So close, and yet so far. Jonathan Fox of Plymouth was almost the winner on “Jeopardy!” Tuesday evening. He answered the last question correctly and took the lead in final round but lost when the reigning champ also came up with the right response.
Fox had the lead in Double Jeopardy! but dropped to second place after the eventual winner, Joey DeSana, who made an all-in bet on a Daily Double question. Fox ended the regular round with $13,600, only $800 behind DeSana.
In Final Jeopardy! the clue was “A 112-foot-tall monument in a Madrid plaza depicts a writer seated above bronze statues of these two characters.” Fox had the correct response: “What is Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.” He finished the game with $18,000 and the lead but came in second when DeSana also guessed correctly and with a larger bet. For his second-place showing, Fox earned $3,000.
Fox was a big winner at the beginning of the quiz show when he used American Sign Language to spell his wife’s name. He made the ASL sign for “I love you” with his thumb and index finger, then used hand signals to spell Julie.
Dave Kindy, a self-described history geek, is a longtime Plymouth resident who writes for the Washington Post, Boston Globe, National Geographic, Smithsonian and other publications. He can be reached at davidkindy1832@gmail.com.