Despite entering the game show’s final round trailing far behind the first-place contestant, 23-year-old Toronto tutor Mattea Roach managed to clinch yet another “Jeopardy!” win Thursday night.
The Canadian has won 23 games, making her one of the show’s youngest champions to crack the all-time top 10 “Jeopardy!” winning streaks.
The “Final Jeopardy!” question for Roach and the contestants on Thursday was: “A black-and-white newsreel in this film begins: ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree’.”
Roach wagered $12,999 and won with the answer, “What is Citizen Kane?”
Key moments: Roach played Thursday night against Sarah Snider, a middle school teacher from Fishers, Indiana and TJ Lovejoy, a mortgage lender from Chandler, Arizona.
Snider pulled ahead by almost $4,000 before the first commercial break, leaving Roach in second place at $12,000.
Snider kept a lead of almost $3,000 by the end of the first round and continued to pull ahead in the second.
By the final round, Snider had earned a lead of almost $10,000.
When Roach revealed her answer to “Final Jeopardy!,” she wrote: “If this is it, thanks for the fun!”
Her answer turned out to be correct, and it earned almost $13,000 and closed the gap between her and Snider.
Snider failed to come up with the correct answer and Roach pulled ahead for a win on the final question.
Her winning stats: roach’s cumulative winnings now total more than $560,000 (US), as of her 23rd game.
She plays again on Friday, facing off against Betsy Hobbs, a senior operations manager from Thornton, Illinois, and Danielle Maurer, a digital marketing manager from Peachtree Corners, Georgia.
Roach has a 91-per-cent accuracy rate, according to “Jeopardy!” daily scores.
She is the show’s most successful Canadian player.
Roach has responded to more than 600 questions and averaged roughly 28 correct responses per game, says “Jeopardy!”
After Thursday’s game, she has won the ninth highest amount of prize money in “Jeopardy!” history.
Roach is eligible to qualify for the show’s “Tournament of Champions,” facing off against the most successful players in “Jeopardy!,” including 38-game champ Matt Amodio and 40-game winner Amy Schneider.
Personal life and queer representation: Roach lives in Toronto and is a graduate from the University of Toronto. She works as a tutor and was raised in Halifax, NS
The “Jeopardy!” champ says the only reason she may be able to afford a home in Canada’s sky-high housing market is due to her winnings from her on the game show
Some American networks have seemingly latched on to Roach’s sexual orientation, referring to her as the “lesbian tutor” on the popular TV show. People online were quick to jump to support her, something she says she was grateful for.
Roach says she’s happy to be part of a recent influx of LGBTQ contestants, although she acknowledged that the US networks’ tweets about her were clumsy. “I think it is relevant to my ‘Jeopardy!’ run, not because it has anything to do with my ability to play the game, but because, I think it’s part of a larger story regarding queer and trans contestants on this season.”
The list includes Amy Schneider, who had a 40-game winning streak, and said in a series of tweets last year that she was proud to be a queer, transgender woman and wanted people to know, but that it represented but a small portion of her identity.
Schneider had one of the longest winning streaks on the show.
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