“Jeopardy!” is currently re-airing its biggest tournament in the show’s history — the “Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time” tournament that aired in January and drew close to 15 million viewers per episode.
The tournament originally ran as four 60-minute episodes, but this time around, producers have edited the tournament into eight 30-minute shows that will run through May 14.
Here are some highlights from the first episode that aired Tuesday night.
A clue about Utah
Ken Jennings, a Brigham Young University graduate, was a software engineer in Salt Lake City when he had his initial run on the show. So it was fitting that he answered the following clue in a category about national parks:
“Here’s a view of this Utah national park through one of the sandstone features for which it is named.”
The answer: “Arches.”
A rarely missed question
In the first round of this episode, not a single clue was missed — a feat host Alex Trebek pointed out as the three contestants fist bumped each other in congratulations.
The first miss of the game came right at the start of the second round, when Brad Rutter landed on a Daily Double.
The clue: “We understood each other…and let the others prattle,” said Catherine the Great of this longtime adviser and less longtime lover.”
Rutter, who wagered all of his 4,000 points on the question, failed to come up with the correct response: Grigory Potemkin.
Jennings’ daring wager
The second Daily Double of the round went to Jennings. It was a wordplay clue in a category called “Before, During and After.” Although Jennings is typically strong when it comes to wordplay questions, he told Trebek: “This is not where I feel comfortable, but I am going to go all in.”
He wagered all 8,600 points on the following clue: Louisiana Purchase explorers, joined by LBJ’s secretary of defense and a ‘golden boy’ dramatist.”
Jennings was visibly conflicted and took a noticeably long pause before eventually coming up with the correct response: “What is Lewis and Clark Clifford Odets?”
“Jeopardy!” recently released a video of Jennings, James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter re-watching and commenting on that moment.
In the video, Jennings explained the pause: “So this whole pause, I’m thinking it’s (golden boy dramatist) William Inge, and I can’t work backwards, and then I almost say Clifford Inge.”
In the video, Jennings then laughs as he watches his mouth start to stay “Inge.”
“Last minute switch to Odets,” he says. “That’s a nerve-wracking situation.”
Rutter, who came in last during the tournament, joked about Jennings’ daring wager: “You gotta do it, Ken. Yeah, that’s a good move. I would’ve bet all of my zero dollars there.”