Jeopardy champ: Who is Emma Boettcher, and how did she beat James Holzhauer?
As James Holzhauer’s amazing run on the TV show “Jeopardy!” came to an end Monday night, the spotlight turned to new champion: a librarian whose master’s thesis was about trivia questions.
Emma Boettcher, 27, grew up in Paoli, Pennsylvania, at the end of the Main Line 15 miles northwest of Philadelphia. She attended Conestoga High School in Berwyn, then earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Princeton in 2014.
She received her master’s degree in information science in 2016 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also worked as a library account manager. Her thesis for that degree — “Predicting the Difficulty of Trivia Questions Using Text Features” — relied on “Jeopardy!” clues.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Boettcher (rhymes with “fletcher”) has worked at the University of Chicago as a user experience resident librarian since August 2016. She focuses on faculty and student experiences with the university’s library services.
A longtime “Jeopardy!” watcher, Boettcher said she had tracked her scores at home in a notebook for five years. She auditioned for “Jeopardy!” four times before she got the call in February to compete on the quiz show.
Boettcher used a strategy similar to Holzhauer’s: go for higher-value clues and find the Daily Doubles. Holzhauer got the Daily Double in the first round right, and Boettcher nailed the two Daily Doubles in the second round.
“I knew going in that Daily Double hunting was something that I could do and feel confident doing,” she said. “I don’t need to be cautious around that.”
“I lost to a really top-level competitor,” Holzhauer told The New York Times. “She played a perfect game. And that was what it took to beat me.”
Many expected Holzhauer, a Las Vegas pro sports gambler, to smash former champ Ken Jennings’ record of $2.52 million, set over 74 games in 2004. Holzhauer had won 32 consecutive games and was in second place on the show’s all-time money list, not including tournament play.
The final question and the betting:
Going into Final Jeopardy, Boettcher had $26,600, Holzhauer had $23,400, and the third player, Jay Sexton, had $11,000.
Before seeing the final question, the three had to wager on whether they’d answer correctly.
- Boettcher bet $20,201, enough to beat a maximum bet by Holzhauer if both got the answer right.
- Holzhauer bet $1,399. He knew that, if Boettcher made the expected bet, he couldn’t beat her if both got the answer correct — but if he missed the answer his $22,001 was still guaranteed to beat Sexton.
- Sexton bet $6,000.
The final clue read: “The line ‘A great reckoning in a little room’ in ‘As You Like It’ is usually taken to refer to this author’s premature death.”
All three contestants got the correct answer: 16th-century English playwright Christopher Marlowe. Boettcher and Sexton used only the last name, a standard “Jeopardy!” practice. Holzhauer gave the acceptable nickname “Kit” Marlowe.
Boettcher finished with $46,801, Holzhauer with $24,799 and Sexton with $17,000. For second place, Holzhauer will add $2,000 to the money from the games he won.