Justin Bolsen, a first-year student at Brown University from Canton, Georgia
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Andy’s Pregame Thoughts:
It’s time for semifinal #2 for the High School Reunion Tournament—one of Justin Bolsen, Stephanie Pierson, or Claire Sattler will join Jackson Jones in the finals. Interestingly, in terms of attempts in the quarterfinal, as per the box scores, Justin had 39, Claire 34, and Stephanie 27. Seeing these numbers, this could be anyone’s game—if someone gets a board that suits them, they might find themselves in the final very easily!
I still wish the show had elected to air the March 10 game on February 16; having the disjointed semifinals like this and airing the finals on Wednesday and Thursday just doesn’t feel right. Additionally, I’m going to register my displeasure again towards the show electing to randomize both the lectern and first selection. It’s incredibly confusing for the home viewer when someone other than the leftmost lectern makes the first pick and there is no need to doubly randomize. If the show wants to randomize the first pick in a tournament situation, just randomize the lecterns and use that randomization to control the first pick.
PSA: The best way to keep COVID-19 at bay (and keep Jeopardy! producing new episodes) is for everybody to get their vaccinations as soon as they can, including any boosters as recommended. When wearing a mask, please ensure that your mask covers both your nose and your mouth.
Are you going on the show and looking for information about how to bet in Final Jeopardy? Check out my new Betting Strategy 101 page!
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(Content continues below)
Correct response: Who is Dr. Samuel Mudd?
More information about Final Jeopardy:
(The following write-up is original content and is copyright 2023 The Jeopardy! Fan. It may not be copied without linked attribution back to this page.)
Samuel Mudd was arrested and convicted in the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; Booth had broken his left leg in the aftermath of the shooting (while jumping down from the presidential box in attempting to flee Ford’s Theatre) and Mudd splinted Booth’s leg; Mudd’s culpability was established mainly because he had failed to timely alert authorities as to Booth’s presence. Mudd escaped hanging but was sentenced to life imprisonment in a prison at the Dry Tortugas.
During Mudd’s imprisonment, in 1867, an outbreak of yellow fever occurred at the prison. Mudd’s efforts—he was named prison doctor in an emergency capacity as the previous doctor had died—helped stem the spread of the disease due to implementing strict hygiene protocols. In the aftermath, grateful survivors felt that Mudd’s efforts had made him worthy of government clemency, and Andrew Johnson pardoned Mudd in February 1869.
Interestingly, Samuel Mudd was the subject of a crucial Daily Double in one of the recent Season 8 episodes that I had been listening to on the premium Jeopardy! Radio Classics channel on TuneIn Radio.
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: How Often Does It Happen?; Book Sequels; History; Quotable TV Shows; A Lot Of Hot Air; “A”djectives)
Justin definitely had the best time in the Jeopardy! round, picking up an early Daily Double and holding the lead through the round. Everyone generally had a good round, though.
Statistics at the first break (15 clues):
Justin 5 correct 1 incorrect
Claire 3 correct 0 incorrect
Stephanie 3 correct 0 incorrect
Statistics after the Jeopardy round:
Justin 12 correct 1 incorrect
Stephanie 8 correct 0 incorrect
Claire 5 correct 1 incorrect
Double Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: The Tech Beat; Sea Here; Study: Guides; Pop Music; More Than One Meaning; Pivotal Women)
Claire definitely found her game in the opening part of Double Jeopardy!, but she dropped $2,000 on a Daily Double. Then Justin came on strong, but missed his opportunity to put the game away, dropping $5,000 on his—on a clue that was a subject of a Final Jeopardy! in October. At this point, the lead belonged to Stephanie, but a couple of incorrect responses from her on some absolutely correct but painful judges’ rulings led to Claire holding the lead going into Final. After a correction from the judges in Justin’s favor, the scores sat at Claire $8,600, Justin $8,400, and Stephanie $5,200.
Statistics after Double Jeopardy:
Claire 13 correct 3 incorrect
Justin 23 correct 3 incorrect
Stephanie 11 correct 2 incorrect
Total number of unplayed clues this season: 16 (0 today).
Final Jeopardy! today was a Triple Stumper—Justin’s conservative bet means he’s the second finalist!
Tonight’s Game Stats:
Looking to find out who won Jeopardy! today? Here’s the Monday, March 6, 2023 Jeopardy! by the numbers:
Scores going into Final:
Claire $8,600
Justin $8,400
Stephanie $5,200
Tonight’s results:
Stephanie $5,200 – $3,500 = $1,700 ($10,000) (Who is Johnson?)
