‘Jeopardy!’ Fan-Favorite Drew Goins Returns for Second Chance — Did He Get Taylor Swift Redemption?

Jeopardy!, Inc.

After Drew Goins’ initial appearance in September 2024, fans clamored to see him return to Jeopardy!, and that’s exactly what happened in the second and final week of the Second Chance Tournament. In fact, he even got a bit of redemption after he previously missed out on a Taylor Swift question.

Goins, a journalist from Honolulu, Hawai’i, faced off against Steve Miller, a retired medical transcriptionist from Eugene, Oregon, and Jonquil Garrick-Reynolds, a theatrical wardrobe technician from Ottawa, Ontario. The three hoped to advance to the January 9 finals and then join Will Yancey in the Champions Wildcard event (beginning January 13).

Early on, Goins had control of the game, leading at both breaks in the Jeopardy! round and doubling his score with the first Daily Double; in “Historic History,” he correctly answered, “The 1973 Arab-Israeli War occurred during these 2 periods, one Jewish & one Islamic, both of which involve fasting” (What are Ramadan and Yom Kippur?).

It was during his interview in the middle of the first round that host Ken Jennings asked about a “run-in with some angry Swifties” after his first episode. “I got a Taylor Swift question wrong, went home worried that the Swifties would come rip me out of my bed one night, but it turns out the angry Swiftie was my brother, who’s here today,” Goins shared. “The night before taping, he had prepared an entire practice board for me,” and while the goal may have been to just get through it and he had more stuff to study, “It was entirely Taylor Swift.” Jennings suggested he might have a second chance here, since “That’s what Second Chance is for.”

Well, Goins certainly did, with the last clue of the Jeopardy! round in Albums reading (and getting a laugh): “In 2014 Taylor Swift gave us this album named for a different year.” Goins rang in and excitedly answered, “What is 1989?” Jennings said in response, “Redemption for Drew. That is correct. And the crowd goes wild.”

While Goins was leading 11,600 to Miller’s 3,400 and Garrick-Reynolds’ 2,600 heading into Double! Jeopardy, it wasn’t a runaway for him. That was in part due to Miller’s play in this round, including doubling his score with the second Daily Double of the game. In “Alliteration on the Map,” he correctly answered, “What is Corpus Christi?” for “Mustang & Padre Islands lie between this Texas town & the Gulf of Mexico.” That gave him 16,400 to Goins’ 18,800 at the time. But Goins got the third Daily Double and still led going into Final Jeopardy! with 33,400 to Miller’s 18,400 and Garrick-Reynolds’ 9,800.

All three players correctly answered, in “21st Century Business,” with “What is Tinder?” for the clue, “An early version of this app was called Matchbox, but that name was too similar to another company that offered the same service.” Goins advanced with the second-highest winning total all season, 36,801.

“Glad to see drew is finally out of the woods with that epic redemption arc. no more bad blood from the angry swifties!” one fan wrote on the Reddit thread after the episode, and Goins replied, “’Bad Blood’! I studied! I get that!”

Jeopardy! player Sam Cameron chimed in to the thread to share his thoughts from the green room of the taping. “This was such a crackerjack match to watch,” he wrote, “and it did not disappoint upon a rewatch. The gutsy Daily Double payoffs, the too-perfect Taylor Swift clue – Steve and Jonquil played SO well and kept it competitive right through the end, but it’s tough to stop the kind of freight train that Drew was driving this game. Serious congrats to all three players, what a fantastic way to kick off the week!”

Player Zoe Grobman, also on this week’s schedule, added, “Jonquil was the first competitor I met, while waiting for the elevator at the hotel. She’s an absolute sweetheart and razor sharp, the type of person who makes you immediately root for her. I remembered Steve from his original game. He joined us for last weeks tapings the day before as well. Drew I hadn’t met before tape day but he quickly won everyone over with his infectious energy. In other words, when they announced today’s competitors I felt bad that only one of them could win.”

Grobman also shared that the games were taped on Election Day. “There was a nervous energy in the air. It was honestly a huge relief for us to have to turn off our phones and entertain each other instead of doomscrolling online,” she wrote. “During FJ I quipped in the green room that you want to make sure to spell Tinder correctly to avoid the confusion with…erm…a different app, so of course we all enjoyed seeing Drew leave out the E – but what an amazing Fire Symbol! He was immediately joking about it himself when he came back to the green room. A great game by all three players.”

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