2025 Jeopardy! ToC Cycle Complete
The show could have handled unveiling the fields better — but it didn't do as badly as initially feared. Plus, some facts and figures about 2024's regular play.
With Week 13 of Jeopardy! Season 41 in the books, we know, to the extent possible, the players in each of the three phases of the upcoming postseason. We’ve got the eighteen Second Chance competitors, as well as the thirteen Champions Wildcard entrants (to be joined by the two SCC winners). And we know the winner of CWC will advance to the Tournament of Champions, where the top nineteen players from the last cycle (that is, everyone who lost between the end of last season’s Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament and yesterday) are waiting.
But hold on, Matt, you say. That’s only twenty. Didn’t the producers say on “Inside Jeopardy!” that this would be a 21-player ToC, just like the 2022 event?
Lisa Ann Walter’s replacement
Throughout this week, there has been confusion and consternation among close observers of Jeopardy!, not least of whom are Andy Saunders of The Jeopardy! Fan and myself. Coming out of Tuesday’s game, it seemed impossible for the fields of the postseason stages to be filled in the remaining games. We wondered aloud whether the cutoff had been moved, or whether players lower on the leaderboard than those announced would also get into CWC, but whose names the show withheld to keep the exact cutoff point a mystery. I went back and listened to the whole first segment of the November 18 “Inside Jeopardy!” to seek a plausible explanation for how things could end up.
I had similar thoughts on Thursday, after Stevie Ruiz lost. I updated the leaderboard with that, and noticed that it left us with the necessary complement of thirteen for Champions Wildcard, but still one short for the ToC. At which point, quite fortunately, something specific from Sarah Foss popped into my head:
Well, a bit of disappointing news off the top for the field. We learned at the end of last week that Lisa Ann Walter… she had really tried to work her schedule in a way that she could be able to shoot with us and shoot with them, and it's not going to be possible…
And suddenly, everything made sense. “The end of last week” here, from the perspective of a podcast released on November 18, means the Thursday or Friday before; i.e., the 14th or 15th. Champions Wildcard was taped on the 12th and 13th. Thus, at that time (and when the ToC cutoff episodes were taped on October 2), Jeopardy! had every expectation that Walter would be available and would contest the ToC. The show wasn’t surreptitiously manipulating the cutoff point and/or the field — it was confronted by a circumstance entirely out of its control.
Most likely, Walter will be replaced in the ToC field by the first runner-up of Champions Wildcard. That player would have already been expecting to make a return trip to Culver City this week to serve as the ToC alternate, much as Andy Tirrell did for this year’s ToC. It would then stand to reason that the CWC second runner-up also would have gone back out there to serve as the standby contestant during taping.
DO BETTER, DARIAN LUSK
In his article at TV Insider recapping Thursday’s game1, Lusk wrote:
“Actually, my guess is that Lisa Ann Walter is actually able to return in time for the 2025 TOC after it was previously announced that she would be unable to return for that TOC,” Matt Carberry wrote referring to the Celebrity Jeopardy! winner who had to bow out of the ToC. The blogger, whom TV Insider is happy to attribute the theory to, added, “Because I guess she decided to skip her production of Abbott Elementary so she could compete.”
I did not write that. I wrote the comment at the top of that particular discussion, which set out the same things that I have throughout this section. The words in those quotation marks were written by u/dalhigbeegenius2, and I entirely disagree with them. Abbott Elementary pays the bills in the Walter household; Jeopardy! does not. Any irreconcilable conflict between the two obviously would be resolved in favor of the former, especially given that Walter’s invitation to a ToC isn’t rescinded; it’s simply deferred to 2026.
Mr. Lusk, if you’re happy to attribute something to me, it’s best for all involved if that thing is actually my own content. Things like this, and floating out the idea that the Champions Wildcard field would be filled out by Second Chance players with high Coryats3, exemplify why so much of this community holds you in such low regard.
I’ll tell you who did do better this week — Andy Saunders. He credited me for the explanation of the ToC field not being full. Additionally, while withdrawing his prior statements critical of what he thought was the show changing the cutoff, he didn’t “memory hole” those remarks. I’ve been sharply critical of Saunders at times, but he handled this situation with class and integrity, and I commend him for having done so.
The circumstances that the show could control
I expect, and certainly hope, that the show will explain all on the next episode of “Inside Jeopardy!”, which we expect will come out this Monday, December 9.
Here’s a key exchange from that November 18 podcast, time stamp 15:23 on that YouTube video:
Sam Buttrey: Well, wait a minute, Sarah — you promised me eighteen names, and you only gave me fifteen.
Sarah Foss: Well, Sam… much will be decided. Of course, we’re going to have that Champions Wildcard winner, and we don’t know who else will be filling out that field. So stay tuned to more Jeopardy!.
Everything Foss said there was true; none of it, nor anything else she said in that podcast, was misleading. The show’s staff would be well within its prerogative to disclaim fault for viewers, including writers, making incorrect assumptions.
That said, I think the show should have been more transparent about the circumstances when the ToC and CWC fields were revealed. It could have been made clear that Walter’s withdrawal necessitated her replacement with an alternate. If that was to be the CWC first runner-up, then stress that this circumstance wasn’t known to the show or the players in that event — they all thought they were playing for one spot, so strategy was not affected.
Whatever the case, if the show knew how it planned to handle Walter’s departure at the time it taped that podcast, I think all would have been better served by that information being disclosed then. I don’t see what benefit is derived by withholding it for three weeks. Perhaps the show is trying to maintain a particular narrative? I just feel fortunate to have realized this before writing this newsletter; it would have a very different tone had I still been under my prior assumptions. The egg stays off of my face and those of others — but it would’ve been appreciated if Jeopardy! had intercepted that egg at launch.
Looking back the the ToC cycle just concluded
Let’s break down some numbers.
A brief note about “nominal” and “effective” cycle lengths
The “nominal” length is the period during which players who made their last appearance (in other words, lost in regular play) are under consideration for the upcoming ToC. For this one, that’s the 78 regular play games of last season, and the 65 aired so far in this one — so 143 games, the shortest cycle in show history.
The “effective” length is slightly adjusted from that; it takes in any wins the cycle-beginning champion (here, Lucas Partridge) carries over from the previous cycle, and leaves out the streak of the cycle-ending champion (in this case, Dave Bond). Partridge had three wins coming into Season 40 regular play and Bond has two now, so the effective cycle length is 144 games. The effective cycle is what we’re looking at in the stats below.
The same principle applies to the divide between Season 40 and 41 (July 26 and September 9), and the taping hiatus (October 11 and 14).
Average wins of champions
Overall: 2.400 (144 games, 60 champions) Season 40: 3.333 (80 games, 24 champions) Season 41: 1.778 (64 games, 36 champions) Before taping hiatus (BTH): 2.838 (105 games, 37 champions) After taping hiatus (ATH): 1.696 (39 games, 23 champions)
Average winning score
Overall: $19,784 Season 40: $19,374 Season 41: $20,297 BTH: $19,654 ATH: $20,137
Other statistics
Daily Doubles: 58.33% (252/432) Final Jeopardy: 46.06% (193/419) Average Coryat, all players: $10,579 Average Coryat, winners: $15,207 Players not making Final Jeopardy: 13 (10 in Season 40, 3 in Season 41)
Upcoming
A review of Pop Culture Jeopardy!, which I hope to have up sometime later this weekend.
Archive version, in case the original is stealth edited.
This comment, and this one.
See this JBoard thread.