Who is the librarian who took down 32-time champion James Holzhauer on "Jeopardy!" Monday night, when the gambler was so close to Ken Jennings' all-time money record?
Emma Boettcher was introduced at the start of the show as a "user experience librarian" from Chicago.
As host Alex Trebek interviewed the contestants at the start of the second segment of the show, we learned Boettcher did her Master's paper on "Jeopardy!"
"I ran a series of text mining experiments to see if a computer could predict how difficult a clue was, based on things like how long it was, what words were in the clue, what the syntax was, and if it had any audio-visual elements in it," Boettcher said.
"And what did you discover?" Trebek asked.
"That it's very hard to do," Boettcher replied, which drew laughter from Trebek and the audience.
The Chicago Tribune reports Boettcher, 27, got her Master's in information science from the University of North Carolina. Before that, she was an English major at Princeton.
So what is a user experience librarian? It's also referred to as a UX librarian. Here is how one librarian described it in an article on Medium.com.
"I would describe a 'UX Librarian' as someone whose primary job responsibilities focus on observing and analyzing usage patterns, customer preferences, and emerging trends, then synthesizing that information into concrete recommendations for changes, improvements, and innovations in the provision of library services and resources, and in the design and features of library spaces and interfaces," Courtney Green McDonald said in the 2018 article.
But back to what happened Monday night. When it got down to "Final Jeopardy!" Monday, Boettcher had a $26,600 to $23,400 lead.
The show's final clue was: "The line 'a great reckoning in a little room' in 'As You Like It' is usually taken to refer to this author's premature death."
Both Boettcher and Holzhauer correctly answered, "Who is Christopher Marlowe?"
Holzhauer bet $1,399, giving him $24,799. Boettcher bet $20,201 to give her a total of $46,801. Even if Holzhauer bet everything, he would have lost by $1.
Boettcher said she plans to use her winnings to pay off her student loans, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Holzhauer's streak ended at 32 wins and $2,462,216. That's a little more than $58,000 shy of the record for earnings set by Ken Jennings 15 years ago. Jennings also holds the record for wins with 74.
Another pretty astounding note from Monday's show. Trebek said that every clue was answered in "Jeopardy!" and only one was missed in "Double Jeopardy!"
The Associated Press contributed to this report.