Nova Scotia’s Mattea Roach earns 9th ‘Jeopardy!’ win, prize money tops $200K

The winning streak continues for Nova Scotia’s Mattea Roach, who won the popular TV quiz show Jeopardy! for the ninth time Friday night.

Roach added another $28,001 in winnings, bringing her total earnings to $210,802 USD.

The 23-year-old originally from Nova Scotia secured her win during the “Final Jeopardy” category of “Academy Award Winners.”

The clue was: “In 2019, he won his first competitive Oscar, 36 years after a Student Academy Award for a film about a Brooklyn barbershop.”

Roach, who bid $6,201, wrote “Who is Spike Lee?” which was the correct answer.

According to Jeopardy!‘s daily box scores, Roach has answered clues correctly 93 per cent of the time in all nine games, with 239 correct responses and 17 incorrect ones.

Roach will now try to win her 10th game when she returns to the show on Monday.

In an interview with Global’s The Morning Show last week, Roach said she applied for the show online during the pandemic, because she was “bored” and wanted to give it a go.

“The worst thing that happens is I don’t hear back, and the best thing that happens is maybe I got on the show, so there’s literally no downside to taking the test. Then I got the best possible outcome,” she said.

That best possible outcome — so far — has allowed her to pay off her student loans and a chance to appear in a future Tournament of Champions game.

Roach graduated from Sacred Heart School in Halifax in 2015, and her family still lives in Halifax and Cape Breton. She now works as a tutor in Toronto.

— with files from The Canadian Press