Mattea Roach, the Jeopardy! champion with 23 wins under her belt, ended her reign on the show on Friday, losing by one dollar to challenger Danielle Maurer of Peachtree Corners, Georgia. Maurer won Friday’s game with $15,600 while Toronto tutor Roach placed second with $15,599. The Final Jeopardy question, which had to do with the history of Georgia’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport, is what ultimately unseated Roach. The 23-year-old’s winning streak and earnings of $560,983 landed her in the Jeopardy! Hall of Fame; Roach is the fifth best contestant in history, behind show legends Ken Jennings, Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio, and James Holzhauer. “It feels still kind of like a dream,” Roach said in a statement. “I really came down here hoping to maybe win one game and so I still can’t believe it. You know, it’s strange, obviously I didn’t come through in the last one, but I still feel so happy and so lucky to have had this experience.”
On Twitter, Roach posted, “Feeling proud and reflective tonight - thank you again so much to all who have supported me during my run. It’s almost exactly four months to the day I got the call to go on Jeopardy, and I had no idea back then how much my life would change as a result,” along with a link to Phoebe Bridgers’ “I Know the End.” She added, “I’ll share some more detailed thoughts tomorrow but for now I have one thought which is CONGRATULATIONS DANIELLE.” Maurer replied to Roach’s tweets, writing, “You are such a queen. Thank you for being so incredibly gracious and wonderful to a group of extremely nervous contestants.”
