When Amy Schneider was an eighth grader in Dayton, Ohio, her fellow students voted her most likely to appear on “Jeopardy!”
They underestimated her.
On Wednesday, Ms. Schneider, 42, an engineering manager from Oakland, Calif., became the first woman in the show’s history to achieve 21 consecutive wins, surpassing Julia Collins, who had set the record of 20 wins in 2014.
“I never dreamed of matching Julia’s streak,” Ms. Schneider wrote on Twitter. “It’s hard to say how I felt: proud, dazed, happy, numb, all those things.”
In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Schneider said that when she was not concentrating on the answers, she was thinking about whether she might beat Ms. Collins’s record.
“I could pretend that I didn’t have my eye on the various leader boards at that point, but I was definitely aware,” she said. “I knew what was at stake.”
The episodes were shot in September and October. However, Ms. Schneider didn’t make her television debut until November 17. Each episode ends with her tweeting to write colorful play-by-play accounts of her winsTo or from post updates about her cat, Meep.
This week, she notched her 20th win, she described how she had nearly missed her chance to tie Ms. Collins’s record when one of her fellow contestants, Josette Curtis, began gaining on her.
“Josette, a registered dietitian, went on a bit of a run in the Vitamin category, and all of a sudden my shot at a runaway was in doubt,” Ms. Schneider wrote. “And if Josette found the last Daily Double, she could potentially take the lead!”
Ms. Schneider won that game and the subsequent episode.
Her 21st win was her identification of the ship that Officer Charles Lightoller had boarded, on April 15, 1912.
Her answer, “What is the Carpathia?” — the ship that rescued the roughly 700 surviving crew members and passengers of the Titanic — brought her total prize money to $806,000, the fifth highest amount won by any “Jeopardy!” contestant and the highest amount won by a female contestant in the show’s history. Her 22nd win was in an episode which aired Thursday. This brought her total winnings at $831,600.
Ms. Schneider holds the No. 4 spot overall on the list of “Jeopardy!” contestants with consecutive wins. No. 1 on that list is Ken Jennings, now a “Jeopardy!” co-host, who won 74 consecutive games in 2004. Ms. Schneider has a record of 22 consecutive wins and is only 10 wins away the No. James Holzhauer is the professional sports betor who dominated the show in 2019, holding the No. 3 spot. No. Matt Amodio (a Yale doctoral student in computer science), is No. 2. This Yale student won 38 consecutive games.
Ms. Schneider was congratulated and thanked by past winners, such as Larissa Kelly, who was a graduate student who appeared on the show in 2008/09 and held the record for highest-earning female contestant.
“Well, it was fun to hold a Jeopardy! record for a few years,” Ms. Kelly wrote on Twitter. “But it’s been even more fun to watch @Jeopardamy set new standards for excellence, on the show and off.”
Ms. Schneider is a transgender woman who lives in Oakland with Genevieve.
As a child, she watched “Jeopardy!” with her parents, she said, and dreamed of being a contestant one day. She was a voracious reader and loved trivia. In grade school, she participated as a geography bee competitor and reached the top 10 in Ohio for 1992.
“I got a National Geographic atlas for that,” Ms. Schneider said.
When the opportunity to appear on “Jeopardy!” arose, she said, she felt unsure about how to discuss her gender identity.
In the end, she decided to acknowledge it simply — by wearing a pin bearing the trans pride flag during an episode.
The decision, Ms. Schneider said, was in part inspired by Kate Freeman, who wore a similar pin in December 2020 when she became what many believe was the first openly transgender woman to win on “Jeopardy!”
“It was something that I wanted to get out there and to show my pride in while not making it the focus of what I was doing there,” Ms. Schneider said. “Because I was just there to answer trivia questions and win money.”
Ms. Schneider’s record has brought positive attention to the long-running quiz show after it was rocked by drama over who would permanently succeed Alex Trebek, the host for more than 36 years.
Mr. Trebek passed away in November 2020 from pancreatic cancer. He was 80.
Sony Pictures Entertainment, the producer of the show, announced that Mike Richards would be the show’s permanent host. Richards was an executive producer. The decision disappointed “Jeopardy!” fans who had become invested in a series of celebrity guest hosts the show appeared to be auditioning to replace Mr. Trebek.
The show was then faced with the aftermath of The Ringer’s report that revealed offensive comments Mr. Richards had made regarding women on a podcast he hosted in 2014. After the publication of the report, Mr. Richards quit as host and executive producer.
Later, Sony announced that Mr. Jennings would continue to host the show, along with Mayim Bialik (a sitcom actress) as its hosts.
Ms. Schneider can’t say how far she got on the program. The next episode, in the which she competed against Nate Levy (a script coordinator from Los Angeles) and Sarah Wrase (an accountant from Monroe, Mich.), was scheduled to air Thursday.
Ms. Schneider said her advice for anyone who wanted to replicate her success was “just be curious.”
She added: “The way to know a lot of stuff is to want to know a lot of stuff.”
Kitty BennettContributed research
Source: NY Times
