Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions’ losers pen emotional messages after being ‘disappointed’
Three contestants went head-to-head to be declared the winner of Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. Two of the contestants reflected on their time on the show and praised the winner
Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions comes to an end
Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions crowned its winner.
The spinoff of the trivia game show came to an end on Thursday, Feb. 13 with viewers seeing archivist from West Lafayatte, Indiana, Adriana Harmeyer, customer support team lead from Burbank, California, Isaac Hirsch, and software engineer from Lionville, Pennsylavnia, Neilesh Vinjamuri go head-to-head to be declared a champion.
Adriana and Neilesh were neck-and-neck throughout the show. The software engineer was in the lead when it was time for the Final Jeopardy! round. The category was “Greek Myth” with the hint being: “Panoptes, meaning all-seeing, was the byname of this legendary figure, slain by Hermes while standing guard over Io.”
Everyone was correct with Neilesh adding $7,201 to take the game and the championship with 20,801. Neilesh won $250,000 in real money, while Adriana and Isaac both received $75,000. Neilesh is now headed to Jeopardy! Masters going against the best of the best.
Neilesh Vinjamuri was declared the winner
Viewers at home sent their congratulations to the software engineer from Pennsylvania, as well as Adriana and Isaac. The two contestants reflected in their time on the tournament and praised Neilesh in a Reddit thread.
Adriana admitted that it “wasn’t” her day but was “fortunate to have reached this point and shared the finals stage with two brilliant competitors.” She was impressed with Isaac’s daily doubles. Adriana then sent her congratulations to the winner.
She wrote: “Huge congratulations to Neilesh, who showed throughout this tournament why he’s a deserving champion. Both are Jeopardy greats for a reason! This whole tournament was an incredible experience, full of wonderful people.”
Isaac also wrote about his experience and and recalled that he was “locked in” during the last game but was “disappointed with the overall result.” He called Neilesh “insane” and praised his game. At the end, Isaac is just happy to go back home and watch Jeopardy! like a “regular person.”
Isaac wrote: “In case you can’t tell, Neilesh is absolutely ridiculous on the buzzer. Neilesh has deep pockets of knowledge and is unafraid to make big wagers, but his greatest asset is incredible buzzer speed. Adriana and I are pretty good at the buzzer, I think, but by the end of this he had me completely rethinking my strategy when it comes to buzzing in. I believe after this game Ken said I set the season record for buzz ATTEMPTS in a game with 50-something. It did not matter. He’s insane.”
He continued: “So that’s my praise for Neilesh as a player— he played a very complete finals and is an extremely deserving winner. I’d also like to shout out Adriana— while you witnessed me visibly losing my mind that I couldn’t ring in, she stayed cool the whole time. She’s unflappable, a great player, and also a very nice person.”
