He played hard, he bet big, and he… came in second.
Federal banking watchdog Richard Cordray showcased his knowledge of newspapers, literature, and science Wednesday night
in a special “Jeopardy!” faceoff of past champs
.
But even a major wager in the Final Jeopardy round couldn’t pull the head of the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
into the winner’s circle once more.
Cordray was a five-time “Jeopardy!” champ in 1987 (
pictured
), when, as a fresh-faced law school grad clerking for the U.S. Supreme Court,
he raked in more than $45,000 in winnings
.
He returned to face the big board once more in a battle against
Tom Nosek, an aerospace consultant from Torrance, Calif., and Leslie Shannon, a market analyst based in Finland.
In a roller-coaster of a game, Cordray — whose agency oversees banks, credit unions and other lenders — racked up his first correct response by identifying “fetid” as a five-letter synonym for “malodorous.”
He jumped in with two costly goofs — misidentifying North Dakota’s “low-grade brown coal” as “anthracite,” not “lignite,” and going with “pleistocene,” not “devonian,” as the geological “age of fishes” — but pulled himself back into the black (and the lead) with an answer about neap tides.
During the quick chat period between rounds, Alex Trebek quizzed Cordray — a former Ohio state treasurer and attorney general — about having worked his “Jeopardy!” champ status into his campaign pitches when he went into politics.
“The one I recall is,
‘The answer is: Richard Cordray,’
” Trebek chuckled.
Cordray upped his game in the next segment. He came close to running a category matching newspaper names to their home cities — The Des Moines Register, The Columbus Dispatch, The Indianapolis Star and The Omaha World-Herald, stumbling only on The Commercial Appeal of Memphis.
And the regulator scored with three good responses in the category on the works of Henry James (though Shannon grabbed one on a Daily Double), bringing him into a $5,400 tie with her going into Double Jeopardy.
Cordray dropped his first attempt in that round, going with “Pravda,” not “TASS,” as the former Soviet Union’s official news service.
He also made several pricey errors in the opera category and missed one on the porcelain-producing French city of Sevres (Cordray went with Limoges).
Nosek, who arguably played the most conservative game of the three champs, came into Final Jeopardy with up to $6,000 to wager on “The Periodic Table,” followed by Shannon at $3,600 and Cordray in third with $2,600.
The answer:
“Of the element symbols that don’t match the element’s English name, this element’s symbol is alphabetically first.”
Risking it all, Cordray doubled his money with “What is silver?” and Shannon promptly emptied her account by putting it all on the incorrect “What is iron?”
Nosek, who had wagered $1,201, wrote “What is AG?” The judges accepted it — though his failure to give the element’s proper name
sent the Twittersphere into something of a tizzy
— elevating him into the next stage of the $1 million tournament.
At least financially, Cordray had nothing to lose by playing aggressively.
in an interview prior to the show’s airing, his status as a presidential appointee barred him from taking home any money he won — or even directing it to charity.
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