Despite an up-and-down performance in yesterday’s College Jeopardy! semifinal game, Craig Boge ‘07 pulled off a convincing victory to advance to the tournament’s final round, which spans two days and will be aired today and tomorrow.

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Jason Chuang

Supporters and fellow residents joined Craig Boge ‘07 in the Grove Lasuen Lounge last night to root for the trivia wiz as the semifinal round of College Jeopardy!, in which he competed, was aired on ABC. Boge has already participated in the taping of the competition’s final round, which will air tonight.

Boge struggled in the first round, his score hovering in the low hundreds — with an occasional dip into the red — as his opponents, Northwestern junior Dean Malec and University of Michigan senior Pete Troyan, cruised to four-digit scores. A late-round surge, however, helped Boge pull ahead, and he held a dominant $2,000 lead at one point.

The large lead was short lived, though, as a series of mistakes, including an incorrect guess on a Daily Double question concerning space exploration, reduced Boge’s lead to a mere $400 at the end of the first round.

“Still in the lead,” chanted a few supporters as the commercials began to roll.

Both Malec and Troyan came back strong in Double Jeopardy!, when a series of correct answers on Daily Double questions raised both competitors’ scores near Boge’s winnings. But Boge handled the pressure in stride. After missing questions about the Velvet Revolvers (he incorrectly identified the band as the Sex Pistols), Boge was seen chuckling sheepishly into his sleeve, looking around to scope out the crowd’s reactions.

In the final moments of yesterday’s viewing party at the Grove Lasuen house, where Boge lives, the raucous standing-room-only crowd waited with bated breath. Their housemate had a relatively slim lead entering Final Jeopardy!, with $14,000 to Malec’s $11,100 and Troyan’s $9,200.

“I liked it better last time,” grumbled a supporter who recalled Boge’s quarterfinal performance in which the senior clinched his semifinal berth before the final question.

“I liked it better last time, too,” quipped Boge, who was watching with his friends in Grove.

After both Troyan and Malec incorrectly answered the Final Jeopardy! clue: “In an Ibsen play, Nora tells her husband that she’s been like one of these to him, just like she was to her father,” you could have heard a pin drop in the Grove lounge.

Troyan’s incorrect answer — “What is a doll’s house?” — dropped his score to $200 and Malec’s slip up — “What is a daughter?” — put him at $0.

Jeopardy! host Alex Trebec paused before revealing Boge’s answer, noting that he had “read and re-read” every word of the hint during the allotted 30 seconds.

When Boge’s correct answer — “What is a doll?” — appeared on the screen, the crowd erupted in cheers.

“Craig! Craig! Craig!” chanted the crowd, drowning out Trebek’s closing comments and the commercials that followed the show.

“I was in physical pain when placing my wager for the final question,” Boge said. “I’m not really good at literature and play questions, and I thought I had lost for sure when I realized that the Final Jeopardy! category was ‘Lines from Plays.’”

Boge attributed his correct response to his 11th grade English teacher, who assigned “A Doll’s House,” as mandatory reading for his class.

“It’s the only Ibsen play I’ve ever read, and it’s the only thing I still remember from that class,” Boge said. “I was so lucky.”

With his semifinal victory, the senior moves on to the finals of this year’s College Jeopardy!, a two-day event which will begin at 7 p.m. tonight and conclude tomorrow night also at 7 p.m. The winner will be determined by the highest aggregate score over the two days and will win $100,000 and a spot in the Tournament of Champions.