Jeopardy! Champ Breaks More New Ground

Trans contestant Amy Schneider has won 21 straight games, most ever by a woman
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 24, 2021 1:25 PM CST
Updated Dec 30, 2021 9:10 AM CST
Jeopardy! Champ Breaking New Ground
A screen shot of Amy Schneider.   (Jeopardy!/YouTube)

Update: Still going. Jeopardy! contestant Amy Schneider has now won 21 games in a row, the most ever by a woman, report the Washington Post. She also collected more than $800,000 during the run, the fourth-largest sum overall in regular play. Schneider is transgender, and she is the first trans contestant to qualify for the annual Tournament of Champions. Our original story from Dec. 24 follows:

Jeopardy! has a new rising star, this one with a historic footnote. Amy Schneider is currently on a 17-game win streak and has won more than $631,000. As USA Today reports, that puts her in fourth place on the all-time list of regular-play winners, behind Matt Amodio ($1,518,601), James Holzhauer ($2,462,216), and Ken Jennings ($2,520,700). The 42-year-old is an engineering manager who lives in Oakland, and her win streak has led to a bit of show history, notes Yahoo Entertainment. Schneider is the first openly transgender contestant to qualify for the annual Tournament of Champions.

"I am so incredibly grateful," she tells San Francisco's KGO-TV. "Hopefully I can send a positive message to the nerdy trans girl who wants to be on the show, too." The advocacy group GLAAD thinks she's doing just that. Her "incredible run on Jeopardy! allows families all over the country to get to know her as someone who is great at word puzzles, has in-depth knowledge on a range of topics, and who also happens to be a transgender woman," says Nick Adams, the group's director of transgender representation. Schneider has been discussing her Jeopardy! adventure on Twitter. (More Jeopardy stories.)

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