Jeff Xie wins ‘Teen Jeopardy’

J.P Stevens High School student Jeff Xie won this year’s “Teen Jeopardy” tournament in dramatic fashion, answering a tiebreaker question correctly and walking away with $75,000.

Xie and Alan Koolik of Boca Raton, Fla. each accumulated $54,200 after a two-day final, forcing a tiebreaker to decide the champion. A tiebreaker clue was presented, Xie rang in first and responded correctly to win.

The episode, recorded in early March, aired tonight. Xie plans to use the money to travel and pay for college.

“I knew that I had to get the Final Jeopardy! clue right, and when Alan also gave the correct answer, my jaw dropped because I knew we were tied,” Xie said. “When the tiebreaker category ‘The Civil War’ was announced, I was excited because history is a strength of mine. When I saw ‘Shiloh’ I knew the answer.”

Xie, who will be a senior when school starts next month, was one of 15 students from among 8,574 hopefuls across the country who qualified to be on “Teen Jeopardy.”

He earned a spot on the show through a multi-step process. First, he completed a 50-question online test. That earned him one of 250 places in regional auditions across the country, where prospective contestants took part in a second 50-question test, an interview and mock game play. Xie, 17, navigated that hurdle in New York City in November and received a spot on the 29th edition of “Teen Jeopardy.”

Xie placed second in his first-round match, aired last week, to earn one of four wild-card berths in the semifinals. On Monday’s semifinal episode, he beat two contestants who won their previous match to reach the two-day final.

He is the first New Jerseyan to win the tournament since Meryl Federman of Livingston in 2007.

Congrats!

Source AP