List of Jeopardy! contestants
Jeopardy! is an American television game show. Its format is a quiz competition in which contestants are presented with general-knowledge clues in the form of answers and must phrase their responses as questions. Many contestants in the show's history have received significant media attention because of their success on Jeopardy!, particularly Brad Rutter, who has won the second highest total prize money on the show and was undefeated by a human until 2011; James Holzhauer, who holds several of the show's highest overall daily scores; and Ken Jennings, Amy Schneider, and Matt Amodio, who have the top three longest winning streaks. Other contestants have been better known for their accomplishments elsewhere, such as John McCain, a one-day champion in 1965 who later became a U.S. senator and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.1964–1979
Terry Thompson
Terry Thompson, a housewife and alumna of Swarthmore College, was the first Tournament of Champions winner. She won $8,590 over the course of her run on Jeopardy!, including $5,080 during her main run and $3,510 in the tournament. Thompson noted that her husband was initially wary of her participating in a televised quiz show, as it had been only six years since the quiz show scandals had tarnished the medium's reputation.Burns Cameron
Burns Cameron, billed as "a businessman from Larchmont, New York" during his original run and "a realtor from Standish, Maine" on his 1990 appearance, won $11,110 in his appearances on Jeopardy!, including a then-record five-game total of $7,070 in December 1965. Cameron won the third annual Tournament of Champions in 1966, in which he won $4,040. Cameron also appeared on the 2,000th episode in 1972, an all-time-best game in which he faced Elliot Shteir and Jane Gschwend, two 1969 contestants who had surpassed his total in their five-day runs. He finished second and won $700 for charity. Cameron is cited as one of the best players of the Art Fleming era of the show. In 1990, when Jeopardy! creator Merv Griffin produced Super Jeopardy!, a separate weekly prime time network version based on the Trebek version of Jeopardy! to air Saturday nights in the summer on ABC, he invited Cameron to compete as the only player from the Fleming era. Cameron competed in the fifth quarterfinal game, where he finished second and won $5,000.John McCain
and 2008 presidential candidate John McCain was a one-day champion in 1965 before serving in the Vietnam War, spending five and a half years as a POW, and later becoming a senator from Arizona.Red Gibson
won the 1968 Tournament of Champions. Gibson later became a prominent sedevacantist and conspiracy theorist. One of his sons is actor, director and producer Mel Gibson.Jane Gschwend
Jane Gschwend a high school dropout and homemaker from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, held the record for the most money won in regular Jeopardy! play for the original series with her $8,250 total over five days. She was upset in the semifinal round of the 1969 Tournament of Champions but returned as part of the all-time best charity game on the 2000th episode in 1972, winning that game. Host Art Fleming cited Gschwend as an example of how a common person without traditional credentials could succeed at the game.Jay Wolpert
won the 1969 Tournament of Champions. He later became known as a game show producer, screenwriter, and occasional actor.1984–present
Jerry Frankel
Jerry Frankel, a musician and composer from Buffalo, New York, was a five-time undefeated champion during Trebek's first season, winning $32,650. He became that version's first Tournament of Champions winner, earning the $100,000 grand prize by defeating Bruce Fauman and Steve Rogitz in the two-game final.Chuck Forrest
held the record for the largest non-tournament cash winnings total from 1985 to 1989, and the largest all-time winnings from 1986 to 1990. The show's producers regarded him as one of the best and most memorable contestants of the 1980s. Forrest is widely regarded by other elite Jeopardy! players as one of the most formidable contestants ever. He won five consecutive games from September 30 to October 4, 1985, winning a then-record $72,800 and qualifying for the 1986 Tournament of Champions, which he won, earning another $100,000. Forrest later played in the Super Jeopardy! tournament, the Million Dollar Masters tournament, the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, the Battle of the Decades tournament, and the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament. He implemented a strategy known as the "Forrest Bounce" to confuse opponents: the strategy involved picking each clue from a different category instead of taking the clues in order. With Mark Lowenthal, Forrest co-wrote the 1992 book Secrets of the Jeopardy! Champions.Barbara Lowe
