Reigning "Jeopardy!" champion Amy Schneider has officially achieved the second-longest winning streak in the quiz show's history.
On Monday, the software engineering manager from Oakland, California, won her 39th straight game, besting previous runner-up Matt Amodio's 38-day record. So far, no one has come close to catching current "Jeopardy!" host Ken Jennings, who notched a colossal 74 consecutive victories as a contestant in 2004.
Could Schneider be the one to finally dethrone the greatest "Jeopardy!" player of all time? She's more than halfway there.
"It still feels unreal," Schneider said in a statement. "Knowing that I had this chance, I was definitely thinking about it. Then Ken said it, and I thought, 'Alright, I just accomplished this huge thing' and it was pretty great."
By the end of Monday's episode, Schneider had amassed $1.32 million on the show — the fifth-highest total ever, including tournament winnings. And she hasn't even participated in a tournament yet.
After her regular-season run comes to an end, she'll likely compete against Amodio in the next Tournament of Champions. Both Schneider and Amodio are newly minted hall-of-famers who made their "Jeopardy!" debuts in the same cycle.
"It's going to be an honor playing against you," Schneider told Amodio in a statement, "and it's going to be a tight competition."
During her historic "Jeopardy!" stint, Schneider has blazed a trail by winning more games than any other woman and transgender person to appear on the long-running trivia series.
Her lightning buzzer reflexes and 95% rate of accuracy when responding to clues tend to give her a runaway lead heading into the Final Jeopardy! round. And in recent months, she's gained a legion of fans who support her and follow her detailed game recaps religiously on Twitter.
"It's actually been great, the opportunity to get used to seeing myself on screen and see people responding so favorably to it," Schneider told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month.
"I can now look at myself and see someone that people like and agree with them and understand why. ... I honestly wasn't sure I'd ever have that feeling."
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