Amy Schneider becomes Jeopardy! contestant with second most consecutive wins, behind Ken Jennings
Amy Schneider has officially surpassed Matt Amodio's 38-game streak
Aux News Schneider
Amy Schneider has officially surpassed Matt Amodio’s 38-game streak, making her the Jeopardy! contestant with the second highest number of consecutive wins. The first continues to be Ken Jennings, who broke the record in 2004. He also hosted the episode in which Schneider won her 39th game. As of the episode that aired on January 24, Schneider has won a total of $1,319,800.
Schneider also made Jeopardy! history by becoming the first woman on the show to be among the top all-time winners. She recently penned an essay for Defector on her outstanding accomplishment, writing, “I’ll generally observe that I was born with a brain that, for whatever reason, retains knowledge well. I don’t have a ‘photographic’ memory or anything like that; God knows I’ve spent enough time hunting my apartment for my phone to disprove that idea.” She continued, “But while many people, upon learning that, for example, ‘oviparous’ is an adjective meaning ‘egg-laying,’ will quite sensibly forget it almost immediately, I will probably remember it, and without any particular effort.”
She also addressed her privilege, noting, “Unlike most people in history, I wasn’t born into grinding poverty, and my parents believed in the value of knowledge as its own reward. Moreover, I am white, and until well into adulthood, was perceived as male. Had that not been the case, my intelligence would have been seen as surprising at best, and threatening at worst, which undoubtedly would have impacted my intellectual development. But it was the case, and I was never discouraged from acquiring knowledge.”
Schneider also explained that Jeopardy!’s central gimmick where contestants are required to give their answer in the form on a question, “perhaps inadvertently, teaches an underrated skill, which is simply understanding what you’re being asked. The gimmick of the show forces a weird kind of syntax on the clues, so that, oftentimes, you have to untangle the question before you can even begin to find the answer.”
18 Comments
… spoilers? Jeopardy airs right now in my area.
I’ll just politely say FUCK YEAAAAH! This woman makes me hella proud, its great seeing a trans woman this visible for such a long time. I hope she continues to stick around and kick ass. Knowing hundreds of transphobes are bitching and can’t do shit is a wonderful feeling.
I’ve been popping in and out, so I might’ve missed it – has she mentioned being trans on the show? I haven’t seen anyone getting upset, but that’s because all the reaction to her on AVC has been overwhelmingly positive, and I don’t really pay attention to many other corners of the internet. But anyways, transphobes tying themselves into knots is always a nice bonus to any situation.
I unfortunately caught a glimpse of one of the nasty dumbass corners of the internet and those dudes aren’t quite sure what transphobic knot to tie themselves into On one hand, they’re upset from the usual “whuttabout women’s sports” angle that this “man” has taken the title of Most Winning Female Jeopardy contestant from whomever the previous female lead was – but defending the honor of “Nerdiest Female Game Show Contestant” is something they’re having a hard time working up much fervor aboutOn the other hand, they see having Amy on the show as an example of “woke culture taking over America”, but that word kinda means nothing anymore and it’s hard to explain how a LGBTQ person answering trivia questions correctly is somehow related to efforts to recognize systemic racism against black Americans. Nothing’s really sticking, so it’s basically just “we don’t like when good things happen to a trans person” vague anger.
There’s people claiming she’s only doing so well because she’s “really a man.” Real progressive thinking.
She has said things in the personal interview section that imply it, but I don’t think she’s overtly said the word? She often talks about her girlfriend, though, so anyone watching without awareness of the gender identity part certainly knows she’s openly queer.
I’m not sure if she’s mentioned it explicitly, but one of her story segments was about relating to Ozma from the wizard of Oz books, and the character being a princess who was raised as a boy.
Shes very open about it while not making it her only identifying aspect. Has spoken about issues and wore a pin on multiple occasions. Most Jeopardy fans love her, of course there’s a vocal minority but fuck them.
I don’t *think* she has mentioned being trans on the show but she has been there SO long now they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel for stuff to talk about with her post-introduction so who knows, maybe when she’s the all-time winner she’ll call an audible and talk about the problems trans people face a la Liam Neeson’s hilarious interview on the Daily Show years ago where he just started talking about how the horses that pull hansom cabs in NYC are mistreated LOL.
second Jeopardy! contestant with most consecutive wins…are there just no grammar rules for headlines anymore?
It’s not about the content of the content — it’s just about the content! LA, here we come, baby!
I’m loving the trend of dominant competitors lately. They’re fun to watch. Amy has been incredible, and yet she’s only halfway to Ken’s total games streak, and barely halfway to his winnings. Just puts his achievement in context. Can’t wait to see how much longer she makes it.
how hyped are you for Tournament of Champions? imagine being Matt and going in as the fucking 2-seed.
It’s gonna be a real barnburner.
Right? Should be insane. We’ve got 3-4 people who would ordinarily be the obvious favorite in the TOC.
Good for her!
I love her and was rooting for her to get to this point, but now I’m kind of longing for it to get competitive again. I usually get tired of the long-timers before this point, though, so it’s been quite a run. It’s not that I want to see her get knocked out anytime soon, I’d just like to see some closer games.
Really smart going for the #1 spot of all time .Live as you want.However I still can’t figure, born a man ,who became a woman ,and has a woman as a mate,??