To be declared the winner of the 2025 “Jeopardy!” Tournament of Champions — and to claim the $250,000 prize — a contestant had to successfully navigate through the competitive quarterfinals and semifinals, and then be the first to win three games in the final round.
On Thursday night, that distinction went to Neilesh Vinjamuri, a software engineer from Lionville, Pennsylvania, who won three “Jeopardy!” games last year.
But had it not been for an unexpected scoring change near the end of the game, the outcome could’ve been substantially different.
What happened during the ‘Jeopardy!’ Tournament of Champions finals?
Vinjamuri had the greatest advantage going into Thursday’s game, with two wins under his belt. His fellow competitors, Adriana Harmeyer and Isaac Hirsch, each had one.
Vinjamuri pulled ahead early, concluding the first round with $6,600 — Hirsch, in second place at the time, had $3,400, as The Jeopardy Fan reported.
But Vinjamuri lost some momentum in the second round when he wagered $5,000 on the following Daily Double clue and missed, per “Jeopardy!” archives: ”The New Mexico State Capitol is at 490 Old this route blazed in 1821″ (the answer: Santa Fe Trail).
Harmeyer, meanwhile, added $4,000 to her total when she answered the other Daily Double correctly: “In the 1860s, the New Lebanon community in New York became a hub for ladder-back chairs named for this religious group” (the answer: Shaker).
The game took an unexpected turn near the end, though, when host Ken Jennings abruptly interrupted a contestant to reveal that a previous response he’d deemed correct from Harmeyer was actually wrong due to a mispronunciation.
The $1,600 clue, under the category “Pop Culture Jeopardy!”, featured a picture of an actor: “She was the mother on ‘How I Met Your Mother,’ and the daughter of Carmine Falcone on the HBO show, ‘The Penguin.’”
Harmeyer had responded with “Miloti,” for actor Cristina Milioti, leaving out one of the syllables, as TV Insider reported. At the time, Jennings deemed the response correct and the game moved forward.
When Jennings later became informed of his error, he announced the score change and $3,200 was taken from Harmeyer’s score (the $1,600 she got when it was deemed correct, plus another $1,600 for missing the clue).
Going into the Final Jeopardy round, Harmeyer was in second place with $10,400, and Vinjamuri was in the lead with $13,600. The difference between the two was $3,200 — the exact amount Harmeyer lost over the “How I Met Your Mother” clue.
All three contestants correctly answered the Final Jeopardy clue: “Panoptes, meaning all-seeing, was the byname of this legendary figure, slain by Hermes while standing guard over Io.”
With his response of “Argos,” Vinjamuri added $7,201 to his score to bring his grand total to $20,801. Harmeyer added $6,000 to her score and ended with $16,400. But if she had been tied with Vinjamuri going into Final Jeopardy, the wagers would’ve likely been different — and a tiebreaker could’ve potentially been needed.
In a Reddit thread discussing the game, Harmeyer said she’ll never forget her error.
“I actually do know her name,” Harmeyer wrote on Reddit. “I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking about why it came out that way.”
The contestant from West Lafayette, Indiana, also shared her gratitude for being part of the prestigious tournament.
“It wasn’t my day, it wasn’t my tournament, but I feel so fortunate to have reached this point and shared the finals stage with two brilliant competitors,” Harmeyer wrote. “Isaac is so good at this and pulled out some truly impressive daily doubles and finals. Huge congratulations to Neilesh, who showed throughout this tournament why he’s a deserving champion. Both are Jeopardy greats for a reason! This whole tournament was an incredible experience, full of wonderful people.”
With his victory, Vinjamuri earns a spot in the next “Jeopardy!” Masters tournament.
Both Harmeyer and Hirsch, who tied for second place overall in the Tournament of Champions with one win each, walked away with $75,000.
6 clues that stumped all 3 ‘Jeopardy!’ Tournament of Champions contestants
During Thursday’s game, the following clues stumped all three contestants, per “Jeopardy!” archives (answers are at the very bottom):
- Two-word cities: “This Chilean city, the largest on the Strait of Magellan, has been enriched by nearby oil fields.”
- Twentieth-century bookshelf: “OBOS is short for this title of a women’s health book published starting in the ’70s.”
- Civil War places: “A Union victory in the 1864 Battle of this city on the Cumberland River ended Southern resistance in Tennessee.”
- Civil War places: The promontory known as this “Ridge” at the Battle of Gettysburg was the objective of Pickett’s Charge.
- Art for art’s sake: “Borrowed from French, it’s the term for Louise Nevelson’s form of sculpture in joining everyday objects in unusual combinations.”
- Pop Culture Jeopardy!: “Joshua Jackson and Phillipa Soo star in this ABC medical drama aboard a luxury cruise ship with a mythic name.”
Answers: 1. Punta Arenas; 2. Our Bodies, Ourselves; 3. Nashville; 4. Cemetery Ridge; 5. assemblage; 6. “Doctor Odyssey”