‘Jeopardy! Masters’ Night Three: Has Victoria Groce Become the ‘Final Boss’?

Amanda Bell May 8, 2024, 9:00 pm

At the start of Jeopardy! Masters Season 2, Season 1 champ James Holzhauer declared that he was the “final boss” of the entire competition, but so far, it’s been the Victoria Groce show, through and through.

In the third night of competition — for Games 5 and 6 on Wednesday, May 8 — Groce once again took the lead and held it. And although it wasn’t a runaway this time (for the first time in Masters‘ second season so far), she still had a commanding performance. So is Victoria Groce the new “final boss” of this season? Well, there’s still a lot of gameplay to go, but she’s off to a good start.

Coming into the night, the tallies of match powers were: Victoria Groce in 1st place with 6, James Holzhauer in 2nd place with 4, Yogesh Raut in third place with 4 (because of the tiebreaker being the number of correct responses), Matt Amodio in 4th with 1, Mattea Roach in 5th with 1 point, and Amy Schneider trailing in 6th with 0.

Here’s a look at everything that happened on night three of Jeopardy! Masters Season 2.

Game Five

The first match-up saw Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, and Yogesh Raut going head-to-head. Raut came in with one win and a second-place finish under his belt, while Amodio had just one second-place finish, and Schneider had none.

It didn’t take long for Raut to forge his way to frontrunner status, earning $5,400 in the first round, with Schneider pulling up the rear with $4,600 and Amodio earning $2,200. (Note: Amodio did get the Daily Double; in the category “European Geography,” the clue was, “A palace in this city in Provence is a reminder of its role in the Catholic church in the 14th Century. Amodio wagered $1,000 — the most he could due to being in the red — and guessed “Avignon.”)

Though all the contestants kept it close enough in the first round, Double Jeopardy was an absolute trouncing. While Amodio did get another Daily Double (and correctly guessed that a pangolin is the described scaly cousin of an anteater), Raut got the second and bet the whole house, which was already $15,400 at that point. Raut doubled his score by correctly guessing that O’Brien from 1984 was the character who taunted Winston about being betrayed immediately.

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Thus, going into Final Jeopardy, it was yet another runaway with a race for that singular second-place match point: Raut came in with $36,400, while Schneider had $12,200, and Amodio had $7,200.

The Final Jeopardy category was “The Theater,” and the clue was, “This show debuted December 30, 1879, in a theater on the Devon Coast, with the cast in costumes from a related show.”

Perhaps ironically, Raut was the one person who didn’t get it right — the answer: Pirates of Penzance — but he wisely wagered nothing and kept his lead at $36,400, with Schneider taking second (and earning her first match point) with $14,401, just $1 more than Amodio’s final score of $14,400.

Game Six

The second game featured Mattea Roach, James Holzhauer, and Victoria Groce — the first meeting of the two The Chase stars in the competition.

Holzhauer had a great start and even found the Daily Double in the first round, but he got the answer wrong after being “all the cheddar” — costing him a gutting $5,800. (The clue, in the category of “Starts and Ends with R,” was, “This device allows air to get from a scuba diver’s oxygen tanks & into the diver’s lungs.” While Holzhauer did have a guess that matched the category parameters — “What is ‘respirator’?” — the answer was, “Regular.”)

Thus, Groce’s $6,000 from the round was enough to head into Double Jeopardy in front, with both Holzhauer and Roach trailing at $1,400.

In Double Jeopardy, Groce pulled a power move upon finding a Daily Double, echoing Holzhauer by pressing her hands forward and saying, “I believe the move is ‘all-in,'” putting her entire $14,000 prize pot on the line. Holzhauer cheekily replied with, “Poor technique. Good strategy, though.” Indeed it was that; in the category “They Did Bad,” Groce correctly guessed that Machine Gun Kelly was the person “nicknamed for a lethal weapon regulated by Congress in 1934” who didn’t kill anyone but did kidnap.

Still, impressive though her performance was, host Ken Jennings happily noted, “Look at this! For the first time in this competition, first place is not a foregone conclusion as we head into Final Jeopardy.”

For Game 6’s Final Jeopardy round, the category was “Famous Last Words,” and the clue was, “In 1530, he made his last confession and wished that ‘I had served God as diligently as I have done the king.'”

Not a single one of the masters correctly guessed it the answers — they all guessed Thomas More, although the answer was Cardinal Wosley — so it came down to the betting strategy. Groce put just $5,601 on the line, so she finished with $23,999; Holzhauer lost $6,400, taking his score down to $11,200; and Roach wagered all $7,000 of their money and ended with $0.

And with that, the new leaderboard scores are as follows:

1st = Victoria Groce – 3 tonight, 9 total
2nd = Yogesh Raut – 3 tonight, 7 total
3rd = James Holzhauer – 1 tonight, 5 total
4th = Matt Amodio – 0 tonight, 1 total*
5th = Amy Schneider – 1 tonight, 1 total
6th = Mattea Roach – 0 tonight, 1 total

*Tiebreaker is the number of correct responses.

Jeopardy! Masters, Night 4, May 10, 8/7c, ABC