Warning: This page contains spoilers for the June 26, 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 20th Century Events) for Monday, June 26, 2023 (Season 39, Game 206):
It was immediately reported “the flames are still leaping maybe 30, 40 feet from the ground the entire 811 feet length of” this
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Today’s Jeopardy! contestants:
Caroline Gulick, a Realtor from Reno, Nevada |
Ryan Clary, a cheesemonger from Chattanooga, Tennessee |
Donna Matturri, a librarian from Columbus, Ohio (1-day total: $17,400) |
Andy’s Pregame Thoughts:
It’s the last week of June; five weeks of regular-play episodes remain in Season 39. Donna Matturri returns today as your defending champion after defeating 5-day champion Ben Goldstein on Friday. Today’s challengers are Chattanooga cheesemonger Ryan Clary and Reno Realtor Caroline Gullick.
In case you missed it, my Weekly Thoughts article published yesterday created some waves after I found an article from the 1990s explaining why Jeopardy! contestants pay their own way to Los Angeles to tape their appearance on the show.
Being June 26, it’s also my mother’s birthday; happy birthday, Mom!
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 the Hindenburg?
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.)
On May 6, 1937, the LZ 129 Hindenburg was attempting to moor in Lakehurst, New Jersey, having departed from Frankfurt, Germany, on the evening of May 3, when it abruptly caught fire; the most common belief today is that static electricity buildup ignited hydrogen on the airship, causing the fire. 35 of the 97 passengers & crew died in the disaster.
Being the first transatlantic flight of 1937, there was significant publicity surrounding its arrival in the United States; thus, numerous newsreel cameras and radio journalists were on site in Lakewood for the Hindenburg‘s arrival. Herbert Morrison of WLS Chicago recorded the most famous depiction of the disaster, including the most famous words: “Oh, the humanity and all the passengers screaming around here.” American Rhetoric has a full record of Morrison’s recording.
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 & Tonight’s Game Stats:
Looking to find out who won Jeopardy! today? Here’s the Monday, June 26, 2023 Jeopardy! by the numbers, along with a recap:
Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: First Ladies’ Rhyme Time; Here Comes The Summer; 7-Letter Words; United Kingdom Election Constituencies; Lovely Rita; Meter Made)
Caroline had the best round; she seemed to fare well on clues that required more lateral thinking. Finding the Daily Double at the end of the round put her in the lead going into the second break.
Statistics at the first break (15 clues):
Caroline 6 correct 0 incorrect
Ryan 4 correct 0 incorrect
Donna 3 correct 2 incorrect
Today’s interviews:
Caroline has friends who don’t like watching Jeopardy! with her.
Ryan won a scholarship to learn about cheese production in France.
Donna had a blue M&M as the only witness at her wedding.
Statistics after the Jeopardy round:
Caroline 12 correct 1 incorrect
Donna 8 correct 2 incorrect
Ryan 7 correct 1 incorrect
Scores after the Jeopardy! Round:
Caroline $6,200
Donna $3,800
Ryan $2,800
Double Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: Names Of The 1990s; War Of The Words; Scientists; Classical Music; TV; Crossword Clues “P”)
Ryan found the Daily Double on his first pick and increased his score. Then, Donna seemed to do well on the signaling device for most of the round, but she seemed to have no interest in finding the last Daily Double (it stayed out until the 30th clue of the round). As it was, Donna did have a lead going into Final, but it wasn’t a runaway.
Statistics after Double Jeopardy:
Donna 21 correct 4 incorrect
Ryan 14 correct 1 incorrect
Caroline 16 correct 2 incorrect
Total number of unplayed clues this season: 34 (0 today).
Scores going into Final:
Donna $18,800
Ryan $11,600
Caroline $7,400
Ryan and Donna got final, but Ryan didn’t bet enough to take advantage of Donna’s not making a cover bet, so Donna’s now a 2-day champion!
Tonight’s results:
Caroline $7,400 – $7,400 = $0 (What is)
Ryan $11,600 + $10,222 = $21,822 (What is the Hindenburg?)
Donna $18,800 + $4,000 = $22,800 (What is the Hindenburg disaster?) (2-day total: $40,200)
Other Miscellaneous Game Statistics:
Daily Double locations:
1) UNITED KINGDOM ELECTION CONSTITUENCIES $1000 (clue #30)
Caroline 4600 +1600 (Donna 3800 Ryan 2800)
2) CLASSICAL MUSIC $1200 (clue #1)
Ryan 2800 +2000 (Donna 3800 Caroline 6200)
3) SCIENTISTS $2000 (clue #30, $0 left on board)
Donna 19800 -1000 (Ryan 11600 Caroline 7400)
Overall Daily Double Efficiency for this game: 101
Clue Selection by Row, Before Daily Doubles Found:
J! Round:
Donna 1 3 5 1 5 4 5 3 4 3
Ryan 3 4 5 4 3 5 2 4
Caroline 2 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 5*
DJ! Round:
Donna 4 5 2 1 3 4 1 2 1 1 1† 2† 1 4 5*
Ryan 3* 4† 5† 3 3 4 3 4 3 2
Caroline 2 5 5 5 2
† – selection in same category as Daily Double
Average Row of Clue Selection, Before Daily Doubles Found:
Donna 2.84
Ryan 3.56
Caroline 2.65
Unplayed clues:
J! Round: None!
DJ! Round: None!
Total Left On Board: $0
Number of clues left unrevealed this season: 34 (0.17 per episode average), 0 Daily Doubles
Game Stats:
Donna $19,800 Coryat, 21 correct, 4 incorrect, 42.11% in first on buzzer (24/57), 0/0 on rebound attempts (on 2 rebound opportunities)
Ryan $10,800 Coryat, 14 correct, 1 incorrect, 21.05% in first on buzzer (12/57), 1/2 on rebound attempts (on 5 rebound opportunities)
Caroline $6,800 Coryat, 16 correct, 2 incorrect, 29.82% in first on buzzer (17/57), 0/0 on rebound attempts (on 3 rebound opportunities)
Combined Coryat Score: $37,400
Lach Trash: $8,600 (on 8 Triple Stumpers)
Coryat lost to incorrect responses (less double-correct responses): $8,000
Player Statistics:
Donna Matturri, career statistics:
37 correct, 4 incorrect
0/0 on rebound attempts (on 4 rebound opportunities)
33.33% in first on buzzer (38/114)
0/1 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: -$1,000)
2/2 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $15,600
Ryan Clary, career statistics:
15 correct, 1 incorrect
1/2 on rebound attempts (on 5 rebound opportunities)
21.05% in first on buzzer (12/57)
1/1 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $2,000)
1/1 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $10,800
Caroline Gulick, career statistics:
16 correct, 3 incorrect
0/0 on rebound attempts (on 3 rebound opportunities)
29.82% in first on buzzer (17/57)
1/1 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $1,600)
0/1 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $6,800
Donna Matturri, to win:
3 games: 51.422%
4: 26.443%
5: 13.597%
6: 6.992%
7: 3.595%
Avg. streak: 3.059 games.
Andy’s Thoughts:
- I would have played the last seven clues of Double Jeopardy!, as well as Final, much differently than Donna chose to. However, Donna has earned the right to play however she chooses to—and she’s a two-day Jeopardy! champion (and most of the armchair commenters around the Internet certainly are not.)
- I certainly hope those waiting to play the rest of this week noticed Donna’s bet here.
- Today’s box score: June 26, 2023 Box Score.
Final Jeopardy! wagering suggestions:
(Scores: Donna $18,800 Ryan $11,600 Caroline $7,400)
Donna: Standard cover bet over Ryan is $4,401. (Actual bet: $4,000)
Ryan: This is a “crush game”; going all-in maximizes your potential winnings if you’re correct.(Actual bet: $10,222)
Caroline: You actually have a chance of winning this with a correct response; go all-in to maximize potential winnings. (Actual bet: $7,400)
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Was the only guess I had given the length and flames still leaping from the ground.
Dang! I got this, but not in 30 seconds. So I guess I lose. Lol Took a while to figure out what was 811 feet long.
Yeah, I’ve probably heard that broadcast a half a dozen times or so over the years. The first time was in a history class, probably US History in high school.
Oh, the humanity!
or – oh, the huge manatee 🙂
as much as I loved the Turkey Drop episode of WKRP, I always found it in somewhat bad taste that Les Nessman said ‘oh, the humanity’
I responded with the Hindenburg within a few seconds. So hopefully this should be a triple get…my first time making this statement!!! (:
My first thought was “Oh, the humanity!”
Unfortunately, Morrison has been mercilessly ridiculed and mocked over the years for his reaction to the crash. This was supposed to be a light fluff story. When, however, it became the disaster that it did, Morrison, understandably, was horrified and overwhelmed while still trying to do his job as an on-site reporter.
I didn’t know that so looked online and found nothing other than the occasional use of ‘oh the humanity’ used in a less than appropriate way.
Oh the humanity has helped me to remember the hindenburg. Back in the old days airships didn’t have the money to use any other elements and the hydrogen was the only thing available. I saw something like this on seconds from disaster and there was a book of great disasters that covered this tragedy.
It wasn’t really about money, it was about the U.S. being unwilling to sell helium to Germany. It hadn’t been that long since WWI, when the Germans used zeppelins to drop bombs on England.
Oh, the humanity indeed! I was 7 years old and my parents were listening to the radio news about the disaster. I asked what the Hindenberg was, and they said it was a Zeppelin that burned. Only when I was older did I get the whole story.
