Shrewd maneuvering and a knowledge of 19th century literature and painters lead to a three day run on “Jeopardy!” for a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor and Florence resident.
Joseph Bartolomeo, an English professor specializing in 18th century British literature, won more than $36,000 on the long-running game show.
“It was a fantastic experience, a great group of people and I have no regrets at all,” Bartolomeo said in a phone interview after the show Monday.
The two-time champion had won a total of $36,500, earning $14,000 on Thursday, and $22,500 on Friday. His winning streak ended Monday evening after failing to bet enough money to clinch a win in the Final Jeopardy round.
In his first appearance on Jan. 5, Bartolomeo, was trailing until he wagered $200 in the final round — and won $14,000 because of it.
In the category “men of science,” the final question asked: “him vs. him: ‘The Life-Long Feud that Electrified the World’ is a book about these two men.”
Although he answered the question wrong, answering Nikola Tesla and Lumiere, his frugal betting landed him narrowly ahead of the two other contestants. The right answer was Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison.
The defending champion, Amanda Berofsky, a quality assurance analyst from Waterford, Michigan, had the lead entering the final question. She lost after getting the question wrong and betting enough to drop her total below that of Bartolomeo.
The following day, Bartolomeo competed against a congressional press secretary from Washington, D.C., and a social worker from Columbus, Ohio.
In the Final Jeopardy category on Friday, “Name That 19th Century Work,” with $7,500 on the line for Bartolomeo — having at this point amassed $15,000 — the three contestants had to infer the following: “Modern bourgeois society … is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers … called up by his spells.”
The answer? “What is the Communist Manifesto?” And with that, Bartolomeo won yet again.
He ended the day’s competition with $22,000.
On Monday, a correctly answered question failed to clinch the game after Bartolomeo bet too low in Final Jeopardy.
Bartolomeo started Monday’s game strong, getting every question right in the category “Women and the American Revolution” and remaining in the lead throughout the first round.
However, his lead was quickly whittled away in the second round as Blair Moorhead, a social worker from Arlington, Virginia, and law student Jack Paleczny of Chicago, Illinois, surpassed his earnings.
Going into Final Jeopardy, Bartolomeo trailed by $8,800, to Moorhead’s $10,600 and Paleczny’s $17,400.
In that final round, contestants must come up with the right question to the one clue in the category. When the final category is announced, they each strategically wager a sum of money, based on how well they think they know the category. Monday’s category was “19th Century Notables.”
The statement put to contestants: “Calling him a red-headed madman, in 1889 a group of his neighbors signed a petition to ban him from his home in Arles France.”
While Bartolomeo came up with the right answer — Vincent Van Gogh — his wager of $8,000, which bumped him up to $16,800 was not enough to beat Moorhead’s final score which was $17,402. Paleczny’s score fell to $13,400 after he incorrectly answered the question.
“If I had bet all of my money I would have won, but you know, it doesn’t matter it was just so much fun, and that is why I did it,” Bartolomeo said Monday.
“This was something on my bucket list that I never thought I would get the opportunity to fulfill,” he said. “The fact that I did was great, and that I won twice was just icing on the cake.”
Bartolomeo’s win in the trivia contest comes less than a year after Northampton poet and Smith College employee Jennifer Jabaily Blackburn came from behind to win the show last March, and take home $19,700.
Blackburn works as an administrative assistant at Smith in the Poetry Center and the department of French studies.
In 2000, Bartolomeo was selected to be a contestant on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” but did not make it past the “Fastest Finger” round to the “hot seat.”
“When I was a child, my family and I were great game players,” Bartolomeo told the Gazette back in 2000, shortly after his stint on Millionaire. “We’d play the home version of ‘Jeopardy’ and ‘Trivial Pursuit.’ I have a reasonably good memory for otherwise useless pieces of information.”
Reporters Amanda Drane, Michael Majchrowicz and Emily Cutts contributed to this reporter. Freelance reporter Fran Ryan also contributed.
