‘Jeopardy’ Champ’s Winning Streak Ends After Brutal Daily Double Loss

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Jeopardy‘s September 18, 2024 episode.]

Jeopardy‘s two-day champ ended their winning streak with a difficult loss. The downturn began with an incorrect Daily Double answer, and the player never truly recovered from there.

Playing in the episode were returning champ Aiden Orzech, a teacher from Thornhill, Ontario, whose two-day winnings total was $49,599; Chris Lindsay, an attorney from Carmel, California; and Sam Neuman, a global communications specialist from New York City.

Aiden had a difficult start, with his score at the first commercial break being -$600. Chris had -$400, and Sam was in the lead with $2,600. Aiden turned things around in the next round, however, ending with $3,000 vs. Chris’ $200 and Sam’s $3,600. Aiden had increased his score by $2,000 in this round with the first Daily Double, but it’s the second Daily Double that did him in.

Aiden dropped $3,000 from his score of $5,000 in the second Daily Double, dropping him into second place behind Sam, who had $5,600 at that point. Sam increased their lead to $9,800 with the third Daily Double, but it wasn’t a runaway game heading into Final Jeopardy.

Aiden and Chris were nearly tied and fighting to pull out ahead of each other and possibly unseat Sam from first place. The scores were Sam with $10,200, Chris with $5,800 and Aiden with $5,200. Chris was the only one who answered Final Jeopardy correctly. The final bets allowed Chris to stage an unexpected win. His final score was $11,600, Sam’s was $8,780, and Aiden had bet it all, resulting in his $0 final score.

The Final Jeopardy category was “The Movies.” The clue: “Hewlett-Packard’s first big customer was Walt Disney, who purchased special sound equipment for the making & showing of this film.” The answer: “What is Fantasia?”

On the Reddit discussion board for the episode, fans remarked on the tough game.

“Oof, this was a rough episode,” one wrote.

“Tough boards today. And also, this is so far not shaping up to be the start of the season that we expect,” said another.

There were some head-scratching moments for viewers, however, like when the players didn’t recognize a photo of singer Kate Bush in one of the clues. Fans on X (aka Twitter) called it a “slow” game. See fan reactions to the episode below.

Slow, slow game. #Jeopardy pic.twitter.com/j3Rq0NggHi

— AC  (@ACinPhilly) September 18, 2024

Anyone else think they would be kicking butt if they were a contestant on tonight’s #jeopardy

— Aloha (@AlohaAlwayz) September 18, 2024

Good for Sam for getting the easy peasy DD in double #Jeopardy

— Franny Di (@FrannyDiP) September 18, 2024

KATE BUSH QUESTION ON JEOPARDY AND NONE OF YOU KNEW HER?!?!! GET OUT!!!!

— Carina (@CarinaMegan) September 18, 2024

I always feel weird when they play the board bottom-up. I’m still getting warmed up when they do the hard clues. #Jeopardy

— Lindsay “Ashley” Wilcox (@lndsyloves) September 18, 2024