Ken Basin

Ken Basin, a entertainment lawyer and Harvard Law graduate from Los Angeles, California, was the last contestant on the 10th Anniversary Special of the U.S. version of the show on August 23, 2009. He achieved the unfortunate distinction of becoming the first person in the U.S. to miss the $1,000,000 question, thus losing $475,000 and walking away with a mere $25,000.

In 2003, Basin was a contestant on Jeopardy's College Championship that year. He went to the semifinals only to be eliminated there and took home a consolation prize of $5,000.

Fastest Finger Question
From the 10 contestants, 4 got it right, but Ken (with a time of 3.71 seconds) was the fastest to correctly answer A-B-D-C, making it into the Hot Seat.

Ken's Run to the Million
Ken had a hunch, but decided to use his last lifeline, Ask the Audience, with Yoo-hoo being the most voted answer (40%). Ken also thought it was Yoo-hoo, and after pondering for a minute if he would regret more losing $475,000 than not winning an additional $500,000, Ken decided to go with his hunch Yoo-hoo with 1 minute, 12 seconds remaining. Unfortunately, his hunch turned out to be wrong, as the correct answer was A: Fresca

Trivia

 * Ken became the first contestant to correctly answer the $500,000 question on the Clock Format (and the first one to do so since Lyn Payne in 2007).
 * He later became the first contestant to incorrectly answer the $1,000,000 question.

Quotes

 * Ken: In law school we would say that people who went to law school went there because they were risk-adverse and people who were risk loving went to business school. I went to law school. Maybe I should have gone to business school.


 * Ken: I'm going to ask a favor. I'm going to ask the audience to start cheering in advance and just stop abruptly if I get it wrong because C, final answer! Give me a million dollars!
 * Regis: No, it's not the final answer, you just lost a lot of money... It's Fresca! Fresca!