Jeopardy! contestant Libby Jones' 2-game streak ends on Wednesday

Jeopardy! season 42 game 63 premiered on Wednesday, December 3, 2025, hosted by Ken Jennings, featured returning champion Libby Jones, along with two new players:

• Ron Lalonde, a medical physicist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• Sarah Murphy, a freelance transcript editor from Hamilton, Ontario.

Giant Killer Libby defeated the 14-game champion Harrison Whitaker, becoming a champion on Jeopardy! for two games. As she entered the stage with $70,802 for her third game, she fell short in the final round, wrapping up her three-day appearance with a total of $73,802.

Jones dominated and took a lead in the first round, but got the Daily Double wrong. At the end of Double Jeopardy!, Jones had $15,200, with Lalonde close behind with $11,200. Murphy had a negative score of $400 and was eliminated from competing in Final Jeopardy!

Ron answered the final round correctly, betting $4,001, and finished with $15,201 by the end of the game.

While Libby just wrote down “Poet” instead of the correct answer, "Poet's Corner," which cost her $7,201 and left her with $7,999, making Ron Lalonde the new Jeopardy! champion.

The 2-game champion missed the final round on the third game of Jeopardy! season 42

Libby Jones is a 44-year-old recruiter for engineering Internships at Tesla from Davenport, Florida, and grew up in Springboro.

She is the sister of one-time champion Evan Jones and is the first woman since Hannah Wilson on May 4, 2023 to win over $40,000 in a regular season play game.

On her debut in Jeopardy! on Monday, December 1, 2025, Jones defeated the champion Harrison Whitaker and then later became the eighth giant killer to win more than one regular-season play game after defeating a super champion. Her earnings are:

• Monday, December 1, 2025: $24,801
• Tuesday, December 2, 2025: $46,001, and her two-game total became $70,802
• Wednesday, December 3, 2025: $7,999, and her final earnings for three days were $73,802.

Host Ken Jennings praised Libby Jones’ performance in the episode, noting:

"I hope you were watching yesterday’s game because it was a dozy, it was a dilly. We had two players scoring more than $20,000 heading into Final Jeopardy! But in the end, it was Libby Jones who became a two-day champion, notching our second-highest one-game total of the season behind only Harrison Whitaker, the super champ she beat on Monday."

During the exit interview, Jones shared how Taylor Swift helped her prepare for the show, stating:

"When I was in the thick of studying and pressed for what I should be studying, I would just shuffle my Taylor Swift playlist and kind of let that guide me.

So, ‘London Boy’ — let’s study prime ministers. Or ‘Teardrops On My Guitar’ — let’s study parts of the eye."

The Final Jeopardy! clue in the category "Monuments and Memorials" on the 63rd game of Jeopardy! season 42 was:

"In NYC’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, an alcove with memorials to Hart Crane, Sylvia Plath and 54 others is the ‘American’ this."

The Correct response was "What is Poet’s Corner?" but Libby only wrote "Poet," which was incomplete, leading to her defeat in the game as well as the championship, and Ron Lalonde, who answered it correctly, became the new Jeopardy! winner.

He would now compete on Friday, December 4, 2025, in the 64th game of Jeopardy! against two new players: Andy Luo, a student coach from Johns Creek, Georgia, and Marie D'Avignon, a VP of operations from Durham, North Carolina.

Stay tuned for more updates.