The pair faced two high-pressure questions at the end of the game.
For US$500,000, they were asked which achievement occurred just two months after The New York Times predicted that powered flight might still be one million to 10 million years away.
The choices were splitting the atom, cloning a mammal, the first powered airplane flight, and the development of the polio vaccine.
Ding immediately favored the first powered flight, while Affleck remembered reading about the newspaper’s famously inaccurate forecast. To reduce the risk, they used the 50:50 lifeline, which left splitting the atom and the first powered airplane flight, The New York Daily News reported.
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Jeopardy! champion Jamie Ding (left) and actor Ben Affleck (right) with host Jimmy Kimmel on the set of the celebrity edition of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. Photo from Instagram/@easterncongo |
Affleck backed Ding’s answer, and host Jimmy Kimmel confirmed it was correct.
The final question asked which pair of names had never been given to turkeys pardoned by a U.S. president during the annual Thanksgiving tradition.
The options were Peanut Butter and Jelly, Chips and Tater Tot, Macaroni and Cheese, and Spaghetti and Meatball.
Affleck first asked Kimmel for his view. The host suggested Spaghetti and Meatball, though he admitted he was unsure.
The pair then used their Phone-a-Friend lifeline to call Ding’s friend Stephen Morrison, but he ran out of time before giving an answer.
In the end, Affleck decided to trust Kimmel’s instinct and locked in Spaghetti and Meatball. When the show confirmed it was the correct answer, Affleck and Ding jumped in celebration and embraced as they won the US$1 million grand prize.
“I felt so good when the lights went on like that,” Ding said, as quoted by USA Today. “I certainly think that we did a great job, but it also takes a lot of luck. And in this case, our skill and luck were both good.”
The pair donated the entire prize to the Eastern Congo Initiative, the nonprofit Affleck co-founded to support communities in eastern Congo.
Ben Affleck is an American actor, director, producer, and two-time Oscar winner who rose to fame after co-writing and starring in “Good Will Hunting” (1997) with Matt Damon, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He later won Best Picture as a producer of “Argo” (2012), which he also directed and starred in. Beyond acting, Affleck co-founded the production company Artists Equity.
Jamie Ding is an American quiz champion, New Jersey state government employee, and law student who gained national attention after winning 31 consecutive games on the U.S. quiz show “Jeopardy!” in 2026. His $882,605 in prize money marked the fifth-longest winning streak in the show’s history. “Jeopardy!” is a long-running American quiz show known for its challenging questions across a wide range of subjects.
“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” which debuted in the U.S. in 1999 based on the British format, challenges contestants with 15 increasingly difficult multiple-choice questions. Celebrity editions allow winners to donate their prize money to charity.