[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the January 22 episode of Jeopardy!]
The Jeopardy! Champions Wildcard 2025 tournament has its finalists after one wildcard player maintained the lead throughout the January 25 semifinals showdown. Another player saw their finals hopes dashed by a loss on a true Daily Double bet. Tonight’s winner now joins fan-favorite Drew Goins and Will Yancey, who won the January 21 game that fans are calling one of the best episodes ever. A wildcard winner, a fan-favorite returning champ, and a high-scoring, risk-taking winner is an exciting cast for the two-day finals.
Playing in the January 22 semifinals were Paul Clauson, a tax analyst from Madison Heights, Michigan; Mehal Shah, a software engineer from Seattle, Washington; and Marko Saric, a math professor from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Fans will recall that Saric won last week in a game where Adam Hersh inexplicably bet it all in Final Jeopardy. High scores help you secure wildcard spots in this tournament, so betting it all is rarely worth the risk, but Yancey was confident in his final answer in the January 21 episode; he bet it all and answered correctly in the final prompt, resulting in a massive final score of 52,000. Goins won in another runaway victory, but his episode was preempted by Donald Trump’s inauguration for fans in certain timezones, angering many viewers.
Who made it into the Jeopardy! Champions Wildcard 2025 finals?
They’ll get the chance to see Goins and Yancey play again when Shah joins them in the first round of the Champions Wildcard Finals on Thursday, January 23. Saric was the only non-wildcard player in the last semifinal game. Shah and Clauson were both wildcard entries (Clauson made it into a wildcard spot after Hersh’s bad bet). Shah held a strong lead for the entire game, but it wasn’t a runaway victory. He answered his first Daily Double correctly, and Clauson answered his first incorrectly, losing 2,000 from his score in a true Daily Double. He found the third Daily Double and added 4,800 to his score with a correct answer, but he still didn’t catch up to Shah by the final round.
The scores were Shah with 19,800, Clauson with 12,400, and Saric with 5,800 heading into Final Jeopardy. Only Saric was correct with his final answer, doubling his final winnings to 11,600 after betting it all. But it wasn’t enough to beat Shah’s winning score of 13,799 after a bet of 6,001. Clauson ended in third place with 9,900 after wagering 2,500.
When are the Jeopardy! Champions Wildcard finals?
Goins, Shah, and Yancey will compete in two games set to air on Thursday, January 23 and Friday, January 24 (check your local listings for air times). The player with the highest cumulative dollar amount at the end of the second game wins the tournament.
The 2025 Tournament of Champions begins next week on Monday, January 27. See the full cast and schedule here.
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