Warning: This page contains spoilers for the April 7, 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 Geography) for Friday, April 7, 2023 (Season 39, Game 150):
Of the 13 nations through which the Equator passes, it’s the only one whose coastline borders the Caribbean Sea
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Today’s Jeopardy! contestants:
Rachel Clark, a director of client strategy from Washington, D.C. |
Brandie Ashe, a personal assistant from Panama City, Florida |
Brian Henegar, a guest services agent from La Follette, Tennessee (3-day total: $68,202) |
Andy’s Pregame Thoughts:
Brian Henegar has just gotten better over the course of this week; in yesterday’s game, he picked up 33 correct responses. It’s clear that he’s a very capable and very strong player. Today, his challengers are Brandie Ashe and Rachel Clark.
One thing that I touched on a couple of days ago: When you’re playing at the level that Brian is playing at right now, you need to be striving for mastery of the game’s advanced strategies. You have to be willing to go all-in on early Daily Doubles. Your Daily Double hunting needs to be mistake-free, in order to keep those Daily Doubles out of the hands of your opposition. After all, one of the major reasons why I continue to write the things that I do is to hopefully help potential future contestants prepare for their own appearances on the show, and I like to be instructive in that respect.
Meanwhile, the spring Gamers vs. MS Twitch live-stream charity relay will start today! As always, many Twitch streamers—I’ll be joining the relay for the fifth time—will collectively raise money for MS Canada from April 7–17. Canada has some of the highest rates of multiple sclerosis in the world, with an estimated 1 in 385 Canadians living with MS. MS is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that attacks myelin, the protective covering over the nerves. If the damage is bad enough, nerve impulses can be completely disrupted. There is no cure; however, researchers are learning more daily.
Chag Pesach Sameach! The Unofficial Jeopardy! Haggadah supplement, written by many former contestants, is again available for the Passover Seder for Jeopardy! fans worldwide.
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!
(Content continues below)
Correct response: What is Colombia?
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.)
Only one South American country extends from the Caribbean Sea to south of the Equator: Colombia.
I expect that for many familiar with South American geography, this may be a 50/50 proposition between Colombia and its neighbor Venezuela.
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: Norway Is Famous For…; Americana; Landing On Planet Franchise; De-Composing; Good “E”; Two Shoes)
Brian had a slow start, missing a Daily Double and having a correct response overturned at the break. However, he picked up 10 correct after the interviews to take a commanding lead!
Statistics at the first break (15 clues):
Brian 7 correct 2 incorrect
Brandie 3 correct 0 incorrect
Rachel 2 correct 0 incorrect
Statistics after the Jeopardy round:
Brian 17 correct 2 incorrect
Brandie 5 correct 0 incorrect
Rachel 3 correct 1 incorrect
Double Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: You Totally Ruled!; Life & Death In Literary Titles; Science; The Secret Of Acronym; Pop Culture; Animalistic Words)
The first half of Double Jeopardy! belonged to our challengers; Rachel took the lead with DD2. However, Brian got to the last Daily Double and picked up the lead himself going into Final! Scores going into Final were Brian at $15,200, Rachel at $12,000, and Brandie at $10,000.
Statistics after Double Jeopardy:
Brian 24 correct 4 incorrect
Rachel 12 correct 1 incorrect
Brandie 13 correct 1 incorrect
Total number of unplayed clues this season: 23 (0 today).
Final Jeopardy! today was a Triple Stumper, and it came down to the wagers. Rachel ended up with the most money by $100 and is our new champion!
Tonight’s Game Stats:
Looking to find out who won Jeopardy! today? Here’s the Friday, April 7, 2023 Jeopardy! by the numbers:
Scores going into Final:
Brian $15,200
Rachel $12,000
Brandie $10,000
Tonight’s results:
Brandie $10,000 – $4,000 = $6,000 (What is Venezuela?)
Rachel $12,000 – $5,500 = $6,500 (What is Ecuador) (1-day total: $6,500)
Brian $15,200 – $8,800 = $6,400 (What is Brazil?)
