‘Jeopardy!’: Greg Shahade Speaks Out About His ‘Matt Amodio Pause’

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Copying a great! Jeopardy! champion, Greg Shahade, who beat Jamie Ding, spoke out about the pause that he sometimes does before answering. Host Ken Jennings said it resembled super champ Matt Amodio and asked him if it worked.

Shahade, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, took time to answer the clues on Monday, April 27. Sometimes he went until one second was left on the clock before he answered. The chess master would tilt his head and make a scrunched-up face as he thought. Fans noticed it, and now he is setting the record straight.

On Jeopardy!‘s substack, Jennings talked to all three contestants — Shahade, Ding, and Katrina Puckett — about how they felt after the runaway game that took down Ding.

“You were doing the Matt Amodio thing, where you pause a moment before each response,” Jennings said. “I guess just to double check, kick the tires?” Amodio, a 38-game champion, would also pause before answering, usually correctly.

Shahade also emulated Amodio by saying “What’s” or “Who’s” before responding instead of “What is” or “Who is?” Amodio would do the same.

“Just to calm myself down,” Shahade responded.

“Oh, I see,” the host responded. “Did it work?”

“Maybe,” the game show contestant replied and then laughed.

“We don’t know how wired you would be in a world where you were not pausing,” Jennings said.

“I was fooled on all of those Daily Doubles,” Jennings said. “I thought, ‘Oh, he really doesn’t know.'”

“The fan one, I was just so stressed. I knew I knew it, but I was having trouble running through all of his plays. Fortunately, I got there,” Shahade said. The clue in “Playwrights” he is talking about was “The title object of this Oscar Wilde play is both a fashionable accessory & a mark of femininity.” The answer was Lady Windemere’s Fan.

The game show contestant went big on the DDs, wagering all of his money on the first two and $7,000 on the last one, which solidified his win after he answered all of them correctly.

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'Jeopardy!': Greg Shahade Speaks Out After Beating Super Champion Jamie Ding

During the course of the game, Shahade had 41 attempts on the buzzer, in which he tied with Ding, a law student and bureaucrat. Shahade had the most correct responses with 23 compared to Ding’s 18.

He also had more buzzer accuracy with 61 percent. Ding had 51 percent on the buzzer.

Ding complimented Shahade on his “amazing” game and said his run was “fun while it lasted.”

Ding turned to him, clapped, and said, “Just phenomenal.”

Jeopardy!, weekdays, check local listings, stream next day on Hulu and Peacock