‘Jeopardy!’ Champ Matt Amodio Finally Reveals His Bizarre Answering Strategy: “There Are Fewer Things That Can Go Wrong”

Who? What? Where? Why? When? Finally, long-running Jeopardy! champ Matt Amodio has given us the method behind his answering madness. The contestant came under fire for his bizarre technique early on in his winning streak, and the nagging from Jeopardy! fans has continued throughout his stint on the show. But in a recent interview for his current school, Yale University, Amodio clarified that it’s all part of his “strategy.”

The controversy began a few weeks ago when Amodio first took the stage. When an answer is a person, instead of using the word “Who,” Amodio instead uses “What.” For example: when the answer to a question was Anna Faris, instead of answering “Who is Faris?” Amodio instead chose the words “What’s Faris?”, sparking backlash online for incorrect grammar.

“Is Matt the most annoying contestant ever?” one Twitter user wrote when Amodio first started gaining traction. “Is it so hard to say ‘who is’? or ‘make it a true daily double’?”

Fans can rag on Amodio all they want; but after a risky Daily Double and three weeks in the game, he’s now on the Jeopardy! leaderboard for fourth-highest winnings in regular-season play. The Jeopardy! overlords also clarified the rules, thanks to all the controversy surrounding Amodio: “Jeopardy! doesn’t require that the response is grammatically correct,” they clarified in a statement. “So, Matt Amodio’s no-frills approach is unique but well with guidelines.”

But the real question all along: what’s the point of this answering technique? In an interview with the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science, Amodio revealed that he’s kept his answers consistent in style so that he can really hone in on the clue itself.

“I have a strategy where I form all of my questions with a ‘what’s’ at the beginning – then, I can focus on the rest of the clue,” Amodio explained. “Other people have been very upset about me being robotic instead of forming a question differently each time. I was glad that Jeopardy! said this was perfectly within the rules. I’ve watched Jeopardy! every day of my life, so I knew it was OK.”

Amodio compared it to his background in computer science, stating it’s simply more efficient when you’re cutting off one part of the program, and that it’s easier to stay on course.

“That’s the kind of thing we do in computer science all the time. You have a section of your program and it does ‘A’ or it does ‘B’ and it has to decide which,” Amodio said. “Then you realize ‘Wait, we never actually need to do ‘B,” so you cut that off and just leave a smaller bit of program. It’s cleaner and where there are fewer things moving, there are fewer things that can go wrong.”

Jeopardy airs weeknights on ABC at 7/6c.

Where to watch Jeopardy!