Amy Schneider broke yet another “Jeopardy!” record on Monday, knocking fellow star Matt Amodio out of the second-place spot for consecutive wins on the quiz show. Schneider, the first woman to earn $1 million in winnings on the show, has now won 39 games and $1,319,800.
Like many of her games, Schneider dominated throughout Monday’s show, finding and correctly answering two Daily Doubles and ending the first two rounds $33,000 ahead of the competitor in second place. A wrong answer in the category of “U.S. Museums” in Final Jeopardy cost her $25,000, but she still left the episode with an additional $12,600.
The win comes weeks after she broke James Holzhauer’s third-place record of 32 games. When asked by current host Ken Jennings how it felt to beat Holzhauer, Schneider said beating him had become “a target of mine” after she began to do well on the show.
Jennings is now the only person standing between Schneider and the top spot. But Jennings, who went on a historic winning streak in 2004, is still far ahead with 74 consecutive wins. Schneider is in fourth place — behind Jennings, Holzhauer and Amodio — for the total amount of money won in regular-season play.
Schneider is also the first transgender “Jeopardy!” contestant to qualify for the Tournament of Champions, and is the highest-earning female contestant in the show’s history.
In an interview with “Good Morning America” on Monday, Schneider said her favorite thing about her “Jeopardy!” experience has been “being on TV as my true self, expressing myself, and representing the entire community of trans people, and just kind of showing a different thing than maybe some people have seen, of just being a smart, confident woman and, you know, just doing something super normal like being on ‘Jeopardy!'”
