Erik Agard of Gaithersburg was on roll after winning three Jeopardy! games and more than $66,000 this week. He was leading again entering the Final Jeopardy portion of Wednesday night’s show. But his winning streak came to a crashing halt when he failed to answer the final question correctly, losing to Hannah McIntyre, an author from British Columbia, Canada.
Agard, a 2011 graduate of Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, was featured on the well-known game show on four straight weeknights, winning in three episodes.
A professional puzzle maker, Agard won the American Crossword Puzzle tournament in March when the 24-year-old completed a puzzle in less than five minutes, besting the former champ by three minutes. Agard also serves as the Arizona Daily Star’s crossword puzzle maker, according to the newspaper’s website. He works remotely and in 2017 published a crossword book titled Food for Thought Crosswords, available for purchase on Amazon.
After winning easily on Monday night, Agard again won by $1 on Tuesday night. He defeated Traci Clark, a pharmacist from Florida, and Patrick Healy, a social studies teacher from New York.
During Wednesday night’s show, Agard had a $4,500 lead on McIntyre entering Final Jeopardy, but was stumped by this answer in the African Cities category: “Also a judicial capital, this aptly named city is known for an annual rose festival that began in 1976.”
McIntyre and third-place finisher Rock Wayda, a bond analyst from California, both correctly answered, “What is Bloemfontein,?” the capital city of the province of Free State of South Africa. Agard answered, “What is Cape Town?”
Agard also did not know the answer to the Final Jeopardy question on Monday night, but easily won the game anyway and “won over the internet” according to Time magazine by writing a popular internet meme as his answer, “What is you doing baby.”