Scores after the Jeopardy! Round:
Brian $8,000
Brandie $2,800
Rachel $1,000
Opening break taken after: 15 clues
Daily Double locations:
1) DE-COMPOSING $1000 (clue #8)
Brian 3000 -1000 (Brandie 800 Rachel 600)
2) YOU TOTALLY RULED! $1600 (clue #18)
Rachel 7000 +3000 (Brian 6800 Brandie 9600)
3) SCIENCE $1600 (clue #24, $7600 left on board)
Brian 8000 +4000 (Brandie 10000 Rachel 11200)
Overall Daily Double Efficiency for this game: 60
Clue Selection by Row, Before Daily Doubles Found:
J! Round:
Brian 3 4 1 3 4 5*
Brandie 5
Rachel 2
DJ! Round:
Brian 3 3 4*
Brandie 4 5 1 1 2 3 4 5 1 3
Rachel 2 3 4 5 2 2 3 4* 5† 1† 1
† – selection in same category as Daily Double
Average Row of Clue Selection, Before Daily Doubles Found:
Rachel 2.83
Brian 3.33
Brandie 3.09
Unplayed clues:
J! Round: None!
DJ! Round: None!
Total Left On Board: $0
Number of clues left unrevealed this season: 23 (0.15 per episode average), 0 Daily Doubles
Game Stats:
Rachel $10,600 Coryat, 12 correct, 1 incorrect, 19.30% in first on buzzer (11/57), 1/1 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
Brian $13,800 Coryat, 24 correct, 4 incorrect, 45.61% in first on buzzer (26/57), 0/0 on rebound attempts (on 2 rebound opportunities)
Brandie $10,000 Coryat, 13 correct, 1 incorrect, 22.81% in first on buzzer (13/57), 1/1 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
Combined Coryat Score: $34,400
Lach Trash: $14,200 (on 10 Triple Stumpers)
Coryat lost to incorrect responses (less double-correct responses): $5,400
Brian Henegar, career statistics:
114 correct, 20 incorrect
5/6 on rebound attempts (on 15 rebound opportunities)
51.77% in first on buzzer (117/226)
5/7 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $7,200)
1/4 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $20,250
Brandie Ashe, career statistics:
13 correct, 2 incorrect
1/1 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
22.81% in first on buzzer (13/57)
0/0 on Daily Doubles
0/1 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $10,000
Rachel Clark, career statistics:
12 correct, 2 incorrect
1/1 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
19.30% in first on buzzer (11/57)
1/1 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $3,000)
0/1 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $10,600
Rachel Clark, to win:
2 games: 40.528%
3: 16.425%
4: 6.657%
5: 2.698%
6: 1.093%
Avg. streak: 1.681 games.
Today’s interviews:
Rachel is the child of an elementary school librarian.
Brandie has a sock obsession, owning over 600 pairs of socks.
Brian works for a chain of gas stations helping truck drivers.
Andy’s Thoughts:
- I’ve been bringing up Daily Double bet sizing all week and the importance of it in terms of mastering Jeopardy!. Even if Brian wasn’t comfortable with the prospect of falling to $0, a bet of more than $6,000 would have meant that Brian was in a “crush game” position going into Final—and he would have survived a Triple Stumper for a fourth victory.
- Christine Whelchel is still the winningest contestant representing Tennessee in the history of Jeopardy!.
- Today’s box score: April 7, 2023 Box Score.
Final Jeopardy! wagering suggestions:
(Scores: Brian $15,200 Rachel $12,000 Brandie $10,000)
Brian: Standard cover bet over Rachel is $8,801. (Actual bet: $8,800)
Brandie: Limit your bet to $3,599 to have the best chance of winning a Triple Stumper. If not, go all in to force Rachel to cover you. (Actual bet: $4,000)
Rachel: You can’t both win a Triple Stumper and cover Brandie. If not covering Brandie, limit your bet to $1,999 and force Brandie to be correct to pass you. If you are going to cover Brandie, you might as well go all in to force Brian to cover you. (Actual bet: $5,500)
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whew! Finally got off the schneid…Thank goodness for the easy ones!
I went with Venezuela… https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-78b93b478a1e43cceb19b1edf0261836-lq
I vaguely remembered someone once taking a cruise of the Caribbean and at some point docking at Colombia. Pure luck.
