A contestant on the show faced off against Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings on Wednesday’s episode on a different trivia game show five years prior

Ken Jennings and this contestant have a past (
Image: Jeopardy!)

Ken Jennings came to face-to-face with an old competitor on Jeopardy! recently.

One-day champion John Liu, a marketing analyst from Santa Monica, California went up against Joseph Carlstein, a graduate student from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Jacqui Kaplan, a high school English teacher from Sandy Hook, Connecticut on Wednesday’s episode of the ABC trivia game show.

During the segment where the contestants tell their anecdotes, viewers found out the Jeopardy! host and John have met before.

Ken started off their conversation by noting, it was not the marketing guru’s first time on a game show. He continued to say how he did not recognize John, but he thought they had met before. John confirmed that by saying, “I have actually beaten you on TV before.”

 

Ken went “wow” and the audience reacted in a similar manner to the news. He asked John to elaborate where and John shared that it was a game show called Best Ever Trivia Show. John explained that he made it to the final round where he went head to head with an expert.

John shared that he beat Ken in a GSN game trivia show ( 
Image:
Jeopardy!)
“Trivia is a game of skill and luck, and I got lucky enough to beat you in five questions,” he said to Ken. He then jokingly responded, “As you can tell, it really still stings. It’s been hard for me to get over ,even though it’s years later.”

But Ken concluded by congratulating John on his “success there and on here.” Best Ever Trivia Show was a show on the Game Show Network. It was hosted by actress Sherri Shepherd and premiered on June 10, 2019 and ran until September 6, 2019 for 65 episodes. The show was renamed in March 2020 to Master Minds with new host Brooke Burns, replacing Sherri. Master Minds debuted on April 6 2020 and aired its last episode in November 2023. It’s unclear if the show is canceled.

The GSN trivia game show was called Best Ever Trivia Show and then Master Minds ( 
Image:
Jeopardy!)
The show (both versions), had three contestants facing off against three “trivia experts.” The experts included Ken, Muffy Marracco, Raj Dhuwalia, Arianna Haut, Ryan Chaffee, Susannah Brooks, David Schuchinski, Jonathan Corbblah, Lakedra Pam, Mark Labbett, and Monica Thieu.

Unfortunately for John on the October 30th episode of Jeopardy, he did not cement a second-day win. Joseph ended up becoming the new one day champion with an earnings of $16,001.