[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the January 13 episode of Jeopardy!]
Sometimes, all it takes is one letter to end up losing out on Jeopardy!, and that’s exactly what happened with Paul Clauson as the Champions Wildcard tournament got underway. (The tournament features 15 champions who missed out on qualifying for the Tournament of Champions during its initial run and are competing for its last spot.)
Clauson, a tax analyst from Madison Heights, Michigan, faced off against Jen Feldman, a high school teacher from Brooklyn, New York, and Will Yancey, a lecturer of history from Banquete, Texas.
While Clauson was leading with 4,600 heading into the Double Jeopardy! round (Feldman had 2,800 and Yancey 2,600), he lost all his 3,400 by being just off by a letter in his response for a (true) Daily Double (the second one found in the game). In People of the Book, the clue read: “Paralyzed Clifford, amorous Constance, manly Oliver.” Clauson answered with, “Lady Chatterley’s Lovers,” whereas the correct response was Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Yancey had 7,800, and Feldman 4,400 at the time. In the end, Yancey advanced with 13,800. Clauson (8,000, doubling his score heading into Final Jeopardy and Feldman (8,200, losing 2,000 with an incorrect response) will have to see if their scores are enough to secure a spot (the top four non-winners with the highest money totals advance to the semifinals as wildcards.).
Zoe Grobman, who competed in the Second Chance Tournament (and came in second to Enzo Cunanan in the January 7 game) cheered on Yancey’s win and sympathized with Clauson over his error in that Daily Double response in the Reddit thread for this episode. “Obviously I’m biased towards the Second Chancers, but I’m real glad to see Will pull out the win here. Shows that us Second Chancers are able to hang with the big leagues!” she wrote.
“Paul, if you see this, I feel for you so much, and I know firsthand how much it stings to have a small mispronunciation cost you the win (I’ll be ruing Amontillado til the day I die),” Grobman continued. “You put up a phenomenal performance though, and going big on the DDs was absolutely the right move even if it didn’t pay off. You should be proud of fighting back not once but twice from TDD misses.”
Clauson chimed in and thanked Grobman for her words. “No regrets on the aggressive DD strategy – I knew how tough the competition would be,” he shared. “I had Lady Chatterley’s Lover on my flashcards but I think I psyched myself out because of the multiple listed characters. That potentially combined with a Michigan linguistic quirk of adding unnecessary s’s to the ends of brands and titles, lol.”
One fan wrote that “they really did Paul dirty on that DD. At no point did they explain that the category was looking for specifically for the book title,” but another chimed in with, “Having ‘amorous Constance’ in the clue is what made his response incorrect beyond the issue with the title. But yes, they should explain they’re looking for the book title.” Clauson also commented on this thread, writing, “Would’ve known it had I read the book! Or the full Wikipedia page,” with the grinning face with sweat emoji.
Grobman also commented on the lack of diversity in the Champions Wildcard tournament. “I do think it’s important to point out that this tournament has only 1 woman and 14 men (12 of whom are white). Obviously in this particular case it’s simply because of how the games won stats fell, but I do think this lack of diversity highlights the importance of Jeopardy! continuing its work in embracing diverse contestants and a diverse trivia canon,” she wrote.
In response, Clauson noted that it wasn’t lost on the competitors: “The clear lack of diversity smacked us all in the face, but it was how the chips fell for this particular tournament. Lots more ladies representing in the ToC though!”
What did you think of that Daily Double clue? Let us know in the comments section below.
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