I hope we'll find that you made it so, Number One.

@Ryan: How would you rank that one among your biggest nail biters? I assume MacKenzie figured early in Double Jeopardy that she was out; at what point did you start to think it would most likely come down to Andy's FJ response?

Pretty early on in DJ (after Sam's Daily Doubles), I realized that's likely what it was going to come down to. The psychological impact is something I hadn't really factored into my wagering decision. Sweating out the last two matches was very nerve-racking, whereas an all-in wager in FJ would have had me immediately knowing whether or not I was moving on.

Did you know final?

i thought this was all filmed on the same day

when you talk sweat do you mean you sweated out that day or sweated out waiting to see results on tv since you didn't know yourself

did the people going after you know the scores they needed to beat? it seems like that'd give a strong advantage to those going last

I doubt anyone factors that in before they are put into that position. Only during yesterday’s DJ did I start thinking how that situation might feel like.

In order of paragraphs:
Yes
When contestants are done taping they are allowed to sit in the audience for the rest of the day
They don’t, that would be grossly unfair

Congratulations, Ryan! Looking forward to seeing how you did next week. (I feel like a reference to Douglas Adams' treatment of tense with respect to time travel in the Hitchhiker's series is due here).

There's no "seeding" in these tournaments, is there? The only thing I could think of is letting the previous highest scorer make the first choice, which seems a super minor advantage.

I think the semis are seeded in some way. Highest score in quarters will get opponents that did the worst in quarters. Not 100% sure on that.

Gl past Ryan, hopefully you run hot on DD and FJ categories.

False. Think the only hard and fast rule is that you won’t face anybody in the semis that you faced in the quarters.

Hmmm. Are we hoping for more apologies or not?

Been there done that, Ryan. It may be why my friends ganged up on me playing Monopoly one night, though it took until about 4am to bust me. Apparently I was a little too gleeful with my success earlier in the game.

Hope past Ryan kicks butt in the near future.

The quarterfinal matches were all filmed on the same day. The semis and finals were filmed the following day.

With COVID protocols in place, Jeopardy is using the Wheel of Fortune set right now as the "green room" for the contestants. On the day of the quarters, after doing morning prep, we were all kept on the WoF set until we were called for our match. Once we played, we were then placed in the audience from the remaining matches. Thus, while playing, we had no idea of the results of the previous games. After my match, I learned from the contestants from the first two games that I was third in the wild card standings, which meant I was in for a sweat during the last two games.


There is a seeding, and then producers use their discretion to select the matchups they think will play best on TV. The basic rules are:

1. Players who played against each other in their initial runs will be kept separated until the Finals (just Ryan B. and Sam for this TOC).

2. Players who play against each other in the quarters will not play against each other again in the semis (so I was not going to get matched up against Jennifer again, for example).

3. Players with the same name will be kept separated until the Finals, if possible (so they would try to keep me and Ryan B. from playing against each other as long as possible).

In the quarters, the top five seeds coming into the tournament (Jason, Jennifer, Karen, Mackenzie and Sam) based on number of games won and total winnings were all placed in separate games. The five women were placed in separate games as well.

For the semis, the top three QF winners (Ryan B., Sam and Jennifer) were separated. After that, they applied the rules above, and also placed the three remaining women (Jennifer, Karen and Veronica) in separate games as well. They haven't posted the matchups yet, so I won't reveal who I'm playing, but I will be on Monday's episode.

Did you guys get to spin the wheel during your downtime?

Well if RyanB, Sam, and Jennifer are all in different games...
And you can't play Jennifer (first round matchup) or RyanB (I'd never thought of that "same name" thing before, but that makes a lot of sense)... And the women are separated... And Sam can't play Veronica in the semis since they were in the same first round game...

Good luck against Sam and Karen on Monday!!

Per thejeopardyfan's stats, that seems like as good a draw on paper as you could've hoped for, but I'm sure variance is through the roof in games like this.

Based on the rules, the semi-finals look like this?
Sam, Karen, Ryan H
Ryan B, Veronica, X
Jennifer, Jason, Y

And the producers just had to decide where to put Kevin and Nibir?

Agree with this. It seems like about the best semi-final matchup our hero could get. If he gets past that, final will be tough though. But I suppose it always is.

Ryan, Ryan, Jason one-time.

Welp, that didn't go as planned. Missing DD1 definitely hurt, and then Sam was insanely fast on the buzzer. Pretty much knew the game was over once he converted DD3. Tried to throw out some wild guesses to prevent the runaway, but that didn't work either. Didn't really matter in the end, as this was a very easy final (especially for a TOC), so whoever had the lead going into FJ was going to win.

I think from a strategic standpoint you played it perfectly. Just unfortunate that you couldn’t come up with the answer for the first DD.

When DD3 was off the board it was pretty obvious that only a Hail Mary could help Karen or you.

Just making it to the ToC is a tremendous accomplishment. You did that and even advanced to the semis. Great job!

This. Great job, Ryan.

Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

Congratulations on your performance. You should be genuinely proud.

good run bro fwiw even my wife was rooting for u n I didn't tell her u were the hero till after she declared her allegiance.

Today’s game was somewhat frustrating. Started with Kevin apparently over adjusting to Ryan’s buzzer speed. Then Ryan displayed pretty questionable sportsmanship once he realized there wasn’t enough money on the board in DJ to overtake Veronica. Finally, the end was relatively anticlimactic once Veronica in the lead got a literature Nobel Price winners category for FJ.

Still happy for Veronica, she played a very solid quarterfinal and now another strong game.

what was the questionable sportsmanship?

I don't know that I'd use "questionable sportsmanship" to describe it, but the dude was visibly pissed off for the second half of the double jeopardy round and beyond. That can be interpreted in a variety of ways, I suppose. While it wasn't a great look, I don't think it was a sportsmanship problem per se.

I don't know if he was particularly congratulatory towards Veronica (or even the minimum amount), but I guess with COVID handshakes and such are off the table. I guess I'd count that, but I stopped paying attention after Veronica's correct response was shown.