Amy Schneider returns to Jeopardy! to win $250,000 US grand prize

Forty-game winner Amy Schneider capped her big year by winning a hard-fought Jeopardy! tournament of champions in an episode that aired Monday.

Schneider, a writer from Oakland, Calif., won three games in the tournament finals, narrowly beating Andrew He, a software developer from neighbouring San Francisco, who won two games. The third contestant, Sam Buttrey, was another Californian who won one game.

Schneider had a 40-game winning streak earlier this year, the second-longest in the game show's history, which began when she defeated He.

She said she wanted to compete again with He — known for his cold-blooded big bets on the show's Daily Doubles — but also feared him.

"He was definitely someone that I knew could beat me because he very nearly did before, and he did a couple of times here as well," Schneider said. "Any of the three of us really could have won if a very small number of things had gone differently."

Schneider led He by $1,400 US going into Final Jeopardy, where the prompt was: "The Jan. 12, 1864 Washington Evening Star reported on a performance of this 'dashing comedy' to 'a full and delighted house.'"

The correct response: "What is Our American Cousin?"

Schneider and He both answered correctly, but Schneider made the bigger bet. She won the $250,000 grand prize, He won $100,000 for second place and Buttrey won $50,000.

On April 14, 1865, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington.