Warning: This page contains spoilers for the May 31, 2024, 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 Historic People) for Friday, May 31, 2024 (Season 40, Game 190):
An island near Cebu City has a statue of Lapulapu & a monument to this man that Lapulapu is said to have killed in 1521
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Today’s Jeopardy! contestants:
Josh Moss, a new small business owner from Boston, Massachusetts
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Amy Yao, a plastic surgery resident from New York, New York
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Adriana Harmeyer, an archivist from West Lafayette, Indiana (2-day total: $46,200)
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Andy’s Pregame Thoughts:
Today’s game—the 41st game of Jeopardy airing this month (only 2 off the record set last May with 43)—features 2-day champion Adriana Harmeyer taking on Amy Yao and Josh Moss. Adriana had a very strong performance yesterday, having the game sewn up to the point where one of yesterday’s challengers couldn’t even use the last Daily Double to catch up to her.
I’m just going to say, without potentially spoiling things: I was pleasantly surprised and quite pleased to see one of the categories in Double Jeopardy when I saw today’s categories in J!6.
I have an occasional mailbag column where I answer fan & viewer questions regarding the show. If you have a question, feel free to send it to mailbag@thejeopardyfan.com!
Remember, if you would like to enter the “Explore Iceland” sweepstakes, you can do so at sweepstakes.jeopardy.com. Today’s Final Jeopardy category is “Historic People”.
(Content continues below)
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Correct response: Who is Ferdinand Magellan?
More information about Final Jeopardy:
(The following write-up is original content and is copyright 2024 The Jeopardy! Fan. It may not be copied without linked attribution back to this page.)
In the early 1520s, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for Spain, attempted a circumnavigation of the globe. Unfortunately, with his crew already having partially mutinied, things had not gone well, and they went from bad to worse when Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521 while attempting to convert the local population to Christianity. Second-in-command Juan Sebastian Elcano completed the circumnavigation, but Magellan still receives most of the credit for the voyage today.
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Game Recap & Tonight’s Game Stats:
Looking to find out who won Jeopardy! today? Here’s the Friday, May 31, 2024 Jeopardy! by the numbers, along with a recap:
Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: It Was The ’60s, Man; To The Ballet!; Fair & Square; In The Fruit Basket; Role With The Punches; ____ & ____)
Josh got off to a hot start, but an incorrect response on a Daily Double dropped him back to $0. Adriana led at the commercial break with $2,600; Amy was second with $2,000, while Josh had $0.
Statistics at the first break (15 clues):
Adriana 4 correct 0 incorrect
Amy 3 correct 1 incorrect
Josh 5 correct 1 incorrect
Today’s interviews:
Josh started a craft distillery.
Amy started weightlifting.
Adriana started trying to read a novel from every country of the world.
Amy played very well in the second half of the opening round to jump into the lead through 30 clues. Adriana was second, while Josh will get to pick first in Double Jeopardy.
Statistics after the Jeopardy round:
Amy 9 correct 1 incorrect
Adriana 8 correct 1 incorrect
Josh 8 correct 1 incorrect
Scores after the Jeopardy! Round:
Amy $5,400
Adriana $4,000
Josh $1,000
Double Jeopardy! Round:
(Categories: The Hill You Say; Science-Y Books; Did You Study The “J” Archive?; Notable Black Americans; Producer Tags; Starts With A Color)
Adriana came out in Double Jeopardy like gangbusters, running a category; her momentum was stunted by a Daily Double miss. Josh played very well in the second half of the round and nearly overtook the lead—but not going all-in on DD3, and naming the New Brunswick city and not the Newfoundland one, meant that Adriana led going into Final by the exact amount that Josh left on the table.
Statistics after Double Jeopardy:
Adriana 19 correct 2 incorrect
Josh 19 correct 3 incorrect
Amy 11 correct 2 incorrect
Total number of unplayed clues this season: 18 (0 today).
Scores going into Final:
Adriana $14,400
Josh $12,200
Amy $6,200
Adriana was the only player correct in Final Jeopardy; she’s now a 3-day champion!
Tonight’s results:
Amy $6,200 – $2,500 = $3,700 (Who is Attila the hun?)
Josh $12,200 – $2,201 = $9,999 (Who is Cook?)
