Final Jeopardy! on The Tournament of Champions Has Been Absolutely Brutal

Every dedicated Jeopardy! watcher knows that moment.

You just rattled off a few correct responses in a row. Perhaps you even ran a whole category! The thought occurs to you: I could be a champion. The Jeopardy! Anytime test is right there. Then all you’d need to do is ace the interview portion, fly to Burbank, and enter into the Jeopardy! canon. You’re the next Matt Amodio. You’re the next Amy Schneider. You’ve got this.

Well friend, sad to say you probably don’t got this. Jeopardy! is hard … very hard. And sometimes Jeopardy! likes to remind we casuals of just how competitive a contest it really is. The latest reminder has arrived in the form of this year’s Tournament of Champions. This is the largest ToC in the show’s history, featuring a record 27 contestants vying for a $250,000 prize and spot in the upcoming Jeopardy! Masters tournament.

While the questions (or “answers” in the show’s topsy-turvy jargon) always level up for the Tournament of Champions, it feels like they’ve really leveled up this time. Even many Jeopardy! fans, who are usually a hardy bunch, are starting to notice just how brutal the queries in this ToC is – particularly when it comes to Final Jeopardy!

This year’s Tournament of Champions began on Friday, Feb. 23 and at the time of this publishing has featured six games with a total of 18 contestants. Of those 18 contestants, only six have gotten the Final Jeopardy! answer correct (though it must be said that two contestants didn’t even make it to Final, having had negative funds after Double Jeopardy!). Final Jeopardy! is quite simply making mincemeat of these poor trivia nerds.

To get a better idea of just how rough Final Jeopardy! has been, we took a look through the recap archives at The Jeopardy! Fan. Presented here is every Final Jeopardy! in the Tournament of Champions thus far, its correct answer, and how many contestants got it right.

Feb. 23

Category: French Authors
Answer: Trained as a priest & a physician, in 1532 he published his first novel under the pen name Alcofribas Nasier
Correct Response: Who is François Rabelais?
Number of Correct Responses: 1

Feb. 26

Category: Art History
Answer: The Royal Academy of Arts has this man’s “La Fornarina” & in the 1800s the RAA’s love of him made some artists retreat to an earlier style
Correct Response: Who is Raphael?
Number of Correct Responses: 1

Feb. 27

Category: Military History
Answer: A prototype of this craft was deployed in August 1955; it made headlines in May 1960
Correct Response: What is the (Lockheed) U-2?
Number of Correct Responses: 3

Feb. 28

Category: 1950s Politics
Answer: In 1959 Bob Bartlett & Hiram Fong each won a coin flip to gain this alliterative title
Correct Response: What is senior senator?
Number of Correct Responses: 0

Feb. 29

Category: World Travel
Answer: The name of this service that began Nov. 14, 1994 echoes the Étoile du Nord, which linked Paris, Brussels & Amsterdam from 1927
Correct Response: What is Eurostar?
Number of Correct Responses: 1

March 1

Category: Countries of the World
Answer: Fearful of independence in 1975, around 120,000 of this country’s people, a third of the population, fled to the Netherlands
Correct Response: What is Suriname?
Number of Correct Responses: 0

Now that is a gauntlet if we’ve ever seen one. Granted, our European readers might be horrified to discover that the Feb. 29 query is considered hard but you’ve got to keep something in mind: we’ve never seen a train before in our lives over here on this side of the Atlantic. It’s also worth noting that Final Jeopardy! in the ToC has generated a remarkable 67% failure rate all through categories involving history, politics, and literature – usually strong subjects for the average Jeopardy! contestant.

Next time you have delusions of Jeopardy! grandeur, remember that the prize for any level of success on the show is eventual evisceration in the Tournament of Champions.