Wow! That’s amazing, Nancy! You were a real “earwitness” to the Hindenburg Disaster. Congrats on living through so much history!
Nancy, that is so fascinating. I have a dear friend who is 102 – older than Kleenex® or sliced bread – and she also has childhood memories of historical events that were just current events at the time. Thank you!
PS: I had just turned 3 when Marilyn Monroe died. Our house was full of visiting relatives when the news broke and it was all the adults could talk about. It made such an impression on me that I still remember details of those days.
A good while ago an acquaintance of ours was telling about having taken a very elderly neighbor to the 1997 premiere of the Titanic movie. He said “it turned out that…’ and we both thought he was going to say she had been on the Titanic or at least closely related to someone who was, but the rest of the sentence was “…the only other time she had ever gone to a movie theater was to the premiere of Gone With The Wind.
has the font changed on the recaps or is it my computer?
The font has changed, in the hope that the site loads faster for all users.
My preference is that the font be san serif even if it takes a bit longer to load. The serifs make numbers harder for me to read.
Carolyn:
I appreciate this sort of specific feedback; I hope that the current numbers are easier to read.
Some previous remarks of yours come to mind:
∙ “Selecting six top-row clues and betting $1,000 on Daily Doubles is not a path to victory on Jeopardy! in 2023.”
If not void entirely, this statement does seem to be relative. After all, selecting eight top-row clues, selecting twice in Double from the same category where DD2 had been found, betting $1,000 on a Penultimate Wager where $3,401 would have given a lock (albeit surrendered the crush if incorrect), and not making the standard cover bet in Final — taken together, that was a path to victory on Jeopardy! in 2023.
∙ “As a Jeopardy! fan, I want to see aggressive gameplay from all contestants, and I feel that I did not get that today.”
This certainly captures how I felt after watching this game. We can leave aside the fact that the “Clue Selection by Row, Before Daily Doubles Found” chart has the maximum possible number of entries; some of that is down to chance, of course. But it does resonate that the chart contains the maximum number of possible “1” and “†” entries (twelve and four, respectively).
I agree entirely with you that “Donna has earned the right to play however she chooses to.” I would submit that every Jeopardy! contestant earns that right upon getting The Call (or perhaps upon arrival at the Alex Trebek Stage) — not at any later point, and irrespective of any other circumstance.
Regarding the first point –
I think that, if you find the DD on clue #30 and you have at least 1.5x the score of your nearest competitor, the best play is ALWAYS to try and put the game away right then and there. For less than 1.5x, betting just to keep the lead is defensible, and 1.5x exactly is just weird, but for more than 1.5x, betting to lock it up on that clue is always the best move.
But presumably a large part of why that is clue #30 is because it was in a category (and level, considering that DDs are never low level) that the players [probably especially the current player, considering you are talking about the leader] had not been very confident of likely knowing. Because of that, wouldn’t the player be thinking more of how much they want to risk losing rather than how much they would like to gain?
Daily Doubles at the bottom row have been successful 65% of the time so far this season. Compare that to Final Jeopardy, which has a rate of 45.62% in all games – and even lower when just counting regular play! – this season.
While it worked out better for Donna today, winning the game on a penultimate Daily Double is still much more likely than in Final Jeopardy.
That 65% success rate means nothing if the category is, i.e, NFL linebackers, and you know nothing about sports. Have to agree with Lisa here that if the category is not in your wheel house, some times it’s best not to go for the kill on the last clue.
Doesn’t that Final Jeopardy failure rate of 54.38% include people who tempered their bets based on the category not being in their wheelhouse? And most successes with a DD in the bottom row can [will?] have been much earlier picks due to their categories, thus plumping that success rate. Last picked is still LAST for a reason (especially since more commonly the last 8-12 picks are from the top two rows because players had been trying for more money than those offer).
you are right that it’s all relative. Donna lucked out her final wager covered the conservative bet of Ryan so it all balanced out anyway. Relative to the other players, she did what she needed to do.
For us people sitting at home in the peanut gallery, we obviously don’t face the same pressures of due to being live on stage. I also know that I hate certain categories and would never bet big on FJ or DD if I see a category that isn’t my forte despite what is theoretically best from a statistical point of view.
I am annoyed when, deep into the game, there’s one category left and the contestants just choose an amount, then the host does not tell the category name. Especially when it’s a weird category, like today’s about UK constituencies, I don’t remember what it is and am puzzled about the clues. Ken Jennings seems to be very good at making sure the category is clear.
I agree. That is a slight peeve of mine, too. However, we cannot be sure that the host didn’t say it but it was cut for time.
“Oh the humanity” would describe some of the choices made in this game, but go easy on Donna, all 3 players are responsible for avoiding the Daily Doubles until the end.