Justin $8,400 – $2,001 = $6,399 (Who is Frederick Douglas) (Finalist)
Claire $8,600 – $8,201 = $399 ($10,000) (Who is Booth? I love you all! ❤️)
Scores after the Jeopardy! Round:
Justin $6,200
Stephanie $4,000
Claire $2,600
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Opening break taken after: 15 clues
Daily Double locations:
1) HISTORY $600 (clue #7)
Justin 1400 +1400 (Stephanie 200 Claire 200)
2) MORE THAN ONE MEANING $2000 (clue #10)
Claire 6600 -2000 (Justin 10200 Stephanie 6000)
3) STUDY: GUIDES $1200 (clue #15, $16400 left on board)
Justin 12200 -5000 (Stephanie 8800 Claire 4600)
Overall Daily Double Efficiency for this game: 29
Clue Selection by Row, Before Daily Doubles Found:
J! Round:
Justin 5 4 3*
Stephanie 1 1
Claire 3 2
DJ! Round:
Justin 5 2 3 4 5 3*
Stephanie 1 1 4
Claire 3 4 3 4 5* 2
Average Row of Clue Selection, Before Daily Doubles Found:
Justin 3.78
Stephanie 1.60
Claire 3.25
Unplayed clues:
J! Round: None!
DJ! Round: None!
Total Left On Board: $0
Number of clues left unrevealed this season: 16 (0.13 per episode average), 0 Daily Doubles
Game Stats:
Justin $12,600 Coryat, 23 correct, 3 incorrect, 40.35% in first on buzzer (23/57), 1/1 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
Stephanie $5,200 Coryat, 11 correct, 2 incorrect, 22.81% in first on buzzer (13/57), 0/0 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
Claire $10,600 Coryat, 13 correct, 3 incorrect, 26.32% in first on buzzer (15/57), 0/0 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
Combined Coryat Score: $28,400
Lach Trash: $14,400 (on 11 Triple Stumpers)
Coryat lost to incorrect responses (less double-correct responses): $11,200
Justin Bolsen, career statistics:
84 correct, 12 incorrect
4/5 on rebound attempts (on 17 rebound opportunities)
35.53% in first on buzzer (81/228)
5/7 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $5,900)
2/3 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $14,250
Stephanie Pierson, career statistics:
41 correct, 9 incorrect
3/6 on rebound attempts (on 12 rebound opportunities)
22.81% in first on buzzer (39/171)
1/2 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $3,200)
2/3 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $8,067
Claire Sattler, career statistics:
112 correct, 19 incorrect
8/9 on rebound attempts (on 25 rebound opportunities)
32.25% in first on buzzer (109/338)
5/7 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $6,000)
4/6 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $14,033
Remaining Players’ Chances of Winning Tournament:
Maya Wright: 8.086%
Justin Bolsen: 32.210%
Jackson Jones: 36.926%
Tim Cho: 11.700%
Caleb Richmond: 11.078%
Today’s interviews:
Claire would like to become a comedy writer.
Stephanie started doing stand-up comedy last year.
Justin studies in the most isolated spot possible on campus.
Andy’s Thoughts:
- Today’s box score will be linked to when posted by the show.
Final Jeopardy! wagering suggestions:
(Scores: Claire $8,600 Justin $8,400 Stephanie $5,200)
Justin: Standard cover bet over Stephanie is $2,001. (Actual bet: $2,001)
Stephanie: While any bet that could put your score over $6,400 (so, $1,200 or higher) if you’re correct is probably going to fine, I would recommend betting between $3,601 and $4,799. This way, you surpass a potential low bet from Claire, while staying ahead of her if she covers and is incorrect. (Actual bet: $3,500)
Claire: Standard cover bet over Justin is $8,201. (Actual bet: $8,201)
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I knew it couldn’t be Booth since he was dead before then (but I was on the right track). So, I guessed Robert E Lee (who it turns out was eventually pardoned, but not until 1975).
My guess was Jefferson Davis…
Davis’ pardon was in 1872, so you were closer than me.
I remembered his last name, which I hope would be sufficient.
The only first name I could think of associated with “Mudd” was Harry, the old Star Trek recurring character😅
I was certain that the clue was referring to Dr. Mudd but couldn’t think of the first name. Don’t you think they would have accepted just “Dr. Mudd”? I do, as a Trekkie, think that “Harry” might have been blocking me from even possibly remembering “Samuel”.
