Ballard man surpasses $150,000 on Jeopardy

Nobody can stop Ballardite Tom Nissley, who won his fifth consecutive Jeopardy tonight with a bang. Behind a bit for the final question, Nissley bet it big when the category was “20th Century Novelists.” Not a bad bet for Nissley, who works at Amazon.com and edits the Omnivoracious blog.

The only contestant to nail the answer (“Who is William Somerset Maugham?”), Nissley vaulted into even bigger money — now standing at $151,802. While Nissley is a rising Jeopardy star, he still has a long ways to unseat the all-time champion, Ken Jennings, who won 74 consecutive episodes in 2004 for a total of $3,022,700 in winnings.