Sayonara, Season 42

The Season 37 seven-game champion and 2022 Tournament of Champions quarterfinalist passed this past Tuesday, July 21, from brain cancer. She was 52. Her longtime employer, Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington, will hold a memorial service on August 10 at 1:00 PM.

My condolences to her family and friends.

Both effective in early August:

• Birmingham, AL: WIAT switches from CBS to The CW

• Albuquerque/Santa Fe, NM: KRQE switches from CBS to FOX

Just as was the case with WPLG leaving ABC a year ago, neither of these moves impacts Jeopardy!. KRQE has confirmed this, and I assume it to also be the case for WIAT unless and until an announcement from the station or TV listings say otherwise.

Firstly, if “reruns” is good enough for the show, then it’s certainly acceptable for this newsletter.

The syndicated program will show Weeks 18 through 24 of this past season — Champions Wildcard, the Tournament of Champions, and the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament. We’ll see Jeopardy! Masters Season 4 on ABC (8 PM Eastern / 7 Central) in late August and early September. And ESPN Jeopardy!, hosted by Joe Buck, premieres on Hulu this coming Friday, July 31; per contestant Jay Harris, all episodes will be released on that date.1

Here’s an image with all that information and some additional detail. It takes the generally accepted presumption that this year’s Masters, being of the same length and having the same field size as in 2024, will follow the same format. (Credit to u/Beneficial_Gate4682 on r/Jeopardy for the suggestion based on something similar produced by Robert Santoli for Wheel of Fortune.)

I got plenty of ‘em for ya.

Bringing in Jonathan Hugendubler’s first win from Season 41 and leaving out Matthew Riggle’s two thus far, only 54 defending champions lost in Season 42, over 179 games, for an average streak length of 3.315 wins. Here’s the distribution in bar chart form.

I take exception to what Ken said a week and a half ago regarding Caleb Groen — with Groen’s tenth win, Season 42 surpassed Season 38 with five super-champions, not equaled it. This is because I credit Matt Amodio to Season 37, as he won his tenth game before the 2021 summer hiatus. Indeed, using the tenth win as the benchmark, each of the last eleven seasons has produced a super-champion.

We’re now at twenty-three full seasons with “sky’s the limit” in effect, and twenty-three super-champions. At the midpoint of that period – February 2015, the middle of Season 31 – there had been only four, and two of them2 only reached the milestone in the prior year, following a period of more than eight seasons without one. It becomes even more stark when you make a division at the point of Harry Friedman’s retirement after Season 36; nine super-champions in the seventeen seasons before, fourteen in the six since.

Here’s what this looks like, with each division on the horizontal axis comprising a single season.

And the same chart for “classically defined super-champions,”3 those with six wins or more in regular play. Here, the upward shift between the two halves isn’t as stark; one-third (28) of the players in the first 11½ seasons of “sky’s the limit,” two-thirds (56) in the most recent 11½. Eight this year, with Paolo Pasco, Chris D’Angelo, and Peter McFerrin joining the five super-champions.

Across all 180 regular games, champions won $4,361,292, for an average of $24,229 per win. The consolation prizes for runners-up take us to a aggregate payout to first-time contestants of $5,261,292. And once you add in the winnings of the competitors in the four postseason competitions, Jeopardy! awarded a total of $6,646,292 on the syndicated program in 2025-26. The histogram of regular play payouts, ranging from Dan Laine’s $2,193 on June 9, all the way to Caleb Groen’s $60,0674 on July 15:

Celebrity Jeopardy! Season 4 distributed a total of $2,060,000 to the charities chosen by the eighteen returning contestants.

From here on, when a stat is presented as bold / italic, read that as “overall / regular play only.”

Triple Stumpers per game, Season 42: 8.78 / 8.62

Triple Stumpers per game, Season 41: 10.32 / 10.91

Games with ≥10 Triple Stumpers, Season 42: 87 (38.8%) / 65 (36.1%)

Games with ≥10 Triple Stumpers, Season 41: 125 (54.3%) / 107 (59.1%)

J! Archive has many more miscellaneous statistics, including on Coryat, correct and incorrect responses, rebounds, and Lach Trash.

Selected from J! Archive’s detailed statistics. (All games) (Regular play only)

• Success rate, both rounds combined: 66.1% / 65.9% (Season 41: 63.0% / 62.1%)

  • Jeopardy! round alone: 68.7% / 70.6% (Season 41: 62.2% / 63.0%)

  • Double Jeopardy! round alone: 64.8% / 63.6% (Season 41: 63.5% / 61.6%)

• Location, by row:

  • Jeopardy! round: 3.80 / 3.81 (Season 41: 3.94 / 3.92)

  • Double Jeopardy! round: 3.62 / 3.61 (Season 41: 3.60 / 3.60)

• Clue when found:

  • Jeopardy! round: 10.48 / 10.91 (Season 41: 11.21 / 11.70)

  • Double Jeopardy! round: 6.74 & 14.36 / 7.19 & 15.03 (Season 41: 7.88 & 16.43 / 7.91 & 16.34)

• For the fifth consecutive season, no Daily Double was left unplayed; I suspect that all three being uncovered in every game is now a requirement. It last happened on October 28, 2020. (And in fact, probably a necessary action with Second Chance now in play, to ensure equitable opportunity even among non-winners.)

• For the fourth straight season, no Daily Double was in the top row. We last saw one on April 28, 2022.

Again, selected from J! Archive’s detailed statistics.

• Success rate, Season 42: 42.3% / 43.9%

  • Season 41: 43.5% / 42.3%

• Players not reaching Final Jeopardy!, Season 42: 19 / 16 (8.26 / 8.89 per 100 games)

  • Season 41: 16 / 13 (6.96 / 7.18 per 100 games)

• Largest wager, Season 42: Jamie Ding, $44,200, April 1 (miss)

  • Season 41 overall: Will Yancey, $26,000, January 21 (get)

  • Season 41 regular play: Scott Riccardi, $24,000, July 4 (get)

• Unplayed clues: 11. For the whole season. All in regular play, of course. In the not too distant past, there were weeks with eleven or more clues not being seen before the end-of-round signal was heard. On this front, the show, and especially Ken, have improved tremendously in Season 42 even compared to the last three seasons. I plan to have a whole post during the hiatus showing just how much this has changed.

• Percentage of games won by women, regular play only: 11.7% (21 / 180). For the current “effective” ToC cycle, it’s 6.7% (9 / 134). Grace Biermann’s senses were not deceiving her, and I’m glad the show has also taken note of this. It’s possibly another topic to be tackled during the break.

• Final Jeopardy! responses containing “extraneous material,” aka “shout-outs”: 26.0% / 28.2%. There is admittedly some subjectivity in this count; some non-responsive writings, such as messages to other players, I’ve elected not to count. And as I’ve said before in this newsletter, simply considering such material as part of the response given simply isn’t viable as a way to combat this, should the show even wish to do so.

• And last, but not least — clues referencing J.K. Rowling or her works: 13. That’s down from 26 last season and 20 in 2023-24.

In addition to posts mentioned above, there’ll be geographical breakdowns similar to last summer. Masters will surely give me occasion to write. And likely after that concludes, a Season 43 preview, plus looks at any broadcast changes and major preemption threats.