Dr. Mudd was my guess and I am assuming it would have been accepted. “Harry” was definitely keeping me from remembering his real first name!😅
I’m proud to say that I also had “Dr.Mudd” as my response. But, I can’t say where and when I learned of him. Also, my memory of why he was imprisoned, was incomplete.
I saw the dank dungeon in which Mudd was held in the Dry Tortugas after I took a seaplane trip there from Key West. The prisoners and jailers were sitting ducks for yellow fever spread by bites of infected mosquitoes from South America.
Ending the tournament on a Thursday may be a ratings ploy. Fewer people watch TV on Friday evening.
That’s a strong possibility.
They don’t teach American History in school these days? I thought for sure this would be an easy triple get.
That’s an incredibly unfair comment—adult contestants have seen clues about Mudd fall for a Triple Stumper, even being spotted “set Booth’s broken leg”.
As a history teacher and a Jeopardy champ, I might be able to provide useful insight on this. There are a few things to keep in mind when considering how history is taught now compared to when you were in school.
The length of the school year is the same, but there is a lot more to cover! 9/11 was before any of these students could form memory. Sometimes relatively inconsequential things (like the name of the surgeon who treated JWB’s leg) will be left off to make room for more important subjects.
In general, higher-level history education has shifted focus from individual narratives to broader ideas and historical forces. It is much more useful for my students to know things like the various ways that isolationism has appeared in U.S. history than it is for them to know the names of minor individuals. That said, narrative and personal stories are still important, so we try to give plenty of opportunity to learn them still.
Over the last few decades there has also been a shift from rote memorization to emphasizing historical thinking skills. In the age of the internet it doesn’t help my students to make them spend time memorizing things that they can easily look up. It does help them to learn how things like economics, politics, demographics, social movements, etc. influence each other, because there are various patterns that appear frequently enough that it might help them contextualize things in their own future lives.
(sort of an addendum to #1) The canon of history has expanded as well, due to new research and also bringing in more perspectives. For example, for a very long time history was mostly made up of studying the political or military actions of powerful men. That leaves out at least half of the population (based on gender) and doesn’t tell the full story.
(the website disappeared my numerated list, but basically each paragraph was numbered. Sorry for any confusion).
Your teaching sounds wonderful. I hope that approach is widely taken, but I am afraid it is not. When I was in high school the “space race” was current events so obviously there is a lot more history to be learned since then, but even then in our American History classes we never got much further than WWII before the school year ended!
My take on it was that American History was a year long subject at some point in elementary school (5th grade, maybe), then again in 8th grade, then again in High School, in every case starting with (after a page on Christopher Columbus) colonial times and ending shortly after WWII, but would have been more effective with colonial times up to underground railroad covered in elementary school, just prior to Civil War through the Depression and Civilian Conservation Corps in middle school, then on though the rest of history in high school. Presumably the original thought was that younger kids couldn’t remember what they’d been taught earlier [and this schedule probably dates back to when a lot of kids quit school before high school], but I think it is more likely that a lot of them don’t pay enough attention to it in high school because they’ve heard it all before and are bored.
@ Lisa: thanks for the compliment! I know many great teachers who take a similar approach, and it is one of the things now emphasized in curriculum development courses. Of course it does take a lot of work and planning to set up right. My dream would be to teach a history course in reverse chronological order…starting with students’ natural curiosity about the contemporary world (“why is this the way it is?”) and explore the causes, and the the causes of those causes, going back to the beginning of our timeframe. But that would take more curriculum development skills than I have, and probably wouldn’t go super well in a standard high school.
Is this the great Sam Buttrey?
No.
As someone with a BSEd in Social Studies Education, I absolutely agree with everything you’ve said here. I got my degree during the Clinton Administration, and what were were taught was that, while facts and dates had their place in history, it was far more important to foster critical thought on patterns in history and understanding reasons and motives for decisions that were made. The facts that were memorized by rote in the past were context, but what people needed to actually learn were movements, philosophies, and how the factual pieces of the puzzle fit together. I’m pleased to hear that this is how it is practiced, because it was certainly what I tried to convey to my students when I did my student-teaching.
Jeopardy is, after all is said and done, mainly a trivia game.