Adriana $14,400 + $11,000 = $25,400 (Who is Magellan Cook?) (3-day total: $71,600)
Other Miscellaneous Game Statistics:
Daily Double locations:
1) IT WAS THE ’60s, MAN $600 (clue #13)
Josh 3200 -3200 (Adriana 2600 Amy 600)
2) SCIENCE-Y BOOKS $2000 (clue #11)
Adriana 14000 -2000 (Amy 6600 Josh 1000)
3) NOTABLE BLACK AMERICANS $1200 (clue #17, $15200 left on board)
Josh 4200 +2000 (Adriana 13600 Amy 6600)
Overall Daily Double Efficiency for this game: -67
Clue Selection by Row, Before Daily Doubles Found:
J! Round:
Adriana 1 3 2 2 5
Amy 3
Josh 5 4 5 4 5 4 3*
DJ! Round:
Adriana 2 3 4 5 1 1 2 3 5* 5 1
Amy 3
Josh 4 4 2† 4 3*
† – selection in same category as Daily Double
Average Row of Clue Selection, Before Daily Doubles Found:
Adriana 2.81
Josh 3.92
Amy 3.00
Unplayed clues:
J! Round: None!
DJ! Round: None!
Total Left On Board: $0
Number of clues left unrevealed this season: 18 (0.09 per episode average), 0 Daily Doubles
Game Stats:
Adriana $16,400 Coryat, 19 correct, 2 incorrect, 33.33% in first on buzzer (19/57), 1/1 on rebound attempts (on 3 rebound opportunities)
Josh $14,600 Coryat, 19 correct, 3 incorrect, 31.58% in first on buzzer (18/57), 1/2 on rebound attempts (on 3 rebound opportunities)
Amy $6,200 Coryat, 11 correct, 2 incorrect, 22.81% in first on buzzer (13/57), 0/0 on rebound attempts (on 2 rebound opportunities)
Combined Coryat Score: $37,200
Lach Trash: $11,000 (on 9 Triple Stumpers)
Coryat lost to incorrect responses (less double-correct responses): $5,800
Lead Changes: 7
Times Tied: 3
Player Statistics:
Adriana Harmeyer, career statistics:
67 correct, 7 incorrect
8/8 on rebound attempts (on 17 rebound opportunities)
33.92% in first on buzzer (58/171)
3/5 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: $5,000)
2/3 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $17,267
Amy Yao, career statistics:
11 correct, 3 incorrect
0/0 on rebound attempts (on 2 rebound opportunities)
22.81% in first on buzzer (13/57)
0/0 on Daily Doubles
0/1 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $6,200
Josh Moss, career statistics:
19 correct, 4 incorrect
1/2 on rebound attempts (on 3 rebound opportunities)
31.58% in first on buzzer (18/57)
1/2 on Daily Doubles (Net Earned: -$1,200)
0/1 in Final Jeopardy
Average Coryat: $14,600
Adriana Harmeyer, to win:
4 games: 51.430%
5: 26.450%
6: 13.603%
7: 6.996%
8: 3.598%
Avg. streak: 4.059 games.
Andy’s Thoughts:
- I hate to keep saying this, but “Know Your Canada” is a thing—especially the difference between Saint John, New Brunswick and St. John’s, Newfoundland.
- Today’s box score will be linked to when posted by the show.
Final Jeopardy! wagering suggestions:
(Scores: Adriana $14,400 Josh $12,200 Amy $6,200)
Adriana: Standard cover bet over Josh is $10,001. (Actual bet: $11,000)
Amy: You can’t both cover Josh and win a Triple Stumper. Your two choices here are either “$5,800 or more” or “$1,799 or less”. (Actual bet: $2,500)
Josh: Standard cover bet over Amy is $201. (Actual bet: $2,201)
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I guessed “Who was the King of the Philippines?” I knew that’s where Cebu City is, but I didn’t associate it with Magellan, and I had never heard of “Lapulapu”. Even if I’d been right, I’d have been wrong—the show normally asks for names, not descriptions.
Sadly, I didn’t get this. My ironic nickname I’ve been given on trails (I’m a trail runner), is Magellan due to my habit of getting lost.
I believe I saw something about that 1521 incident in some program on PBS in the last year (though from our rural PBS affiliate, it may have originally aired years ago), but I did not recall which explorer it had been about. Hopefully, my memory is not THAT BAD, but that I was just not paying enough attention to it while viewing.
