Colby Burnett | |
---|---|
Born | Chicago, IL |
Occupation | Former World History instructor at Fenwick High School |
Employer | Fenwick High School |
Known for | Jeopardy! King of the Nerds |
Spouse | Janet Wasilewski (m. 2022) |
Colby Burnett is the first Jeopardy! contestant to have won both the Teachers Tournament and the Tournament of Champions. Burnett, who at the time was a teacher at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois, [1] won the Teachers Tournament in November 2012. [2] Later, in February 2013, Burnett won the show's Tournament of Champions, taking home the $250,000 grand prize. He later appeared on season 3 of TBS's reality game show King of the Nerds . [3] Governor Pat Quinn named December 18 as "Colby Burnett Day" in Illinois. [4] [5] In 2014, he competed in the Battle of the Decades, where he made the semifinals but lost his match to Roger Craig.[ citation needed ]
Burnett graduated from Fenwick High School. He then went on to get his BA from Northwestern University, double majoring in History and Political Science. Then he got his MEd in Reading Teacher Education from Dominican University. [6]
Burnett grew up in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. [7] He credits his mother with keeping him out of trouble, as well as enhancing his intellect by buying him an encyclopedia, which he has read from cover to cover. [8] After winning Jeopardy!, Burnett bought his mom a new home in a better area of Chicago. [7] When asked what the greatest accomplishment of his life was, the Jeopardy! champion stated, "knowing a duke of Sealand." [9]
Kenneth Wayne Jennings III is an American game show host, former contestant, and author. He is best known for his work on the syndicated quiz show Jeopardy! as a contestant and later its host. Jennings was born in Seattle, Washington but grew up in South Korea and Singapore. He worked as a computer programmer before he tried out for Jeopardy! in 2004. During his initial run, Jennings secured a consecutive 74 wins, setting records and bringing significant media attention and viewership.
Paul Andrew Richter is an American actor, comedian, writer, and talk show announcer. He is best known as the sidekick for Conan O'Brien on each of O'Brien's talk shows: Late Night and The Tonight Show on NBC and Conan on TBS. He was also star of the Fox television series Andy Richter Controls the Universe. He voiced Mort in the Madagascar film franchise and Ben Higgenbottom in the animated television series The Mighty B! on Nickelodeon.
Eddie Timanus is a USA Today sportswriter and game show contestant who grew up in Reston, Virginia, then graduated from Wake Forest University. Timanus has been blind since he was a toddler due to retinoblastoma. He is best known for his five-game winning streak on the game show Jeopardy! and for being the first blind contestant to appear on the show.
John Joseph Lattner was an American professional football halfback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for one season with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1954. He played college football for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, where he won the Heisman Trophy in 1953 and also won the Maxwell Award twice, in 1952 and 1953.
Fenwick High School is a private Catholic college preparatory school located in Oak Park, a town in Cook County, Illinois that is bordered by Chicago on the north, east, River Forest and Forest Park on the West, and Cicero and Berwyn on the south. Fenwick was founded in 1929 and is a ministry of the Province of St. Albert the Great. It is the only school directly operated and staffed by the Order of Preachers in the United States. It is named in honor of the first Bishop of Cincinnati, Dominican friar Edward Dominic Fenwick, O.P.. Fr. Richard Peddicord, O.P. has served as president of Fenwick High School since July 1, 2012. After a nearly year-long principal search, it was announced in April 2023 that Mark Rasar would be the next principal of Fenwick. On December 4, 2023, it was announced that Rasar would be leaving abruptly, after less than 6 months in the role. President Fr. Richard Peddicord, O.P. will serve as interim principal until a replacement is found.
Bradford Gates Rutter is an American game show contestant, TV host, producer, and actor. With over $5.1 million in winnings, he is the second-highest-earning American game show contestant of all time, behind Ken Jennings, and still the highest-earning contestant on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy!.
Alex Jacob is an American former professional poker player and game show contestant.
A game show is a type of radio, television, or internet program in which contestants, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering trivia questions or solving puzzles, usually for prizes. Game shows are usually distinguishable from reality television competition shows, in which the competition consumes an entire season of episodes; in a game show, prizes can typically be won in a single match. Beginning with the first five-figure and six-figure game show jackpots in the mid-1950s, a succession of contestants on various quiz shows of the era each set records. Teddy Nadler of The $64,000 Challenge, the highest-scoring contestant of the 1950s era, was not surpassed until 1980, when Thom McKee won $312,700 on Tic-Tac-Dough. Between 1999 and 2001, during a brief boom in high-stakes game shows, the record was broken six times. Both the 1955–1958 and 1999–2001 eras of rapidly set and broken records were driven primarily by one-upmanship between the networks each trying to secure bragging rights and ratings by inflating their prize offerings, rather than the merits of the contestants themselves. American daytime television has historically had smaller prize budgets for game shows that air in that daypart.
Jeopardy! is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given general knowledge clues in the form of answers and they must identify the person, place, thing, or idea that the clue describes, phrasing each response in the form of a question.
Charles “Chuck” Forrest is an American attorney and game show contestant who at one time held the record for the largest non-tournament cash winnings total on the syndicated game show Jeopardy! The Los Angeles Times called him "the Alexander the Great of Jeopardy! players." The producers of the show regarded Forrest as one of the best and most memorable contestants of the 1980s. He is widely regarded by other elite Jeopardy! players to be one of the most formidable contestants ever to play.
Roger Alan Craig Jr. is an American game show contestant, computer scientist, data scientist, and machine learning consultant. He held the record for highest single-day winnings on the quiz show Jeopardy! from September 14, 2010 to April 9, 2019. In 2011, Craig returned to win the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. In 2014, he competed in the Battle of the Decades tournament, finishing third overall behind Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings.
King of the Nerds is an American reality competition series co-produced by Electus and 5x5 Media. It was inspired by the Revenge of the Nerds films. The show is hosted by actors and executive producers Robert Carradine and Curtis Armstrong, known for their roles as Lewis Skolnick and Dudley "Booger" Dawson, respectively, in Revenge of the Nerds. The series premiered on January 17, 2013, on TBS. The show features nerds and geeks with diverse backgrounds and interests competing in various challenges for a cash prize of $100,000 and the title of "King of the Nerds". Following a three-season run, the series was cancelled by TBS.
Arthur Chu is an American columnist and former contestant on Jeopardy!, a syndicated U.S. game show. Chu first became known for the unusual style of play he adopted during his eleven-game winning streak on Jeopardy!. When the shows aired, Chu attracted criticism from many for jumping from category to category rather than selecting clues in sequential order, a strategy known as the "Forrest Bounce", named for former champion Chuck Forrest.
Matthew Barnett Jackson is an American paralegal and former contestant on the syndicated game show Jeopardy! who won 13 consecutive games, earning $413,612. This is the eleventh-highest game streak of all time as of June 4, 2023. His 13-episode streak ended with a loss on October 14, 2015. Jackson's total winnings place him tenth on the all-time money-winning list in regular (non-tournament) games as of June 4, 2023.
James Holzhauer is an American game show contestant and professional sports gambler. He is the third-highest-earning American game show contestant of all time. Holzhauer is best known for his 32-game winning streak as champion on the quiz show Jeopardy! from April to June 2019, during which he set multiple single-game records for winnings, and for winning the following Tournament of Champions that November.
Jeopardy! The Greatest of All Time is a special tournament limited-run series of the game show Jeopardy! that took place in January 2020. The tournament was produced for ABC and aired on the network in prime time. This was the second time a Jeopardy! competition aired on network television ; the first occurred in 1990 when the special tournament series Super Jeopardy! was carried by ABC.
Amy Schneider is an American writer and game show contestant. Winning 40 consecutive games on the quiz show Jeopardy! from November 2021 to January 2022 and the November 2022 Tournament of Champions, she holds the second-longest win streak in the program's history, behind only Ken Jennings, who hosted the show as she competed and the longest win streak by a woman. She is the most successful woman and most successful transgender contestant ever to compete on the show, in terms of both the length of her streak and her $1.6 million in winnings.
Celebrity Jeopardy! is an American game show that consists of 13-episode tournaments - each played by 27 celebrities. Their winnings in the tournaments are donated to a charity of their choice.