The Jeopardy! producers took to Inside Jeopardy! today to make a pair of bombshell announcements.
Firstly, Michael Davies admitted that Stella Trout’s response on her crucial Daily Double in Game 2 of Champions Wildcard (On a clue that read “Within the Department of the Interior, this is the country’s oldest conservation agency”, she responded “What is the National Park Service”; the show wanted “What is the Fish and Wildlife Service”?) could have been judged as correct; thus, she will be given a space in the 2027 Tournament of Champions. This is the first official “returning a player due to a game error” since Vincent Valenzuela in 2018.
Secondly, the 18 players for the 2026 Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament have been unveiled, for the tournament to take place immediately following the Tournament of Champions. The format has also been revealed, with 6 quarterfinals (and 3 wildcards) feeding into 3 semifinals and a “first to two wins” final.
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Those players are:
Returning from Jeopardy! Masters: Isaac Hirsch, Matt Amodio, Roger Craig, Adriana Harmeyer, Andrew He. (Neilesh Vinjamuri and Brad Rutter have declined to participate this year.)
From Season 41’s postseason: Mehal Shah, Drew Goins, Will Yancey, Drew Basile, Alison Betts.
From other recent past seasons: Eric Ahasic, Long Nguyen, Liz Feltner.
And from the pre-Davies era: Karen Farrell, Veronica Vichit-Vadakan, Josh Hill, Jennifer Giles, Tom Cubbage.
Other notables declining their invitation this year were Mattea Roach, Julia Collins, and Cris Pannullo.
Along with this format change, I will be posting a “6 quarterfinal 3 wildcard” addendum to my “Wild Card” betting strategy page. A pre-taping tournament preview will be posted on Sunday.
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Can someone post the answer, her question that is now considered correct, and what the official correct question? Thanks.
The “Returning To The Show” page linked above has the information.
BDHamren, FYI: the LINK to the “Returning To The Show” page Andy references appears as “returning a player due to a game error” at the end of the paragraph that begins with “Firstly”. “Returning To The Show” is the title of the page that link takes you to.
Disappointed that Cris Pannullo and Brad Rutter declined to play. I always enjoyed watching them. Just curious why Ben Chan wasn’t invited. I still think he got robbed on that final Jeopardy clue.
Ben was invited to a previous one (and, barring a player coming back from Masters, the show hasn’t issued repeat invites yet to this tournament.
This will be fun and I do hope to see Cris come back sometime. I very much enjoyed his 21 game run when it happened!
And wow to the Stella Trout news. Glad that she’ll be in the next ToC! 🙂
I found it helpful to listen to the latest Inside Jeopardy podcast to understand more fully the answer/question involving the Stella Trout decision.