Jeopardy! fans are relieved tonight that beloved contestant Sam Buttrey — the one who’s a dead ringer for Steve Martin — is safe.
One of his interviews from his appearances on last month’s Tournament of Champions has resurfaced on TikTok. In it, the associate professor of operations research at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., explains that he had recently skipped a tour similar to the one with five people aboard that rescue crews continued to search for Wednesday night.
“That’s right, KJ,” Buttrey said to host Ken Jennings on the show. “I have a friend who operates a company that will take you out to the wreck of the Titanic. So you go out in a boat, and then you go down in a submersible craft and tour the wreckage. It sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but through a miracle of bad timing, my son John and daughter-in-law Caitlyn were getting married that weekend. I was very happy to go there. It was a beautiful wedding, and not a shred of regret in my life.”
Buttrey made his Jeopardy! debut on the show in 2021, when he won the show’s Professors Tournament. He was the second runner-up in the 2022 Tournament of Champions and placed sixth on Jeopardy! Masters, and he won fans over with his kind, affable manner.
As for the people who did make the trip, the situation remains precarious. Officials for the U.S. Coast Guard said in a news conference Wednesday that a Canadian P-3 aircraft had detected underwater noises on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Carl Hartsfield, the director of the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, described the sounds as “banging noises.”
The submersible, named Titan, was launched June 18 by Canadian research vessel the Polar Prince, and never resurfaced. Titan was on its way to visit Titanic’s wreckage site, where that ship infamously sank on April 15, 1912, leaving more than 1,500 people dead. The fascination with the ship has only grown over the years, fueling, among other things, James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster movie, a traveling exhibition of artifacts from the sunken ship and OceanGate. That’s the private company which offers expeditions to see the wreckage up close for about $250,000.
