Warning: This page contains spoilers for the January 30, 2026, 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 Mammals) for Friday, January 30, 2026 (Season 42, Game 105):
Wrangel Island, off the coast of Siberia, may have been the last place on Earth where this 2-word prehistoric mammal lived
(correct response beneath the contestants)
Today’s Jeopardy! contestants:
Paolo Pasco, a puzzle writer originally from San Diego, California
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Laura Faddah, a manager from Memphis, Tennessee
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Scott Riccardi, an engineer from Somerville, New Jersey
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Andy’s Pregame Thoughts:
My pregame thoughts today will do its best to give my thoughts as to the “what” and “why” for today’s game. So that the show can start the Tournament of Champions final on Monday, it has decided to schedule the post-quarterfinals exhibition game between the 3 seeded players—Scott Riccardi, Laura Faddah, and Paolo Pasco—for today. This game would have been taped prior to the 3 games that aired Tuesday through Thursday in order to give all 21 players in the tournament the same time on the buzzer. There are no stakes whatsoever in this game. (Whether I think it’s actually necessary is another story; I certainly used to think so, but the Unified Prediction Model data has changed my mind on this.)
That said: why was this game scheduled for today and not Tuesday? I think we can look to the vagaries of the calendar here, as the answer would have been obvious in past years, but not obvious in 2026. In past years, the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open—played this weekend in San Diego—has been played on Wednesday through Saturday, with third-round coverage airing on Friday on CBS and causing widespread preemptions on that network. However, with this being the “weird” year in the calendar where Labor Day is on September 7 and the TV schedules have to find an extra week to “catch up”, the NFL’s conference championship games aired a week earlier than the Farmers Insurance Open, the golf from Torrey Pines didn’t need to be played Wednesday through Saturday, instead being played in a normal Thursday to Sunday fashion—leading to there not being any pre-emptions to worry about. Unfortunately, the show appears to have been skittish about not wanting an important game pre-empted, so we have the situation we have here.
(Content continues below)
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Correct response: What is the woolly mammoth?
More information about Final Jeopardy:
(The following write-up is original content and is copyright 2026 The Jeopardy! Fan. It may not be copied without linked attribution back to this page.)
The famed elephant-like woolly mammoth once roamed the lands now in northern Asia and North Americ before populations began declining around 10,000 years ago. The last populations—as judged by fossil dating—were on St. Paul Island in Alaska until about 5,600 years ago and on Wrangel Island north of Siberia until about 4,000 years ago.
To me, this is the sort of relatively straightforward Final Jeopardy clue that these exhibition games have been known for.
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Game Recap:
In this fun exhibition game, Paolo Pasco had 22 correct, including two Daily Doubles, to take a runaway victory over Scott Riccardi and Laura Faddah.
Scores going into Final:
Paolo $29,000
Laura $8,800
Scott $5,200
Tonight’s results:
Scott $5,200 + $0 = $5,200 (What is the Woolly Mammoth?)
Laura $8,800 + $1,601 = $10,401 (What is a wooly mammoth?)
Paolo $29,000 + $1,118 = $30,118 (What is the woolly mammoth?) (Winner)
Andy’s Thoughts:
- The Unified Prediction Model has Scott’s and Paolo’s chances of ToC victory at about equal at this point.
- No wagering suggestions will be posted due to today’s runaway game.
- Today’s J!6 clues can be found at the monthly archive.
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