Tournament of Champions: Amy Schneider wins a “Jeopardy!” tournament

NEW YORK — Forty-game winner Amy Schneider capped off her big year by winning a “Jeopardy!” tournament of champions in an episode broadcast on Monday.

Schneider, a writer from Oakland, Calif., won three matches in the tournament final, narrowly beating Andrew He, a software developer from nearby San Francisco, who won two matches. The third contestant, Sam Buttrey, was another Californian who won a match.

Schneider enjoyed a 40-game winning streak earlier this year, the second-longest in game show history, which began when she defeated He.

She said she both wanted to compete again with He, known for his big, cold-blooded bets on the show’s Daily Doubles, and feared him.

“He was definitely someone I knew could beat me because he had come close to doing it before, and he’s done it a few times here too,” Schneider said. “Any one of us three really could have won if a very few things had gone differently.”

Schneider led He by $1,400 entering Final Jeopardy, where the prompt was: “On January 12, 1864, the Washington Evening Star reported on a performance of this ‘dazzling comedy’ in ‘a house full and delighted'” .”

The correct answer: “What is ‘Our American cousin?'”

Schneider and He both answered correctly, but Schneider made the bigger bet. She won the grand prize of $250,000, he won $100,000 for runner-up, and Buttrey won $50,000.

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington.