A category featured on Tuesday night’s episode of “Jeopardy!” tested the contestants’ knowledge of church pews — and knowing about a historic building in Salt Lake City provided a slight advantage.
A historic Salt Lake building gets a ‘Jeopardy!’ shoutout
During the second half of Tuesday’s game, the three contestants faced five clues in a category called “Pew Pew Pew.”
The players were able to correctly answer four out of five. But one clue stumped all three — including the now 11-game “Jeopardy!” champ Harrison Whitaker.
The $2,000 clue: “This egg-shaped building’s original pews — enough to seat nearly 9,000 — were made of pine from the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains.”
Lyman Howard, a financial advisor from Mill Valley, California, buzzed in with the response, “What is the Mormon Temple?”
When the other two contestants couldn’t come up with anything, “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings provided the answer: the Tabernacle.
The Salt Lake building also received a shoutout — and stumped all three players — during a game last season, the Deseret News previously reported.
In a “Jeopardy!” episode that aired in late May, the following clue went unanswered: “A Baptist church with this biblical name opened in London in 1861, a few years before another faith opened one in Utah.”
“It’s also like the one in Salt Lake,” Jennings hinted after none of the contestants could come up with a response.
The Salt Lake Tabernacle was completed in 1867, and immediately became a gathering place for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The historic building, where the Tabernacle Choir performs its weekly “Music and the Spoken Word” broadcast, has also welcomed several U.S. presidents, world leaders, entertainers and musicians, as the Deseret News previously reported.
As a lifelong “Jeopardy!” fan, Jennings — a BYU grad who holds the all-time record for most “Jeopardy!” wins with a staggering 74 — said he’s seen several references to the Church of Jesus Christ over the years.
“When I was a contestant on the show, I wagered $3,800 one time on a Daily Double where the response turned out to be ‘Who is Brigham Young?‘” he told the Deseret News in 2013. “I remember wishing I’d wagered a lot more.”
Who is ‘Jeopardy!’ champ Harrison Whitaker?
Whitaker, a 27-year-old researcher originally from Terre Haute, Indiana, won Tuesday night’s game.
The victory marked his 11th consecutive win, and has brought his total on the show (so far) to more than $300,000.
Whitaker’s path to the 42nd season of “Jeopardy!” started this past summer when he was between jobs and tired of filling out applications.
In a break from the monotony, Whitaker, who recently earned a doctorate from England’s University of Cambridge, decided to start working on a different kind of application — one for “Jeopardy!”
“I just thought, ‘Well, if I have to do something that I can convince myself is productive, may as well be a ‘Jeopardy!’ application,’” Whitaker recently told the Indiana Statesman.
Now, he has become a standout player on the show.
His advice to aspiring contestants: keep learning.
“The biggest benefit you can give yourself, especially if you’re young, is to always pursue learning about things you’re interested in,” he told the Indiana Statesman. “You’ll never be able to learn stuff you don’t care about, but if you follow things that you do find interesting, that can just lead you to lots of fascinating places and teach you a lot about the world.”