Isaac Hirsch made a math mistake that cost him his winning streak on Jeopardy! .
During the July 16 game where where the customer support team manager went head to head with Erika Stromerson from Woodinville, Washington, and Jay Fisher from Lisle, Illinois. It was during the Final Jeopardy! part where Isaac mess up, The category was “1960s People" and the correct answer was “Who was Timothy Leary?”
None of the three contestants got the correct response but Jay won with $1,799 when Isaac’s wager of $14,000 placed him in second place with a score of $1,300. This was the end of the road for the reigning champion who ammassed $215,390.
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The California resident shared in the comment section the reason for loss in Jeopardy! subreddit for the July 16th episode.
“Okay, so why did I wager $14,000? The short answer is I did the math wrong,” Isaac explained “(Although I guess it’s kind of obvious based on how I spent the first minute after the game looking at my scratch paper in horror.) I was trying to subtract 14,401 from 16,200, and somehow came up with 1300 instead of 1800 as the number I needed to arrive at if I got it wrong, hence the 14,000 wager.”
In the last episode of the Inside Jeopardy! podcast for the season as season 40 of the trivia show came to a close on July 26. Host Sarah Whitcomb and Buzzy Cohen in episode that aired July 22 before interviewing Isaac, played a clip of him talking to host Ken Jennings right after the game about his miscalculations.
Ken noted that he was looking at is math to which Isaac responded that he did it "wrong" and "incorrectly." Everything he wrote in the subreddit was reiterated in the post game interview. Ken clarified his strategy of considering a scenario where everyone gets the answer wrong and he wagered for the win. Isaac agreed, lamenting his mistake.
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"This was, I mean, certainly one of the worst ways to lose, but also one of the most fitting for me to lose, cause I am bad at math so this pretty much fits with who I am," the comedian said.
In his interview with Sarah and Buzzy, he said he was glad they didn't show his face the moment he realized he made his math mistake. Isaac offered insight into what lead him to making the math error, although he still thought he should have done the math wrong despite the reasons
"I have a lot of excuses that I could give in that I was very tired, my dinner the night before didn't agree with me, I didn't sleep very well, and also, you know, there's just a mental fatigue to playing nine games of Jeopardy! in a row in a very short succession," Isaac elaborated.
"And I felt like I was just mentally slowing down each game. I was getting slower on the buzzer, my brain just wasn't ticking, I got that daily double in the last game where it's like, you know, he's named after the explorer Amundsen and all I could think of was NBA journeyman center, Lou Amundsen, whois not related to the question at all," he added.
The exhaustion and "mental fatigue" is something another Jeopardy champion talked about the podcast. Adriana Harmeyer, who has a 15-day streak, also expressed the same sentiment in talking about her eventual defeat. Fans can expect to see Isaac next season on Tournament of Champions.
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