The Jeopardy! National College Championship 2022 chose its winner from the Indian American community three years after Indian-origin Dhruv Gaur from Georgia had won the United States’ premiere quiz contest at the national level. On February 22, Jaskaran Singh from the University of Texas, Austin was crowned the winner of the Jeopardy! National College Championship 2022. The 22-year-old turbaned Indian American brought home the grand prize of $250,000 by outwitting other 35 contestants from 35 colleges across the country.
PC: Austin American Statesman | Casey Durkin/ABC
In his interviews with the media after the win, Jaskaran Singh uninhibitedly said, “My journey to Jeopardy began with my mom,” adding that he has been watching Jeopardy since childhood. His mom encouraged him to apply for the quiz tournament when he was 13, but he could not make it beyond the audition. However, his mother continued to make him focus on the goal. In 2021, she persuaded him to take part in the contest again by saying, “What’s the worst that could happen?” The Jeopardy! National College Championship 2022 winner proves that there is a determined mother behind a child’s success.
A resident of Plano, Jaskaran is now officially able to compete in Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. In media interviews, he sounded humble about his win and said that he had no special strategy for the final round. He revealed that he finds trivia facts interesting and likes to keep up with current affairs. and What he cherishes the most about the tournament is not the win, but that he got to meet other meritorious contestants from across the US. He went on to give a shoutout to them, on Twitter, “for being the nicest people” he has ever met.
As the tournament website sums up his performance in the final round, “he gave 48 correct responses and 10 incorrect responses over the two games. He found all six of the daily double clues and answered five of them correctly. He buzzed in on 66 percent of the questions.” His correct response in the form of a question to two of the puzzles doubled his score in the finale. “Who is Lady Chatterley?” was his response to the puzzle – “Introduced in 1928, this character has a disappointing affair with a writer before she begins a more satisfying relationship” – in the category “Characters in Banned Books”. “What is the gilded age?” was his correct response to the puzzle – “An 1873 book title gave us this phrase for the period in the late 1800s of growth & prosperity and also greed & corruption.”
Jaskaran Singh who is majoring in finance and economics plans to use the prize money to pay his college tuition fees. He has interned with the Boston Consulting Group in Dallas and worked for a civil rights organization in Washington. Notably, the University of Texas welcomed the Jeopardy! National College Championship 2022 winner by illuminating the clock tower in orange on February 22.