On Monday night, Ken Jennings—the winningest contestant in Jeopardy! history—will finally step behind the lectern of the Alex Trebek Stage as an official permanent host. Through a season filling in part time with actress Mayim Bialik, he has served as a comforting bridge to the quiz show’s glory days for viewers and contestants alike.
That is, most contestants. Before Jennings became a benevolent Jeopardy! statesman destined to hand out congratulations and good for yous to untold hundreds, perhaps thousands, of quizzing obsessives for years to come, he was something else: a ruthless shatterer of dreams.
To be a Jeopardy! champion, after all, is to send two other players packing. To be the winningest champion of all time is to have ended more Jeopardy! careers than anyone else ever has—148 in his storied 74-game winning streak, to be exact, 147 of whom were booted from the stage just 30 minutes after arriving, never to return, with a consolation prize of either $1,000 or $2,000 depending on just how badly things went.
