Raymond Goslow was quick to the buzzer, and dominated his entire quarterfinal game in this round of Jeopardy! National College Championship that aired last night on ABC, and with a final score of $26,021 he will move on to the semifinals.
Goslow is a recent graduate of Kennesaw State University, and when the game was filmed last November, was a senior. He is on the staff of the Cobb Public Library.
His opponents were Jeric Brual, a senior at NYU, and Lucy Greenman, a senior at William & Mary.
Goslow was first on the board. Greenman chose the first clue from the category “Hits of 2021.” The clue was “She teamed with Cardi B to deal with ‘Rumors’ about a wide range of subjects including groupies and smoothie cleanses.” Goslow hit the buzzer and asked, “Who is Lizzo?”
After that, Greenman had a brief period in the lead, then when she dropped into negative territory Goslow built a lead that he increased and maintained for the rest of the game, often rapidly adding to his score with multiple clues in a row.
Greenman came in second place with $16,000 after risking the entire $8,000 she had accumulated on the Final Jeopardy round, and Brual came in third with a score of $8,001.
The Final Jeopardy category was “Physicists.” The clue was: “A 1927 principle by the Nobel Prize winner says that some knowledge is inaccessible.”
The correct answer was Heisenberg, or Werner Heisenberg. Heisenberg developed the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics that states the path of certain particles in quantum mechanics is not knowable.
All three competitors got the question correct, but Goslow’s correct question only built on what was already a dominating lead he held.
The semifinals will air February 17 and 18, and the final game will air on Tuesday February 22. All will air at 8 p.m. ET, broadcast live on ABC and streaming the following mornings on Hulu.
About the Jeopardy! National College Championship
The official Jeopardy! website describes the tournament and its prizes as follows:
Hosted by Mayim Bialik, 36 of America’s sharpest undergrads will enter this collegiate competition, but only one will claim the $250,000 grand prize and the title of Jeopardy! National College Champion. Second place takes home $100,000, and third place leaves with $50,000. The remaining contestants will receive the following prizes: $35,000 (fourth place), $20,000 (8 semi-finalists eliminated), and $10,000 (24 quarter-finalists eliminated).
An article by Thomas Hartwell posted on the Kennesaw State University website before last night’s airing describes the lead-up to Goslow’s appearance as follows:
During his junior year, Goslow, a geospatial sciences major, had a chance to try out for the “Jeopardy!” National College Championship. He began the process in October 2020, and a series of tests, interviews and auditions meant he made it under the wire before his graduation, traveling to California for filming in November 2021.
“To be eligible I still had to be in school, so luckily they taped it before my graduation in December,” Goslow said. “I was very lucky it all worked out like that.”