‘Jeopardy! Masters’: A Runaway Game 8 Shakes Up the Leaderboard

As the Jeopardy! Masters quarterfinals progressed on Friday, August 28, one contestant notched her third win of the championship in a runaway game.

Friday’s action started with Game 7, featuring Paolo Pasco, a puzzle writer originally from San Diego, California; Juveria Zaheer, a psychiatrist from Whitby, Ontario; and Long Nguyen, a retired engineer from Las Vegas, Nevada.

Nguyen dominated the Jeopardy! Round, responding to 13 clues correctly — more than twice any other contestant — and none incorrectly, as The Jeopardy! Fan reports. But Pasco earned a nice sum on a Daily Double in the Double Jeopardy! round and blocked Nguyen from a runaway game.

However, Nguyen prevailed after the Final Jeopardy! round, which turned out to be a triple stumper with this clue about 20th-century people: “After brilliant service in Morocco, in 1926 at age 33 he became the youngest Brigadier General in any European army.” (Correct response: “Who is Francisco Franco?”)

Nguyen ended the game with 22,400 points and earned three match points, Pasco placed second with 12,400 points and gained one match point, and Zaheer came in third with 2,400 points.

Then came Game 8, which featured Yogesh Raut, an applied cognition specialist from Vancouver, Washington; Victoria Groce, an author and speaker from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Andrew He, a stay-at-home dad from Concord, California.

Groce took an early lead in the Jeopardy! round but really took off in Double Jeopardy! — she ran the “3-Named People” category and nearly ran “Summer Songs,” The Jeopardy! Fan reports. Plus, Groce also found and nailed all three Daily Double clues in the game. She had a runaway score of 30,200 going into Final Jeopardy!, compared to Raut’s 9,600 and He’s 4,800.

The Final Jeopardy! clue in “Pen Names” — “Schardanus Rider, a pseudonym found on 17th century British almanacs, anagrams to this American pseudonym from the 18th century” — yielded the correct response “Richard Saunders” from both Groce and Raut. Groce finished the game with 34,567 and collected three more match points, while Raut came in second with 9,601 and added another point to his total, and He ended up with 4,800.

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After Friday’s double-header, Groce is on top of the leaderboard with nine match points, with Raut on her heels with eight, followed by Pasco with six and Nguyen with five. Zaheer has three at the moment, and He has one.

Four more quarterfinals games are still to come — the first two air on Tuesday, September 1, and the second two ensue that Wednesday. After that, fans will see four semifinal games that Thursday and Friday, followed by two finals showdowns on Tuesday, September 8.

Jeopardy! Masters, Tuesdays through Fridays, 8/7c, ABC, Streaming Next Day on Hulu