Jeopardy! champ Drew Basile boasts he ‘knew the answer’ to clue that ended 7-day streak and reveals real reason he lost

JEOPARDY! champ Drew Basile has insisted that his seven-day winning streak came to a screeching halt due to fatigue – and fatigue alone.

Drew , 23, the first Survivor contestant to compete on the game show , made multiple bold claims in a new interview with EW.

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The Michigan-born graduate student lost on Friday, June 28 after amassing $129,601 and the second-longest streak of the Season 40.

Drew’s last game was sloppy across the board, finishing in the negative in the Jeopardy! round.

The Survivor star made a comeback with $9,600 after Double Jeopardy, but the final clue saw his torch get snuffed.

He bet $8,399 and the category was “Notable American Women.”

The clue was, “In her autobiography she tells of a rather ‘singular coincidence,’ that one of her Swiss ancestors was a teacher of the deaf.”

Drew visibly struggled and squirmed at the podium – he incorrectly guessed, “Gallaudet.” The correct answer was “Hellen Keller.”

Drew was defeated by Cat Pisacano, who beat him by more than $10,000 and who guessed correctly, as did the third player Andrew Fox.

Drew finished with just $1,201, while Cat’s final score was $11,500.

She was beaming when Ken Jennings declared her the new champ.

‘COULDN’T REMEMBER THE NAME’

“Jeopardy! is fatiguing,” Drew told EW the night that his defeat episode aired.

“By the end of the taping day I was exhausted. I had had a terrible Single Jeopardy round, making all kinds of mistakes,” he shared.

“The amazing thing about Final Jeopardy was I knew the answer,” he boldly claimed.

“I knew it was Helen Keller, and I was so exhausted I couldn’t remember the name. I knew I got it wrong.

“I was just so tired, for the life of me I couldn’t remember Helen Keller’s name.

“That comes down to a little bit of youth. That comes down to inexperience.

“And hopefully with a little bit of more practice, that’s a correctable mistake.”

‘SHOCKED DREW MISSED IT’

When his defeat match aired last week, fans were stunned that Drew missed the Hellen Keller clue.

“Am I the only one who thought that final was about the easiest question, and was thoroughly SHOCKED Drew missed it??

“I’m not demeaning his answer or the stress of the situation. I was just shocked,” one fan wrote on Reddit at the time.

“I think our no-longer champion thought way too hard on a lot of clues. This was nowhere more apparent than Final,” wrote another.

‘WEAK POINT’

Drew also revealed how he will bone up for the next Tournament of Champions, admitting that Final Jeopardy – in which he went three for eight – was a weak point.

“I didn’t really pay enough attention to the structure of Jeopardy clues, the grammar of Jeopardy, so Final Jeopardy was a weak point,” he said.

“Going back, I’m really going to spend a lot of time watching the show, paying attention to the way that those Final Jeopardy clues are structured.

“It’s going to boil down to a lot of flashcards, a lot of rewatching older material, and I’m going to pick a few all star names, like, of course, James Holzhauer, Victoria, Yogesh, and study how they play and what they do, to take cues from that.

I’m going to take cues from them.”

‘WEARING ON ME’

Drew is not the first player to lose steam last month due to Jeopardy! taping five episodes a day.

Adriana Harmeyer, who Drew beat in a huge upset after her 15-day streak last month, also credited fatigue for her loss.

They both lost on their fifth game of a five-game tape day.

Drew compared himself to her, “You saw that with Adriana, and you certainly saw with me,” he told EW.

However, Adriana was dealt a much tougher hand than Drew in terms of the show’s schedule.

Her last 13 games (or three tape days) were in May on three consecutive days, a major rarity for the show.

“By the third day, I could feel it wearing on me a little bit,” she shared on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast.

“I just did my best to fight through it and keep going as best I could to focus on buzzer speed and keep remembering things. An unusual experience, I think.”

‘SORE WINNER’

Drew competed in Survivor Season 45 last year and is the first person in history to compete in the reality competition and on Jeopardy!

He finished with the second-longest streak of the season – only behind the champ he knocked out.

Drew’s subsequent wins have made for splashy TV, with his third victory coming from an ultra-rare tiebreaker

His fourth win saw him nab 33 correct responses, a season record for any player.

That said, some fans have called out Drew for “showboating” during those wins.

He would often clap for himself, pump his fists, and also drew ire for writing a joke final answer when he took down Adriana.

“Someone please break his streak… Please. I was really hoping he wouldn’t make it to the ToC,” one social media user wrote during his run.

“Can anyone see through the fake humility of him? Waiting for a new winner,” wrote another user.

Drew and Adriana, who had the big streaks back to back, may now have a rematch in the Tournament of Champions in 2025.

The other qualifiers for the next Tournament of Champions are five-day winners Alison Betts and Dr. Amy Hummel and Celebrity Jeopardy!’s Lisa Ann Walter .

That said, with four wins, Grant DeYoung and Amar Kakirde will likely join in as well.

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