I remember about Samuel mudd. He used to be booth’s coconspirator after Lincoln was killed. this should not be that tough to get. Seeing him pardoned was already enough on him. Happy to see Justin winning today
if the final jeopardy category is not up your alley, competitors should be betting less than 1000.
I keep seeing this time and time again …
I think you are probably right (about some people betting too much even though it’s not one of their best categories), but how do you know what each person’s category weaknesses are? Certainly not just because they then get the ONE clue [FJ] wrong. In this case, I would think that any college student (especially of these three’s caliber) would assume that they could probably get a ‘U.S. History’ clue correct.
Finally glad to see some displeasure on how the tournaments have been formatted. Might as well do a 3 game final to end things on a Friday though I do prefer the 2 week format over the one currently being implemented.
Too bad Stephanie gave a first name on the the question about Hidden Figures. I think she would have had the lead if she would have given just the last name.
Easy for a Marylander. There was a great book serialized in Smithsonian some years back.
https://www.amazon.com/Manhunt-Twelve-Day-TWELVE-DAY-Feb-01-2007-Paperback/dp/B009RIF24K/
As a lifelong Marylander, this one was easy for me, too. Appears that Marylanders had a leg (pun intended) up on others. Even though it was easy for me and other Marylanders, I did think it would be difficult for today’s contestants.
Based on number of correct responses and percentage of in first on buzzer, Justin certainly deserved to win, so congratulations to him. Even so, I am sad to see Claire being eliminated as I would like to have seen her win as further validation of her success in the earlier tournament given the abuse she took. I was kind of pulling for her to win the whole tournament.
Add me to the Maryland residents who got this right. My husband also got it.
Yeah, this was near impossible for me. I couldn’t come up with the name of any doctor who abetted Booth, which I figured this had to be. I went through Booth, Lee, Davis… came nowhere close. Not surprised to see this be a triple stumper.
Today felt like a really weird game, though. Nobody had five digits going into or out of Final Jeopardy. A lot of close but still incorrect responses and 11 triple stumpers added up. Was still fun to watch, though!
Perhaps it sounds like a very minor fact to know considering all the historical details from the 1860 to 1865 period, but there is the additional (fairly wide-spread) knowledge that he is supposedly where the “my/his/her name is Mud” cliche came from (which would likely mean one knows why). Or does no one ever say that anymore?
Came here to say this but you beat me to it.
I grew up in the 70s/80s, and it really wasn’t an idiomatic phrase that my peers used. I think almost everyone I’d heard it from was in my parents’ generation. I did know the phrase and the genesis of it, and that’s what gave me the answer with barely enough time to write it down. Anyone under 50 I would expect to have struggled with it.
Hmm,you were only about a dozen years behind me and that phrase had lasted nearly a hundred years at that time. It may have been in use longer in some areas than others, but I had expected that knowledge of it would have passed on a while longer than usage since if an older person said it, a younger person would have thought “Whaaat?” and immediately looked it up on their smartphone. 😉 And if it was in a single script of just one sitcom in the 60s or 70s, if would have been heard by millions.
I have never heard that phrase before, and I’m a Millennial born in ’88. I highly doubt these (still brilliant) Gen Z kids are likely to have heard it. And if they have, they wouldn’t know what it meant or referred to, because it’s not something people say anymore.
Now I have heard “dragged my name through the mud” before, which means someone soiled your reputation like mud stains your clothes, and maybe that’s a linguistic evolution similar how what used to be “free rein” became “free reign” after horse transportation fell out of favor (both are correct). But I don’t know if anyone can interpret “Mud” as a last name knowing that phrase since it seems so far of a stretch.
All I could come up with was, “The guy who treated Booth,” but I could only remember Mary Surratt’s name and not Mudd’s name.
I thought awarding credit for “matrix” when the correct answer was “database” was quite surprising. Fortunately I don’t think it changed the outcome of the game.
It very much might have changed the outcome of the game. At 7600 Justin needs to wager 2801 to cover Stephanie. If Claire and Justin both wager to cover as they did under the corrected situation, Stephanie can win a triple stumper with a bet of 400 or less if the correction hadn’t been made.
In any event, I believe Justin was properly credited for that response.
I lean toward Josh’s view of this one. All matrices store data in rows and columns; that’s not a particular property of a “relational” type of matrix. The clue asks for a “system” for “information to be stored and retrieved”, which is a best an awkward fit for “matrix”. There’s more than 300 times as many Google hits for “relational database” as “relational matrix” and a chunk of the latter seem to involve a concept from psychology.