I knew that Cebu City was in the Philippines But did not come up with Magellan.
The year and the SEA-sounding location remind of Magellan. But hadn’t he died of a disease, rather than killed? But the clue says “is said to have killed”. Let it be Magellan, then.
Magellan was in Cebu in the Philippines to convert people to Christianity but Datu Lapulapu didn’t want to be converted. So he killed Magellan with a bamboo spear and kept his body for a war trophy.
Thank you; I confused his cause of death with Vasco da Gama’s, apparently.
My FJ! guess was Vasco da Gama. We may have had their circumstances confused since Vasco da Gama died of malaria 3 years after Magellan was killed.
Just a note that I began typing my “6:43” comment before the “6:33” comment had shown up.
For me, this was easy, but what is easy for me is NOT what is easy for you our others. We all come from different backgrounds. There are many finals that others find obvious that are a complete mystery to me.
Automatically connected Cebu to the Philippines because some of the sites that the division I’m assigned to here at work makes use of are in Cebu City. And I figured given the date it was Age of Exploration and one of the captains of exploration missions. The initial name that popped to mind was Cook, but then I looked at the year again, and knew that was far too early for Cook. Being in the 1520s, the next thing I thought of was “circumnavigation”, and that’s when I came up with Magellan. That entire thought process was about 10 seconds, tops. I think anyone good with dates in history should get this.
I didn’t know ANY of the elements of this Final Jeopardy. My Phillipines geography is basically limited to Manila, and, it’s history, besides the Marcos, limited to McArthur and his famous quote of “I shall retrun.) At least today’s contestants (as well as some of my fellow posters,) had a clue, though two of them had the wrong explorer.
I don’t feel like the other two contestants did very well with their incorrect responses since Attila the Hun was over 1,000 years earlier than the date in the clue and that I thought it was fairly well known that the death of Captain Cook was around the time of the founding of “America”, but they might just fall into the “put SOMETHING” advice. I feel I got closer with my wrong response (see earlier comment if curious).
Lisa;
Atilla was an very wrong response, given that we know now that the “answer” (clue) referred to an explorer rather than an conquerer. I’m giving credit to the two players who deduced that, though the explorer they chose was of the wrong era.
It took me ~20 seconds to even get to the Philippines (the city sounded African to me until I recalled where it was) and by the time I could think up anybody from that century, time had expired. Welp. I know I should have gotten this. I think I have brain fog.
Curious about Amy’s bet. Josh was obviously forcing Adriana to make a bet and get it right while ensuring he’d stay ahead of Amy – but his strategy doesn’t take any other perspective into account. This line of thinking is often erroneous, but fine here ($201 and $2201 have similar enough results). Amy’s $2500 also seems to be neglecting others’ bets. Whether she’s wrong or right, she needs the others to miss it, Josh to go all in, and Adriana to overbet… which she did. That was a risk Adriana didn’t need to take, and may be what facilitates the eventual end of her streak. Dissecting bets is so interesting!
Does anyone else think that Adrianna looks like the Claire character in Six Feet Under?
Not exactly, but since you mention it, I can see the resemblance.
I threw out a guess that I knew was wrong for FJ, just so I had something out there. Cebu City clearly seemed like a city in the Philippines, but I was nowhere near coming up with Magellan.
Adriana the Archivist continues her run, but took a last moment change to the correct FJ answer to survive. I thought it was very apropos that she J! Archive category. 🙂
Have a great weekend everyone and we’ll see if Adriana gets win #4 on Monday.
I’m surprised that no one even tried to GUESS ‘Boot Hill’. Was $1,600 just too much to risk on a guess? I was quite sure of that response, but maybe it’s a boomer thing.
I had also thought about saying I could not believe none of them knew ‘Buffalo Soldiers’, then today I was looking at a PBS TV listing and there in a title (of a show that was NOT new) was ‘Buffalo Soldiers’!
I knew Cebu is in the Philippines (went to school at ISM) but I knew the answer was Magellan thanks to the Animaniacs song “The Ballad of Magellan”
and they say that cartoons don’t teach you anything. With Weigel partnering with Warner Brothers Discovery for a “classic cartoon channel, I expect we can learn more from Yacko, Whacko, and, Dot.