For a while there, it looked like Jeopardy! Season 40 was a bit cursed. As good as they were, five-day champions remained just that — worthy champs like Alison Betts and Amy Hummel just couldn’t get past the five-win mark.
Then, Adriana Harmeyer came along and burst through that five-game ceiling again and again (and again and again and… you get it). Now, the newest reigning champ, Survivor alum Drew Basile, is here to prove that the supposed Season 40 curse is gone for good.
On Wednesday’s (June 26) episode, Basile faced off against Natalie Miliano, a manufacturing engineer manager from Maine, and Maryl Harris, a study operations manager from Philadelphia. Coming into the evening, Basile boasted five consecutive wins with a cash total of $91,283. With mere inches to go before making it a six-figure sum, Basile surely brought his A-game … and it paid off.
In the first round, the new contenders managed to keep it interesting — particularly Harris, who got 10 correct to Basile’s 12 and had fewer incorrect answers to boot. Plus, she had this round’s Daily Double and knew that Stetson called his all-weather hat “The Boss of the Plains.” Going into Double Jeopardy, then, the scores were neck and neck. Basile had $5,000, Harris had $4,800, and Miliano was still alive with $2,200.
Double Jeopardy is where Basile made his stand, though. By finding both Daily Doubles, wagering generously on them, and getting them correct (he knew that the Pax Romana began with Augustus Caesar and that the German word for “synthetic” is “erzatz”), he earned just enough in the round to secure a runaway, however slight.
Heading into Final Jeopardy, the writing was on the wall as Basile had $20,200 to Harris’ $10,000 and Miliano’s $6,200.
Icing on the cake? Basile was also the only one who knew the correct answer to Final Jeopardy, even if he won just $118 for that effort. In the category “Literature,” the clue was: “The British Library says of this 19th c. man, ‘one of his most famous poems…is a warning about the arrogance of great leaders.’” While Harris guessed Coleridge and Miliano guessed Blake, Basile had the right answer with Percy Bysshe Shelley.
At that, the now-six-day champion has a whopping $111,601, and we can all consider the “curse” fully and forever broken.
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