It was a good week for two metro Atlantans on "Jeopardy" for its $1 million 30th anniversary tournament.
Both Robin Carroll of Marietta and Mark Dawson of Chamblee are prior winners of the game who collectively have earned nearly $600,000 on the show.
And both got past their first-round rivals in tight matches that came down to Final Jeopardy. They are part of this week's cohort that competed in the second decade of the show from 1994 to 2003.
Carroll has pulled in close to a quarter million dollars over three appearances in 2000, 2004 and 2005.
Dawson won the Tournament of Champions in 2003 and earned $333,849 to date, entering Thursday night's episode, which aired on 11 Alive at 7:30 p.m. locally.
Carroll on Wednesday night got through against two tough competitors, guaranteeing her a spot in the quarterfinals.
She said she will return in April to try to get into the quarterfinals and a shot at a potential $1 million. (For "Jeopardy" geeks, the tournament details are here.)
Carroll, who designs instructional tests for realtors, knew going in that the questions would be tougher than normal. And unfortunately for her, she didn't like any of the categories outside of "British Authors," which she did well. She also cleaned up on the category "Bill Clinton." "I'm a Republican and somehow I did well in there," she mused.
Luckily, her opponents had their ups and downs as well. At one point early on, all three were in the negative zone. All three had the lead at one point. Carroll said she made a few too many mistakes and ended up in third place after double jeopardy with $5,600. Bob Harris, in second place, had $6,000. The leader Shane Whitlock had $10,000. So at that point, it was anybody's game.
But the Final Jeopardy answer was tough: "New research says this word that has become ubiquitous dates back to young men also called macaronis." The category was "Four-letter words."
She said she knew that macaronis were an 18th century term for dandy. But dandy is six letters. Fortunately, she thought about the song "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and the four-letter word "dude" came up as short for "Doodle." The other two didn't get it so she won, bringing home $11,200. She said only one trivia buddy got it among her many friends.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Dawson, in an interview, said he entered the game a little rustier on the trivia side but more focused and relaxed. "I was very comfortable," he said.
Like Carroll, Dawson's game was a battle among all three players though in his case, he led most of the way. He stayed ahead despite missing all three Daily Doubles, costing himself $11,600 in potential winnings. On the bright side, he prevented the other two from getting those Daily Doubles. His rival Dave Abbott answered the final two Bible questions, gathering $3,600 and moving ahead of Dawson entering Final Jeopardy.
In an interview, Dawson said he was counting on Abbott to get the final question wrong for him to win. And lucky for Dawson, he got it right and Abbott didn't. The answer:
He's the most recent winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for fiction, winning in 1982 and 1991 for the same series of books.
The correct question: "Who is John Updike?" Abbott wrote John Le Carre.
So Dawson moves on as well.
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