The clue: This UGA alumna has conquered TV’s most popular game show.
And the answer is: Who is Victoria Groce?
A lifelong “quizzer,” Groce AB ’01 has achieved trivia and quiz bowl superstar status, winning Jeopardy! Masters earlier this year. Less than two months later, she placed first in the 2024 World Quizzing Championship, the first woman in the competition’s 21-year history to do so.
Quizzing was a big part of Groce’s young life, and she had her television debut on High Q as a high schooler in Atlanta. While attending UGA on a piano scholarship, she moonlighted for four years with the competitive quiz bowl team. Groce eventually changed her major to comparative literature, but her passion for quizzing continued after graduation.
She appeared on Jeopardy! “on a lark” for the first time in 2005 and won $23,801, ending her opponent David Madden’s 19-day streak, the eighth longest in the game’s history.
After being knocked out in the next Jeopardy! episode, Groce drifted away from trivia. The responsibilities of life, her job as a writer, motherhood, and going back to school left little room for the long hours and commitment required by competitive trivia.
“Quizzing has meant different things to me at different times in my life,” Groce says. “It wasn’t like I made a big decision to step away from it; it just got squeezed out.”
But after a seven-year hiatus, Groce drifted back.
Over the years, bar trivia with friends progressed to competitive team trivia, then international competitions. And in 2022, the ABC game show The Chase invited her to serve as a “chaser,” a quiz expert who competes against contestants. There, she earned the title “The Queen” and was launched back onto the game show scene.
But she never thought she would appear on Jeopardy! again.
“Up to this point, nothing like that had ever happened before, so returning to Jeopardy! did not even occur to me as a possibility,” Groce says.
Groce says contestants rarely get a second chance to compete. When she received the invitation to participate in a new Jeopardy! Invitational Tournament, she was shocked. After only a month of preparation, she won the invitational and advanced to a spot on Jeopardy! Masters.
Groce entered Jeopardy! Masters as an underdog, competing alongside more recent Jeopardy! powerhouses like James Holzhauer and Amy Schneider.
But the 20-year gap between her appearances took some pressure off. Her lightning-fast buzzer technique—a skill she attributes to her musical background—and quick recall time made her an immediate standout. She entered Final Jeopardy with a big lead and secured the victory by correctly identifying Henrietta Lacks following the clue, “The New York Times wrote of this woman who had died in 1951, ‘Though she was forgotten at the time, part of her remained alive.’”
Groce walked away from the competition with $500,000, the Alex Trebek Trophy, and a new level of fame. She says since her victory, she has had many pleasant interactions with fans, even on a recent vacation in Portugal.
Groce currently writes for quiz competitions all over the world. She is also working on a book proposal and hopes to eventually branch out into translating literary works.
“I love being exposed to new things, and I think quizzing has made my world a lot bigger,” she says. “My life will change because life always changes, but I figure I will keep on doing quiz stuff as long as it continues to be enjoyable for me. And it probably will be for a while.”