Barbara Vollick, a writer and researcher from Anaheim, California, was a five-time undefeated champion during Trebek's second season, winning $35,192 playing under her first and middle name, Barbara Lowe. Host Alex Trebek personally disqualified her from the show's second Tournament of Champions after staff noticed that she had appeared on many different game shows under multiple aliases and Social Security numbers without informing the production company, an allegation that Vollick denied; under the show's standards and practices at the time, special permission had to be granted for a contestant to appear on Jeopardy! if they had appeared on more than two other shows in the previous five years. Vollick attested that only she had only appeared on one such show in the five-year span, but staff research turned up seven appearances over the previous decade, which Vollick stated she did not recall. Her winnings were withheld, and she sued Merv Griffin Enterprises and King World Productions for it, ultimately receiving her winnings, but was banned from appearing on any future tournaments on the show. The 1993 exposé book Inside Jeopardy! by Harry Eisenberg alleged that during her games, Lowe argued with Trebek over incorrect answers; much of Eisenberg's book was littered with factual errors, misstating her winnings and when she appeared on the program, among other inaccuracies unrelated to her, and the surviving tapes of her episodes reveal only a minor argument in the third episode over the pronunciation of Leopold and Loeb that Trebek had initially erroneously declared incorrect because she had used the German pronunciation of Loeb instead of the English. Vollick came forward for an interview in May 2023 to discuss her time on the show, stating that shortly before taping her third episode, she developed a case of gastroenteritis which required the show to stop tape until she recovered. She also stated that Trebek told her she was costing the show time and money, and revealed that her stomach ailment had cost the program thousands of dollars that the show was trying to recoup by withholding her winnings. Her episodes were then withdrawn from release and were never re-run following their original airings. On December 15, 2022, the Barbara Lowe episodes were found by the National Archives of Game Show History from a longtime Jeopardy! fan's collection of 108 VHS cassettes of 896 episodes from the show's first seven seasons, and her games were subsequently added to the J! Archive. Vollick expressed surprise that she had attained such infamy in game show fan circles. She would later win $32,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, again appearing as Barbara Lowe, during which she again experienced a case of gastroenteritis.Richard Cordray
was a five-time Jeopardy! champion in 1987, who appeared in the 1987 Tournament of Champions while still serving as a law clerk. Cordray parlayed his success on Jeopardy! into political office, serving as an Ohio state legislator, the Attorney General of Ohio, and later the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He was a participant in the Battle of the Decades Tournament, but lost in his first match and declined the prize money due to his office.Mark Lowenthal
was an undefeated five-time champion in 1988 and won the 1988 Tournament of Champions. He also appeared on Super Jeopardy!, the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, winning $5,000 after losing his first game, and the Jeopardy! Battle of the Decades, beating Frank Spangenberg in his initial game. Lowenthal is the co-author of the 1992 book Secrets of the Jeopardy! Champions, and has also written a college textbook on intelligence and national security.Eric Newhouse
Eric Newhouse first appeared on Jeopardy! when he won the 1989 Teen Tournament. He was both a semifinalist in the 1989 Tournament of Champions and Super Jeopardy! After winning the 1998 Teen Reunion Tournament, Newhouse was invited to the Million Dollar Masters, where he placed second overall to Brad Rutter. Newhouse was one of nine players to advance directly to the second round of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions but lost his initial game.Tom Cubbage
Tom Cubbage is the only contestant in Jeopardy! history to win both the show's College Championship and the Tournament of Champions. Cubbage became the first ever winner of the College Championship in May 1989, winning $26,600. In November of that year, he was the $100,000 grand prize winner of the 1989 Tournament of Champions. He also appeared on Super Jeopardy! in 1990 and earned $5,000 for appearing as a quarterfinalist. Fifteen years later in 2005, Cubbage competed in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. In the first round, he lost his game, finishing second to Bob Harris. In 2014, Cubbage returned to Jeopardy! to compete in the show's Battle of the Decades. In his first game of the tournament, he defeated fellow Jeopardy! alumni Bob Verini and Jerome Vered. Cubbage lost his second game to Ken Jennings, but he finished the game with $19,500, allowing him to secure a wild-card spot in the next round. In the semifinals, Cubbage lost again, finishing third behind Leszek Pawlowicz and eventual tournament winner Brad Rutter.