Jul 31, 2026
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Add us on GoogleJeopardy! champion Jamie Ding and his game show partner, Oscar-winner Ben Affleck, each credited one another for their grand prize showing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Wednesday night.
Coming into the show the pair only needed to answer the $500,000 and $1 million questions to score a win for Affleck’s non-profit, Eastern Congo Initiative.
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After nailing a $500,000 question about the Wright Brothers, the million-dollar prize hinged on the pair knowing the names of past Thanksgiving turkeys pardoned by U.S. presidents. After lifelines like phoning a friend and asking the host, Jimmy Kimmel, proved inconclusive, the pair correctly guessed that no president ever pardoned a turkey named Spaghetti & Meatball.
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“I feel like I was quite nervous toward the end because it’s a lot of money,” Ding told USA Today after the pair’s big win. “I think that Ben was maybe a little more decisive toward the end. He was talking and getting us to move, where perhaps I would’ve just sat there for a while and been immobilized by indecision.”
Affleck, for his part, returned the gesture, telling the outlet that “it was a great honor to ride Jamie’s coattails all the way.”
The win not only scored the man dubbed “the nicest Jeopardy! champion of all time” another huge game show win, but also put him in rarefied air when it comes to the all-time history of U.S. game show champions.
Ding joins one of the most exclusive clubs in U.S. game show history
Earlier this year, Ding went on a historic 31-game Jeopardy! winning streak — the fifth longest ever — while scoring $880,000 in winnings.
Now, after winning both Jeopardy! and Millionaire, Ding is among the handful of contestants who’ve won the top prizes on multiple different U.S. game show franchises.
The list is small, but led, perhaps unsurprisingly, by Ken Jennings. Along with his record for longest Jeopardy! win streak, Jennings also won the grand prize on an episode of Millionaire last year, as well as a game show called Grand Slam — made up of notable contestants from other game shows.
The only other notable multi-franchise winner is comedian and actor Ike Barinholtz, who won both Millionaire and Celebrity Jeopardy!
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Meanwhile, the Ding/Affleck Millionaire win also gives the actor some bragging rights, as his Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting writing partner, Matt Damon, won the grand prize on the show last year, with Jennings as a partner.
And while you’d think that becoming a champion on two different game show franchises within three months might be enough excitement for Ding — whose day job is at a New Jersey housing and mortgage financing agency — you’d be wrong.
Fresh off his Millionaire win, Ding only gets a few weeks off before he heads back to Jeopardy! to compete in the “Tournament of Champions” in August.
“I’m not sure how much I need to work on buzzer timing, but definitely some amount of it — and, of course, I’m watching Jeopardy!,” he told TV Insider about his prep for the tournament. “I’ve got to keep tabs on the competition. It’s going to be a barn burner.”
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Mike Crisolago is a Sr. Staff Reporter at Moneywise with nearly 20 years of experience working as a journalist, editor, content strategist and podcast host. He specializes in personal finance writing related to the 50-plus demographic and retirement, as well as politics and lifestyle content.