This is by far the most triple stumpers in one week that I know, and the fewest number of correct responses in final Jeopardy
The aggregate 1-for-15 on Final Jeopardy! matches the final week of Season 15 (July 19-23, 1999). Keith Williams noted that on The Final Wager some years back (link to archived version below).
In the 8+ years since, many more old games have been added to J! Archive, so we may now know of other weeks where the players collectively fared ad badly or worse in Final.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210927090838/http://thefinalwager.com/2015/02/21/bad-weeks-on-jeopardy/
Well… dang :/ That’s a bit disappointing, although a cagey (uncanny?) wager by Rachel.
Going 3 straight games with incorrect final jeopardy responses would spell doom for any contestant eventually. The daily double wagers just sped up the process sadly as I really liked Brian.
Good FJ clue, even though I got it wrong. It motivated me to learn the names of the 13 countries through which the equator passes.
“13 nations” is actually doing important work in this clue, and I’m not sure whether it’s a positive or negative reflection on the writers.
The Equator passes through eleven countries on land. Starting from the Prime Meridian and working eastward: Sao Tome and Principe, Gabon, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Indonesia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil. It also passes through the territorial waters (12-nautical mile zone) of the Maldives, Kiribati… and the United States at Baker Island in the mid-Pacific.
11 + 3 = 14, of course. This left me wondering, “how did they come up with the number 13?” (Perhaps not unlike Andy was on September 28, 2020.)
Given that the United States also has territory on the Caribbean (in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), it would seem to also be a correct response. Hence, it looks to me as though the number 13 was chosen to exclude the US and pin the clue to Colombia.
On one hand, it indicates the writers may have been alert to the possibility of this, and specifically wrote in that number to guard against it. On the other, what’s the justification for counting two countries but not another, when the three appear to be similarly situated in terms of having the Equator pass through their territorial waters? It may be that Baker Island is an outlying territory of the United States, but if that’s the justification the writers are relying on, it seems a flimsy one to me. Additionally, this issue could have been avoided entirely by mentioning the 11 countries through which the Equator passes over land.
Matt, you now have me wandering through Wikipedia and crawling deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole. Ugh. All three players guessed a country in South America, but each guessed country either wasn’t traversed by the Equator or didn’t border on the Caribbean. But still. Taking territories into account, let alone ones where the equator crosses only territorial waters or (in one case) an uninhabited territory, might be a stretch. Nonetheless….
In trying to come up with a response, at least I was able to do better than two of the three contestants as I was sure that Brazil’s coastline was all Atlantic Ocean and Ecuador’s was all Pacific Ocean. However, because of the Andes being in Columbia, I tend to think of it as being on the west coast of South America, so I thought maybe Venezuela was the correct response.
I went with Venezuela as well. The clue asked for a nation which meets two requirements. Venezuela meets the second of those requirements but not the first. Brazil and Ecuador meet the first requirement but not the second. It seems like all three responses are half right and none is better than the other two.
You are right about the 50/50 right/wrong equivalency of the two required facts, but it just seemed to me to be more basic knowledge that Brazil’s coastline is all Atlantic Ocean [after all, it is so big and prominent on a map of South America] and Ecuador’s coastline is all Pacific Ocean [after all, it owns the Galapagos Islands], whereas which northern South American countries extend southward enough to cross the Equator is more nuanced [on some small maps the equator and Venezuela seem to touch, but that is far from accurate].
Thos one was easy for me since my wide is from Colombia, and I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Barranquilla and Cartagena on the Caribbean side of the country. That it touches the equator is just a fact I picked up along the way.
Drat! I guessed “Brazil.” I knew that the Final Jeopardy! answer had to be in South America. Right continent, wrong country. Phooey.
Having grown up in Dearborn MI, watching Greenfield Village go by as a triple stumper was disappointing.
Yeah, I’ve always lived about 500 miles from there [as does Brian] but I’ve been to Greenfield Village four times!
I enjoyed Ken’s comment that “we’ve got a sock expert and a shoe expert” after Brian ran the ‘Shoe’ category.