Jeopardy!/Awesome

"Alex Trebek: This kind of event is so momentous and awe-inspiring, the wiki website TV Tropes devotes an entire section to them.

Trope-tan: What is a Crowning Moment of Awesome?

Alex: (looks off-camera) ...CrowningMomentOfAwesome or just Moment of Awesome, yes. Go again."


 * In general, any time a contestant sweeps an entire category, which is usually followed by applause.
 * Fall 1985: Chuck Forrest, widely considered the first truly great Jeopardy! player. No less than Ken Jennings has remarked that, while he was a fan of the Trebek Jeopardy! since day one, Chuck Forrest's run is his first really clear memory of the show. This was because Chuck was a Season 2 undefeated champion who:
 * Won all of his non-tournament games in lock or lock-tie fashion — in other words, going into Final Jeopardy!, he couldn't lose unless he got Final Jeopardy! wrong and made a completely logic-defying wager (or, as they say, pulling a Clavin).
 * Set what was then the show's 5-day winnings record...at the end of his fourth game,
 * And was so dominant in his Tournament of Champions, specifically the finals, that he single-handedly forced the producers to institute a minimum winnings guarantee for ToC finalists. To elaborate, the winner of the ToC that season won $100,000; the other two finalists' winnings were "what you won during the two finals games"; and losing in the semifinals that year got you $5000. Chuck's opponents' totals for the two finals games were $4000 and $3000, or less than they would have gotten had they lost in the semifinals. They appealed and were given $5000, which led to subsequent ToCs having a minimum guarantee for the two runners-up.
 * January 1990: Frank Spangenberg, then a member of the New York Transit Police Department (now the Transit Bureau of the New York City Police Department), set a record of $102,597 during his five days on the show, a record that lasted for 13 years. In addition to that, he set a then-one day record of $30,600 on his fifth and final day.
 * At the time, there was a $75,000 winnings cap, so Frank had to donate $27,597 of his winnings to Gift of Love Hospice, a facility operated by the Missionaries of Charity. In a moment that also doubles as a Heartwarming Moment, his money was used to bring the place up to fire code.
 * Frank later went on to win the Tenth Anniversary Tournament, and made appearances in the Million Dollar Masters and the Ultimate Tournament of Champions.
 * Late 1990s: Eddie Timanus, the first blind contestant to compete on the show; he was expertly accommodated by the show — he had a Braille keyboard at his podium to type Final Jeopardy! responses, and was given a Braille card containing the categories by Alex before each round (this was shown on-camera, although it was up to Eddie to recall what clues were remaining on the board). Merely competing on the show with such a...well, some would consider it a handicap or disadvantage...would have been awesome on its own, but Eddie was a great sport about the whole matter and was very smart — he became an undefeated champion!
 * June-November 2004: Ken Jennings' miracle run. He won seventy-four straight games and won over two million dollars. Two facts to put this in perspective:
 * Before he started his run, the record-holder had been on for eight straight days and had only won about $200,000. In fairness, though, up until 2003 (about a year before Jennings's appearance), 5-time champions were retired from the show undefeated, so this by itself doesn't tell the whole story.
 * More amazingly, in seven years of post-Jennings play, only one other person (David Madden, 19 wins) has even made it into double-digit non-Tournament victories, and none have gotten to 20 straight.
 * May 2005: Brad Rutter owning Ken Jennings in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, getting almost twice as much money as Ken Jennings and temporarily claiming the record for largest game show winner in history with over $3 Million.
 * March 16, 2007: With his two opponents tied at $8,000 and within reach, Scott Weiss figured they would risk it all. So he bet for a tie instead of the win, which led to the show's first-ever nonzero three-way tie and a very interesting intro by Johnny Gilbert on the next episode.
 * September 13-16, 2010: Season 27 began with a runaway win by Roger Craig, who also posted a total runaway in the next game — setting a new one-day record of $77,000 (beating a record set, incidentally, by Ken Jennings) in the process.
 * Roger's third and fourth games were quite impressive, too. On the third, he took a $10,000 tumble on a Daily Double and finished Double Jeopardy! only $1,600 ahead of second place. Luckily, he was the only one to get Final Jeopardy! right. The fourth day, another contestant held a significant lead over him in the first half, but Roger quickly jumped back into the lead during Double Jeopardy!, including a True Daily Double.
 * The IBM Challenge. All of it.
 * That may be so, but Watson GUESSED on a Daily Double with 32% confidence and got it RIGHT. Not only that, but Watson actually made the wager on that day's Final Jeopardy himself! (He got it wrong, but wagered only $947!)
 * Ken Jennings' Final Jeopardy card: "I for one welcome our new computer overlords".
 * November 14, 2011: In the final match of the Tournament of Champions, Roger Craig hunts down two Daily Doubles, one after the other. He bets all of his money on both of them, and gets the answers right; effectively quadrupling his score.
 * December 16, 2011: Jason Keller had been auditioning for the game for 16 years; he remained champion on Jeopardy! for nine days, winning $213,900.