“Jeopardy!” champion Jamie Ding just can’t stop winning money on TV.
This past spring, the New Jersey state government employee deemed “the nicest ‘Jeopardy!’ champion of all time” racked up $882,605 on the quiz show, becoming the fifth-highest earner (behind Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer, Matt Amodio and Amy Schneider) after 31 wins in a row. On Wednesday night, Ding teamed up with Ben Affleck on ABC’s “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire” and triumphed yet again, landing the rare $1 million prize.
This is only the 15th time in “Millionaire” history that a person or team has won the top prize since the show started airing in 1999, hosted by Regis Philbin. This latest version, helmed by Jimmy Kimmel, launched in 2020 and features celebrities competing for charity.
ABC confirmed there had been seven prime-time winners, three syndicated wins, and four celebrity wins. The previous $1 million star winners are chef David Chang; actor Ike Barinholtz and his father; “The Office” stars Oscar Nuñez and Kate Flannery; and, incidentally, “Jeopardy!” icon (and current host) Jennings and Affleck’s best friend (and Kimmel “enemy”) Matt Damon.
The “Jeopardy!”-legend-meets-“Good Will Hunting” combo worked out quite well again, as Ding and Affleck were paired to play for Affleck’s longtime nonprofit, the Eastern Congo Initiative. The first part of their game aired last week on the season premiere, where they made it all the way up to $250,000 by answering 13 questions in a row.
Affleck took on the self-deprecating role, repeatedly joking that he was there to ride the coattails of the trivia expert. However, Ding said that “Millionaire” has its own difficulties because “your ignorance is laid bare for the world to see,” unlike in “Jeopardy!,” where no one knows whether you were about to buzz in.
As usual in “Millionaire,” the early multiple-choice questions were comically easy, asking what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends to do seven hours a day (brushing your teeth or sleeping?) and what event is celebrated with the Times Square countdown clock. Between answers, Kimmel bantered with the pair, asking Ding his favorite Affleck movie. Ding went with “Good Will Hunting,” explaining that he had watched it in full for the first time the day before, though he had seen many of the clips on YouTube. (Affleck’s face during this answer was priceless.)
Things started to heat up around the $32,000-question mark when they were stumped about which McDonald’s sandwich is served with a half-slice of cheese. “I eat a lot of McDonald’s. Like, a lot. All the time,” Affleck confessed, to laughter from the studio. Still, he wasn’t sure and suspected that the crowd might know — so the pair used one of their four lifelines to ask the audience, which correctly guessed the response was Filet-O-Fish.
They breezed through to $125,000, where they had a debate about the subject of the poem “The Mighty Task Is Done” but went with the Golden Gate Bridge. Then Affleck, well-versed in Spanish traditions, happened to know that men dressed in devil costumes jump over babies at the annual festival El Colacho, so they scooped up $250,000.
At this point, the premiere ended, and viewers had to wait a week to see whether Ding and Affleck could get it done. Wednesday’s episode kicked off with their final two questions, with the $1 million query about the names of turkey duos who have been pardoned by presidents, and which of the four choices was made up: Was it Peanut Butter and Jelly? Tater and Tot? Mac and Cheese? Or Spaghetti and Meatball?
“You must be kidding me,” Affleck deadpanned. They had no idea, so they used their final two lifelines: phone a friend (the friend didn’t know) and ask the host. Kimmel, thinking back through his many jokes on his late-night show about turkey pardons, suspected that “Spaghetti and Meatball” was the fake turkey duo — though he said he could have seen himself making a joke about President Donald Trump messily eating spaghetti. So he wasn’t certain.
In the end, Ding and Affleck went with Kimmel’s guess … and it paid off. They won $1 million and jumped up and embraced as confetti rained down, as a giant check was presented for the Eastern Congo Initiative.
And if they made it look easy, the next two celebrity pairs in the episode showed that was not the case: Jason Alexander and Wayne Knight, followed by Tig Notaro and Pete Holmes, each missed out on the $64,000 question, ending their games.
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