Has there ever been a more lopsided game? Has there been a case where only one contestant made it to Final Jeopardy? Has there been a case where nobody made it?
Today’s Final Jeopardy was a blowout; the person in first place not only more than twice the score of either competitor, but more than than their combined scores.
My favorite episode was the one where all three contestants blew Final Jeopardy and wound up tied at (IIRC) $1. So on the next show, there were three co-champions.
This wasn’t all that long ago. I’m pretty sure I was already living in Toronto, so that would place it around … 2010?
FYI - It hasn’t played out on an episode yet, but Jeopardy has gotten rid of ties. If there’s a tie for first place, there will be a sudden death question to determine the champion. I assume if there’s a tie for second, the person who had more money going into Final Jeopardy gets second, and the other player gets third.
I don’t have a written cite, but the J Board fan site has been talking about it for awhile and the contestant coordinators confirmed it when I taped an episode in January.
So far in this thread, we’ve identified three such occasions (in posts #4 & #5), if I’m understanding you correctly, and I guess we can now add a fourth one. Those are just from 1984 onward, the Alex Trebek years. Art Fleming years are not included.
Also, it looks like there’s at least one single-player final Jeopardy not in the archive, but I’ve gleaned from this bio that episode #155 on 4-12-1985 was another one. So we’re up to five now in the Trebek years.