[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Wednesday, February 11, episode of Jeopardy!]
Did a Jeopardy! contestant just predict the outcome of the game? Alison Betts shared that she made a sneaky move that caused her to win the Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament quarterfinal game.
Betts, a creative executive from San Jose, California, played against Isaac Hirsch, a customer support team lead from Burbank, California, and Josh Hill, a network engineer from North Little Rock, Arkansas, on February 11. Betts won five games in 2024 and lost in that year’s Tournament of Champions. Hirsch won nine games in July 2024 and advanced to the finals of the Tournament of Champions. He also reached the semifinals of the 2025 Jeopardy! Masters. Hill won seven games in 2018 and later competed in the Tournament of Champions, where he was eliminated in the quarterfinals.
The JIT is an invitation-only tournament, where players are typically pulled from previous years’ Masters, TOCs, and other long-running champions. The winner of the JIT takes home $150,000 and advances to this year’s Jeopardy! Masters, which has not yet set a date.
After six quarterfinal games, the winners and three Wildcard players face off in the semifinals, and then the finals, where the first player to two wins is the new champion.
Betts took the lead early on and had $1,000 when she found the Daily Double on clue five. She wagered all of her money in “USA.” The clue read, “While his library is in Ann Arbor, his museum is in Grand Rapids, where he grew up.” She answered correctly with “Who is Ford?” doubling up to $2,000.
She continued to keep the lead through the first 15 clues and then the rest of the round. Betts ended with $5,400. Hirsch had $3,200. Hill ended with $3,400.
In Double Jeopardy, she also found the first DD on clue five. She had $6,600 and wagered $5,000 in “Side Hustle Parts of Speech.” The clue was “This adjective is used more & more as a noun meaning anyone who generates content, from poems to advertising.”
“What is… creator?” Betts answered incorrectly. The correct response was creative. She dropped down to $1,600.
Hill found the second DD on clue 20. He made it a true Daily Double with $3,400 in his bank. In “Asia: Back on Tour!” the clue read, ” Of the 7 ‘-stan’ countries, we’re headed for this one, the southernmost.” He answered correctly with Pakistan, doubling up to $6,800.
“Nice,” Betts said.
She knew at that point that she wasn’t going to win, since the men were way ahead of her, so she concocted a plan. “The DJ round, though, hooo boy. There were so many clues I felt I knew but just wasn’t quite sure enough to buzz, especially after jusssst missing the second DD (if only I had literally 1-2 more seconds!) So after missing that, I told myself to hold back and NOT NEG,” Betts wrote on Reddit.
“I really didn’t want to go red as I found it challenging to get in when we all knew the answer. There was no guarantee I’d pick up enough buzzes to claw my way back. As the game got down to the wire, I looked at the scores and realized I didn’t have enough ground to overtake them. And with the difficulty of DJ, I thought the odds of me being the sole solve on FJ were basically nil.”
“But they were verrrrry close to one another. So my best chance was to try to force a tie, as them each having to bet it all was my only path to victory. For the last few clues, I held back, watching them volley. Then, with two clues remaining, the scores were 7200, 7600 with $800 in play. I knew I HAD to get one of the last two $400 clues to leave the right amount on the board. Somehow the buzzer gods smiled on me, and I managed to nab the second-to-last clue, then didn’t buzz on the final clue, just praying Isaac got it instead of Josh,” she continued.
“Miraculously, he did. Going into FJ, I felt pretty confident the all-in bet was their best option here, both because they wanted to win but also because 7600 wasn’t going to be enough for a WC (hah). So I wrote my joke response and wagered my birthday, just in case one of them did a wonky bet.”
The Final Jeopardy category was “1960s Novel Characters.” The clue was “An article about autism in fictional characters included him, whose ‘reward’ is to have his brave act go unrecognized.'” The correct response was Boo Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird, which none of the game show contestants got right.
Betts’ strategy and manifesting worked. She answered, “Who is I hope they both bet everything?” Betts wagered $414, ending with $2,786. Hirsch’s response was “Who is Randall?” Hill wrote, “Who is Caulfield?” They both wagered all of their money, ending with $0. Betts’ plan worked.
She joins Matt Amodio, Roger Craig, Drew Goins, and Andrew He in the semifinals. The last quarterfinal game will be played on Thursday, February 12, before the semifinals begin on Friday.
Jeopardy!, weekdays, check local listings, stream next day on Hulu and Peacock
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