The second day of the two-day Jeopardy! Teen Tournament finals were last night. I missed it because I was glued to CNN’s coverage of the Dorner cabin standoff, which turned out to be a catastrophic error on my part. You see, around 8:00 p.m. I started seeing tweets in my timeline that said things like “LEONARD IS THE MAN” and “BEST JEOPARDY ANSWER EVER,” and I started furiously clicking around to try to figure out what happened. Finally I saw a tweet pop-up that had a picture and HOLY SH-T look at that. Leonard, who has awesome hair and a voice so deep it’s picked up on radios in tunnels, and has been MY DUDE during the whole tournament, had a huge lead built up heading into Final Jeopardy, and decided to have a little fun. “Who is… some guy in Normandy. But I just won $75,000!” Between this and the hyper-adorable Elyse from last year, I may be coming around on the dumb, stupid Teen Tournament.
And here’s the best part: Remember last week when all the contestants finished tied with zero dollars and no one advanced? Well, because no one from that group moved on, two contestants from another group did: the winner, obviously, and the person with the next highest total, who would have otherwise gone home. That fortunate, additional contestant? LEONARD.
Dude is a star.
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I’ll take any Liquid Swords references I can get.
Here to help.
Nice, I somehow missed this the first read through.
This made my morning. Thank you Danger!
Not only did he end it like a boss, he had a ballsy move just minutes earlier: Dude had $18,200, hit the Daily Double box, bet $18,000 as the crowd gasped, and nailed the answer. Leonard rules.
BOOM!!! That moment was awesome!!! The teens do the most “expensive”/”hard” questions first, so the daily double at the end was one of the easiest questions…. at first I thought he he mispoke with the 18,000!!! I was so excited when he got it right. (I knew the answer too…. teen jeopardy is so much fun)
Yeah, THAT was the super ballsy move. It’s like he said, “Remember that epic wagering fail those other kids did last week? Well, I’m here to restore your faith in the youth of today.”
The collective gasp was spectacular.
The $18,000 wager made sense once you see he entered Day 2 with only $3,000. He needed most that $18K. Clutch effort and great finish.
We NEED to talk about this though. Leonard started final jeopardy with $37,000. He had $3,000 from the Previous evening. Therefor,e wagering nothing, the most he could accumulate was obvi $40k. Nilai entered final jeopardy with $14,400. He ended the rpevious night wiht $19K. IF NILAI HAD WAGERED IT ALL (or even a majority) AND GOTTEN IT RIGHT, HE WOULD HAVE WON AND LEONARD WOULD HAVE LOOKED LIKE A HUGE DINGUS! But all’s well that end’s well I guess. Playon Playa.
Actually if Nilai did his math: if he got the question right, he would have had $40,400 and won.
…but he didn’t and Leonard retains boss status.
And sorry for the caps and typos. Wagering mistakes are my bugaboo.
I like to think Leonard knew that and was just like, “Eh, screw it. Nilai isn’t getting this right.”
Pretty sure Nilai is grounded now
Leonard was all up in Nilai’s head after that earlier wager, such a boss
Lolz, I started calculating this all out as soon as I saw how much money Nilai had.
Leonard is pretty awesome (HOLY BALLS THAT DAILY DOUBLE), but…would it have been more awesome if he’d actually finished second? The schadenfreude would be OFF. THE. CHARTS.
The partitions don’t come until after they’ve wagered, so Leonard knew how much the other players had bet.
TimwasTim…what is the point of making something like that up? Not only it is OBVIOUSLY a bluff on your part (VERYclearly betting is part of the strategy so contestants CAN’T see others) but still..is your life SO sad that you think “If I bluff people might think I am smarter than others for once in my miserable life!
Sorry…but being called on your bluff just makes you look even worse.
I guess Tim isn’t going to answer, wakajak. Why don’t you find some forum for thirteen year olds?
I think the Nilai kid was a weak bidder so Leonard new he would puss out. He kept fishing for the daily double then bet like the bitch he is.
he didn’t say he won Jeopardy. He said he won 75,000 dollars! Which also meant he won the game! I must say I was playing favorites since he is from my hometown. Leonard rocks!
That wager coupled with the fact it was drastically different from Nilai, who was obviously searching for the Daily Double boxes ALL tournament, then only wagering $1000 each time, was great to see.
