“You know what – if I bet a lot and lose today, whatever, I’ve had such a good run,” the bespectacled quiz genius told current host Ken Jennings in an episode that aired earlier this week. “So let’s try to make honestly $8,000.”
Jennings, audibly impressed by Roach’s vigorous effort, read the clue, a definition that would require Roach to identify the appropriate word: “To gently tease another person.”
Roach let the hint sink in for less than a second and nodded, the answer on the tip of his tongue.
“Okay, well, I should have bet more,” she said with a flick of her wrist and a subtle eye roll. “What is ‘rib’?”
And with that nonchalant (and correct) reply, Roach retook her lead and – for a $1 bet – won her 17th game in a row. As of that episode, the 23-year-old Canadian has won 19 games, making her one of the youngest “super champions” of the series (ie, breaking the all-time top 10 of the Jeopardy! winning streak).Her cumulative winnings are now over $460,000 since her 19th game on Friday and she boasts a 92% accuracy rate on her answers. per “Danger!” Roach is also the newest LGBTQ “Jeopardy!” Super champion after Amy Schneider’s triumph on the show. Schneider, a trans woman, earned more than $1.3 million earlier this year on a 40-game winning streak, one of the longest winning streaks in the show’s history “an incredible legacy of queer and trans champions,” Roach said in one Interviewed by GLAAD, the LGBTQ media advocacy organization “And also only queer and transgender contestants that really show up on the show and bring a lot of flair to it, which I really enjoyed watching as a viewer.”
Roach called Schneider a “real inspiration” for her before she began filming her series of Jeopardy! episodes and told GLAAD she hopes the two could compete side-by-side in a future Tournament of Champions episode of the show.
In another first, Roach is also the longest-running Canadian on the show (after the late host Alex Trebek, of course), according to Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts.
In an interview with Roberts, Roach shared her strategy before the game: repeating “Hail Mary” as soon as the cameras start rolling, a habit she picked up in a Catholic high school.
“I think it certainly can’t hurt — it certainly didn’t seem to hurt me,” Roach told Roberts.