‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Awed By Player’s Daily Double-less Win: ‘A Buzzer Monster’

Jeopardy! contestant Victoria Groce buzzed herself to victory during Friday’s eighth quarterfinal of the ongoing Invitational Tournament, and fans of the game show are applauding her Daily Double-less win.

“I’m very impressed with Victoria’s performance today!” one viewer wrote in a Reddit discussion thread for Friday’s episode, after Victoria trounced Ben Ingram, a business control specialist originally from Florence, South Carolina, and Dhruv Gaur, a grad student from Cambridge, Massachusetts (and the contestant who once made Alex Trebek choke up).

Victoria, a writer and television personality from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ended the game with $28,801 after a correct Final Jeopardy! response. It wasn’t a runaway game, though, since Dhruv had $14,400 going into Final Jeopardy! He responded incorrectly and ended up in third place with $5,999, behind Ben, who scored $7,654.

“Victoria was on fire with the buzzer and Ben and Dhruv could hardly ring in,” another person wrote. “You gotta hand it to Dhruv and Ben, too, for doing as well as they did with Victoria, to her credit, killing them on the buzzer — or so it appeared.”

A third viewer wrote that Victoria’s “undoubtedly become a buzzer monster.”

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One statistics-minded viewer, meanwhile, noted that Victoria had joined fellow tournament invitees Larissa Kelly, Matt Jackson, and Amy Schneider in reaching a Coryat score above $20,000. (The Coryat score is a player’s score with wagering disregarded, and Victoria’s was $22,800 on Friday.)

“Victoria proving she’s going to be a threat in these games,” another viewer wrote. “Before seeing the semifinal matchup, I like Larissa, Matt, and Victoria as the final three, but we will see.”

Game show buffs might recognize Victoria, and not just because she competed on Jeopardy! in 2005, when she beat 19-day champion David Madden in her debut but then lost her second game. She’s also a Chaser on the ABC game show The Chase — where she’s known as “The Queen” — alongside fellow Jeopardy! alums Brandon Blackwell, James Holzhauer, Brad Rutter, and Buzzy Cohen. And Victoria has a connection to Jeopardy!2024 Tournament of Champions finalist Troy Meyer: She and Troy both represented the U.S. at the 2022 World Quizzing Championships.

Victoria’s ABC bio notes that she lives with her husband, their teenage daughter, and their two cats, and that she enjoys cooking (and cooking “unnecessarily elaborate meals”), kayaking, and knitting. “She is proud to have only required medical attention for knitting-related injuries on two occasions,” the bio adds.

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