Yeah that was infuriating… happy to see someone with some fortitude win.
Oh man, Nilai’s Final Jeopardy! wager from the previous night was absolutely confounding. Pure cowardice when he should have gone go for the throat. Like Gregggggggggggggggggggggggg is wont to say, fortune favors the bold, my man.
Yo Uproxx, where’s my Trebek Badge?
Thanks to dax montana, I think we now need to a Trebek Badge
Leonard you’re a star, you’re a star, you’re a star. A big, bright shining star.
I would like to take the time to say how much I disliked Barrett. He just seemed like a phony! I know he’s 18 but I could tell he was heading down the road to Bro-dom
Yeah I kept saying that he looked like a Jock-Nerd. He’s one dumb blonde away from pretending to be stupid to fit into the bro crowd. I can see him fitting into a fraternity no problem. Hopefully he chooses one that cares about GPA…. Plus he kept shouting and it annoyed the hell out of me. He clearly didn’t have the buzzing down because every shot had him pounding on that thing with his thumb and looking constipated.
Haha, he needs to learn about volume and how TV works. You don’t need to shout so the camera’s pick up your voice, you’re wearing a mic big guy please speak normally. Also keep counting the letters in the word on your fingers buddy, you got it wrong, not all knowing TV God Alex Trebek.
I’m firmly on the Barrett hate wagon. Hate is a strong word, but I really really really don’t like him.
Despite that, it seemed like someone was purposely cheating him with a defective buzzer. He was beating on that device like a teenager that just discovered masturbation. The only time he successfully buzzed in was when the other two didn’t.
Then again, maybe I just don’t understand the mechanics/operation of the device and he was just doing it wrong.
I compared him to Gregg Marmalard from Animal House.
@Arrogant Bastard: There’s a border around the Jeopardy board that we don’t see. After Alex gives the “answer”, it lights up the contestants can buzz in (that’s why they never buzz in early before he’s done talking.) If you buzz in before that border lights up, you get frozen out for something like a second, which is an eternity when the other two people are near-geniuses, like a typical Jeopardy contestant. Most people who do well on the show say that getting that timing right is the REAL tricky part, since most people who’ve made it past all the tests to get on probably know at least 80% of the “questions.”
Soon as Barrett said he wanted to bring “competence and accountability” to the presidency, he was firmly in my hate column.
Tim was Tim, I didn’t like him before that, but it seriously sealed the deal for me. And did you see how excited he got when he got to answer, “Who is Ayn Rand?” last week?
Falseidolator…I get the feeling that you were picked ast in gym class all the time if you think that BARRETT looked like a jock ANYTHING. Barrett looks like the kid who gets notes from his doctor to avoid gym class.
Is the 75K in a scholarship, or can you spend it, like on a ’73 Eldorado ragtop with 22″ gold rims?
/Not raycess, that’s what I’d do.
It’s cash. He did say he’s putting a lot of it towards college (he wants to go to Brown) but did add he’s also looking at a car.
I’m told that he did very well in his Brown alumni interview.
Also, Leonard had his arms crossed the whole time, just like the guy Uproxx interviewed who had been on Jeopardy. Apparently it’s a real winning strategy!!
Maybe the best Final Jeopardy answer since Cliff Clavin wrote “who are two people who have never been in my kitchen.”
DROP THE MIC
Leonard was the only one I didn’t actively hate. Nilai and his “Let’s go (blank) for 800 (ALWAYS 800), please” pissed me off. If you’re gonna say please at the end of your choice at least continue to do it. Fucking Nilai. And voice immodulation guy was just creepy.
I KNOW! Nilai was such a prick. All he did was fish for the Daily Double.
Another reason why Leonard is boss: he got every video game question correct.
I know! I expected Trebek to mention that he sweeped it….
$18,000 on Double Jeopardy? YOU’RE A LOOSE CANNON, LEONARD! But a pretty badass one, I must say.
WU! WU! Look like GZA’s son was just admitted to MIT
Holy shit, that ‘fro rules.
Move over, Kai, the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker, there’s a new Internet boss.
I love that after only watching the clip, nothing that y’all, who watched the whole show, wrote about Barrett and Nilai surprised me.
Darn You Spoliers!! I’m still in the semi-finals.. Guess I need to catch up.
And his name’s Leonard!! Any black dude named Leonard is officially a boss in my book!!