After winning her first “Jeopardy!” game, 23-year-old Mattea Roach immediately knew what she was going to do with her $32,000 winnings: pay off her student debt.
“I’m hoping to go back to school,” she said after the victory. “So there will be more. But now I start from zero.”
Several days later, and Roach has even more to put toward her education. The tutor from Halifax, Nova Scotia, has earned $534,984 over 22 games — and she’s still going strong. Roach is now the fourth contestant this season to reach at least 10 victories — the first time that has happened in “Jeopardy!” history, according to the show.
She’s also secured a spot in the “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions, where she will compete alongside some of the most impressive contestants in the show’s history, including 40-game winner Amy Schneider and 38-game winner Matt Amodio.
That makes four double-digit champs in one season. This has never happened before in Jeopardy! history! pic.twitter.com/fLfYxU6FHe
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) April 19, 2022
“I will probably lose to them. But it will be an honor to lose to them,” Roach told “Jeopardy!” “I’ll try my best, but, I don’t know, 40 and 38, that streak is a long way away.”
The tournament is expected to air in November.
So far during her “Jeopardy!” run, Roach has correctly answered 608 clues, and missed 56— including six Final Jeopardy questions and six Daily Doubles, according to “Jeopardy!” archives on thejeopardyfan.com.
Here are 12 clues Roach has missed. Can you answer them? (All answers are at the bottom).
- Marie Tharp’s discovery of mid-ocean ridges would support continental drift and this theory of continents moving on slabs of rock.
- Smaller than it sounds, this Illinois place was designated “Home of Superman” in 1972.
- Patented in 1955, it did not go over well in the high-end fashion world, but the then-new aerospace industry found it very useful.
- The orphaned future Queen Elizabeth I was devoted to this stepmother who died two days before Elizabeth’s 15th birthday.
- Befitting the title, Antoine Galland, the first Western translator of this collection, worked on it only “after dinner.”
- Old maps depicting what’s now this 125,000-square-mile country labeled the area with the French word for “teeth.”
- The title character of this film has the same name as the Roman goddess of the dawn.
- Adetokunbo, “the crown has returned from overseas”, is fitting for the Adetokunbo family who left Nigeria for this country in 1991.
- These items were tolled, closed & extinguished in an old Catholic ceremony.
- More than 20,000 acres and with at least 100 artesian springs, Al-Ahsa Oasis is this nation’s largest natural oasis.
- Two linked lines of verse (hint: “P” is the exact middle letter in each response).
- The first law of this says that the total energy of a system plus its surroundings is conserved.
Beat 4-game curse: ✅
— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) April 12, 2022
Earn spot in Tournament of Champions: ✅
Congrats, Mattea! pic.twitter.com/GOcafS0hR1
Roach will attempt to secure her 23rd victory Thursday night.
(1. plate tectonics; 2. Metropolis; 3. velcro; 4. Catherine Parr; 5. “The Thousand and One Nights”; 6. Côte d’Ivoire; 7. “Sleeping Beauty”; 8. Greece; 9. bell, book and candle; 10. Saudi Arabia; 11. couplet; 12. the first law of thermodynamics.)