Former Jeopardy! champ from Philly is back after nearly 17 years, and her first opponent is a doozie

Two of the greatest female contestants in Jeopardy! history will face off Monday, and one is from Philadelphia.

Celeste DiNucci, a Philly-based art strategist at Ars Nova Workshop, will take on fellow Jeopardy! super champs Amy Schneider and Austin Rogers in a first-ever invitational tournament. The show will air at 7 p.m. on 6ABC in Philadelphia.

The pairing with Schneider seems appropriate. After DiNucci won 2007′s Tournament of Champions, Jeopardy! went 15 years before another woman — Schneider — was crowned champion. DiNucci was the show’s most successful female contestant during her run, preceding all-time greats Mattea Roach, Julia Collins, Larissa Kelly, and Schneider, whose run included a 40-game winning streak (the second-longest of all time behind current host Ken Jennings) and career winnings totaling more than $1.6 million.

Despite DiNucci’s successful 2006 Jeopardy! run, the last thing she expected was an invitation to this tournament. The last time she competed was during 2014′s Battle of the Decades, where she was eliminated in the first round and not called back for subsequent tournaments. So, she was shocked when she received an invitation that gave her just three weeks to prepare before flying out to Culver City, Calif.

“It’s not like I’d been keeping up with things,” DiNucci told The Inquirer. “I went to the Jeopardy! archives and just started playing a bunch of old games, just to get back into the rhythm of the phrasing and remind myself of things, like, ‘It was [Jacques] Offenbach who wrote The Tales of Hoffmann.’”

DiNucci initially decided to try out for the show after her older brother, Dennis, lost during his first and only appearance in 1992. That’s understandable, considering he faced Jerome Vered, one of Jeopardy’s! all-time champions, who had the misfortune of competing when the show capped winning streaks at five games.

Still, DiNucci was motivated to “redeem the family name,” as Dennis put it. A graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania at the time, DiNucci trekked over the City Line Avenue where the show happened to be holding auditions. She had to wait as other people in her pool appeared on the show, but DiNucci was finally called up for the last week of taping that season, winning five games and ultimately pocketing nearly $340,000.

“There was a lot of it that went out the door to taxes,” DiNucci joked. “But I got to travel some, and it financed me to finish my dissertation at Penn... Taking the check to my bank was wild.”

DiNucci said it was weird being back on the stage. Not only was it her first time competing without the late Alex Trebek hosting the show, but there were also many new faces on the staff. She also noticed a change in the type of contestants playing the game today versus when she first appeared on the Jeopardy! stage.

“It’s professionalized,” DiNucci said. “It used to be a bunch of ordinary people that had some breadth of information and recall... Now there are a lot of contestants for whom trivia and quizzes are their profession.”

Win or lose, there’s a watch party for DiNucci Monday at Solar Myth, the all-day cafe and live music venue in South Philly, in the space formerly occupied by rock club Boot & Saddle.

The winner of the Jeopardy! invitational tournament will take home $100,000 and qualify for the second Jeopardy! Masters primetime tournament, expected to premiere in May.

Here’s the remaining schedule for the invitational tournament:

Between this latest invitational tournament and the recently completed Tournament of Champions, you might be wondering when regular episodes of Jeopardy! will be back on their air.

There’s no firm date, since the invitational tournament will end in a “best of four” format. However, regular episodes — featuring two new challengers taking on a reigning champion — will return between April 9 and April 11.

Season 40 will run for 15 to 16 weeks, ending on July 26.

Separate from all of this is the upcoming Jeopardy! Masters tournament, which is expected to air in primetime beginning in May.

Like last year, Jeopardy! Masters will feature six contestants battling for the Trebek Trophy and a $500,000 prize in ten hour-long episodes that feature two games each. Instead of dollars, the games are scored by points, and viewers are shown where the Daily Doubles are located.

The winner of the invitational tournament will join four other former champions who are already slated to compete. The list includes the top three finalists from last year: James Holzhauer, Mattea Roach, and Matt Amodio. Yogesh Raut, who won the 2024 Tournament of Champions earlier this month, will also receive an invitation.