Wednesday night’s Final Jeopardy prompt asked “Jeopardy!” contestants to identify the historical figure who once said, “if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
The first contestant struck out with “Who is John Lennon?” The second failed to provide an answer. But when the camera panned to Delaney O’Dea ’28, a Brown student competing in the quiz show, she was ready with the correct answer: “Who is Harvey Milk?”
O’Dea placed first on the quiz show’s Oct. 15 episode before returning for a second place finish on Thursday night. Between her two appearances, she earned a total prize of $21,600, clinching a spot as one of the show’s youngest champions.
“It was surreal,” O’Dea said in an interview with The Herald. “When I look back at it now and watch the episode, I’m like, ‘Did that ever really happen?’”
O’Dea landed a spot on the show this August after a months-long audition process that began in February, The Herald previously reported. She applied to compete soon after turning 18, the minimum age for contestants.
In her first round, O’Dea nailed the ‘Broadway’ category: “I was a theater kid,” she told The Herald. She found two Daily Doubles during the game, answering one correctly about the region of Transylvania.
“I figured that out from Latin,” she explained — a language O’Dea studies at Brown. The clue, which referred to a region “beyond the forest,” echoes the Latin roots “trans” and “silva,” which denote “across” and “forest,” respectively. Though she was already in the lead, her answer put her over $3,000 ahead of the other two contestants.
The Final Jeopardy question had O’Dea’s former professor Mariah Min, an assistant professor of English, up on her feet with excitement.
“As soon as I saw the question, I was PUMPING MY FIST like a maniac because I KNEW Del knew the answer!” Min wrote in an email to The Herald. “I'm so proud of her, as is everyone in her life.”
Milk was an LGBTQ+ rights activist and politician from San Francisco. A California native, O’Dea knew the answer right away. “I was raised by my mom and all of her gay friends,” she said. “I was like, ‘If I don’t get this, I’m gonna be disowned.’”
O’Dea was the only contestant to answer the final question correctly, securing her win and raising her total winnings of the night to $18,600.
She had another edge over her competitors: a home-field advantage. O’Dea was born and raised in Los Angeles, and the studio was just 10 minutes away from her house.
“It was nice to go home, and I got to have a bunch of friends and family in the audience,” she said.
At a Brown Quizbowl watch party on Wednesday night, several of O’Dea’s friends shared in the excitement of her win.
“We were all freaking out … when she answered the final ‘Jeopardy!’ correctly,” Ramya Rajan ’29 wrote. “I was lucky to have the opportunity to be with her when her episode aired.”
Though Rajan was unsurprised by O’Dea’s victory, she wrote, “it’s also really surreal.” She added that O’Dea’s “performance and poise were so incredible.”
“I’m so proud of Del!” Matty Berman ’29, another of O’Dea’s friends, wrote in a message to The Herald. “She’s one of the kindest people I’ve met at Brown, and it really showed on ‘Jeopardy!’”
With a win under her belt, O’Dea advanced to Thursday night’s game.
O’Dea felt more relaxed going into the second game. This time, she said, she was “just going to have fun.”
After a relatively close first round, O’Dea rose into the lead during the Double Jeopardy round with a four-question streak that earned her almost $7,000. She honed in on the ‘Fiendish Entertainment’ category, nailing questions about the shows “Lucifer,” “Good Omens” and “Cheers.”
After another contestant gained the lead from a Daily Double, O’Dea held on to her position in second place during the final round and received an automatic prize of $3,000.
O’Dea said most of her prize money will be used for “boring” purposes, like taxes and investing. But with the rest, she said, she’s been “kicking around and buying stuff I don’t need.”
Zarina Hamilton is a university news editor covering activism and affinity & identity. She is sophomore from near Baltimore, Maryland and is studying mechanical engineering. In her free time, you can find her reading, journaling, or doing the NYT mini crossword.
