‘Jeopardy!’ Champ Celeste DiNucci on How Show Has Changed as She Returns After 10 Years

Martin Holmes March 25, 2024, 10:29 am

Celeste DiNucci on Jeopardy! — Jeopardy, Inc!

Jeopardy!‘s 2007 Tournament of Champions winner, Celeste DiNucci, will return to the Alex Trebek Stage today (Monday, March 25) for the first time in a decade.

DiNucci, a music presenter for the nonprofit organization Ars Nova Workshop, first appeared on the iconic game show in 2006, where she went on a five-game winning streak, bagging herself $84,601. This landed her a spot in the 2007 TOC, which she went on to win, beating out tough opponents in Cliff Galiher and Doug Hicton.

The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania native last appeared on Jeopardy! in 2014, where she competed in the Battle of the Decades competition. Despite her previous success, DiNucci said she never expected to receive an invite to the currently airing Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament.

“It’s not like I’d been keeping up with things,” DiNucci told The Inquirer. “I went to the Jeopardy! archives and just started playing a bunch of old games, just to get back into the rhythm of the phrasing and remind myself of things, like, ‘It was [Jacques] Offenbach who wrote The Tales of Hoffmann.’”

While the format of Jeopardy! has remained relatively the same over the past ten years, the crew has changed significantly, something DiNucci noted in an interview with City Cast Philly.

“The first three times that I was on, the crew there was basically the same… so when I went back, it was like seeing old friends, you know?” she explained. “This time, there was nobody there that I knew — except for one guy, Mitch, the guy that puts your mic pack on.”

Ken Jennings and Celeste DiNucci on Jeopardy!

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Another major difference is the host. The late Alex Trebek helmed the show back when DiNucci competed, but the role now belongs to former G.O.A.T. contestant Ken Jennings.

“I think he’s doing actually a very good job — a better job than I expected that he would,” DiNucci said of Jennings’ hosting skills. “I’ve conversed with Ken in other settings and other circumstances, and it’s good to see how comfortable and how at ease he is in this role.”

She added, “I think that he’s able to joke with the contestants in a way just because he’s been there, you know? It’s very different from Alex, but it’s good.”

DiNucci isn’t the only member of her family to have appeared on Jeopardy! Her older brother, Dennis, competed on the show in 1992 but was defeated by super-champ Jerome Vered.

Her brother’s loss was what drove DiNucci to try out for the show, hoping to “redeem the family name.” As she told The Inquirer, she decided to attend an open audition that was taking place in Philadelphia. She eventually made it on the show for the final week of taping for Season 22.

Over her three separate appearances, DiNucci amassed a total of almost $340,000.

“There was a lot of it that went out the door to taxes,” she joked. “But I got to travel some, and it financed me to finish my dissertation at Penn… Taking the check to my bank was wild.”

DiNucci is set for what is sure to be an intense showdown on Monday’s game, where she will take on fellow Jeopardy! super champs Amy Schneider and Austin Rogers. The matchup is interesting because DiNucci was the last woman to win the TOC before Schneider was crowned champion in 2022.

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“It’s professionalized,” DiNucci told The Inquirer when talking about the caliber of modern contestants. “It used to be a bunch of ordinary people that had some breadth of information and recall… Now there are a lot of contestants for whom trivia and quizzes are their profession.”

The winner of the JIT will earn themselves $100,000 and a guaranteed spot in the second season of Jeopardy! Masters, which is scheduled to air on ABC in primetime in March.

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