‘Jeopardy!’ Champion Jamie Ding Loses Historic 31-Game Winning Streak: See the Clue That Ended It All

Jamie Ding’s historic Jeopardy! run has finally come to an end.

The 33-year-old New Jersey native’s 31-game run concluded on Monday when he was bested by Greg Shahade in a runaway victory.

The Princeton graduate, who won $882,605 in prize money during his time on the game show, now ranks fifth among Jeopardy!’s top earners of all time. He also sits in fifth place for most consecutive games won, coming in just under James Holzhauer’s 32 wins, with Matt Amodio sitting in third place with 38 wins, Amy Schneider in second place with 40 wins and now-host Ken Jennings’ record-setting 74 wins.

Ding couldn’t catch up to Shahade during Monday’s blowout game. In the last clue of Double Jeopardy under the category “The Shape of Things,” Ding incorrectly answered “palm leaf” instead of “palm tree” when given the clue, “Home to private residences and hotels, the manmade archipelago seen here in Dubai is built in the shape of one of these.”

Losing $400 for his incorrect answer, Ding went into Final Jeopardy with $16,000 to Shahade’s $32,600, answering simply “TTFN,” short for “ta ta for now,” while handing the New Jersey bureaucrat the victory and losing his first game since March 13.

“I think my last game is unusual, because I was a super champ, but I also lost in a runaway, which I feel like is the first time that ever happened,” Ding told PEOPLE after his loss, adding, “It almost makes me feel better about the thing because there wasn’t really one clue or whatever that everything hinged on.”

“It being a runaway means that I got to write a goodbye message instead of nothing at all,” he continued of his cheeky Final Jeopardy answer. “I wouldn’t have done that if there had even been a chance of me coming out with the victory.”

While Ding said part of him is “not OK” and wanted to continue his streak, he added, “But on the other hand, it could have ended much earlier than it did.”

“There were several people who were really strong and played well, and had a couple of things broken differently, I would have been done for weeks ago. So I’m both upset and pleased,” he said. “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened kind of thing.”

Ding added, “I kept hearing how it was bringing people together, and I love that very much. I’ve heard people say, ‘It’s nice to have something positive on TV!’”