Mountain Lakes guy cleans up on all Jersey ‘Jeopardy!’

Was it supposed to be this way? Or did it kind of just happen?

Tuesday night's episode of Jeopardy! had contestants Phil Hoffman (spoiler alert, he's the one cleaning up) who is a student at UCLA but originally from Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, Huffington Post writer Joe Satran who lives in L.A. but is originally from Montclair, and Pam Sung, an oncologist living in Philadelphia but is originally from Livingston.

Satran told NJ Advance Media, "We had a little moment where we all said we were from New Jersey." Now if they only asked all pork roll, beach fees and toll road questions we would have had a complete Jersey lovefest.

Anyway, this guy Phil Hoffman is on a roll. He won Monday night for a total of $14,195. Monday night's Final Jeopardy question? Well, answer? "This late writer has had 10 plays on Broadway, most of them set in Pittsburgh, like 'Jitney,' which premiered in 2017."

The right question was, "Who is August Wilson?"

Oh, yeah, we all know that, mmm-hmm.

Then on Tuesday night's Final Jeopardy he remained the champion and earned $23,195 more when presented with the answer, "In 1857, the former surveyor general of India objected to giving his name to this landmark as 'the natives could not pronounce.'"

The correct question being, "What is Mt. Everest?"

Sure, because you know, we're all up on our former surveyor generals, am I right?

He returns for Wednesday night's game.

It shouldn't be a surprise that New Jersey folks do well on Jeopardy!. According to a 2019 study by SafeHome.org the Garden State is the smartest state in the nation. 91% of residents graduate high school and 24% have at least a bachelor's degree. We also have an average SAT score of 1090.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski. Any opinions expressed are Jeff Deminski's own.