So I was lying awake in bed and my mind kept drifting back to wondering what the big deal is on tonight's Jeopardy! Shows you how great my fantasy life is, eh? Anyway, it dawned on me — and yes, I know I'm probably overthinking this — that the tip-off is that the press release said they'd consulted an expert in Game Theory. It did not say that they'd consulted a statistician or other expert in the science of chance and numbers. Game Theory experts deal in how people strategize; how they try to exploit their opportunities for maximum advantage.
So what is it in Jeopardy! that involves strategizing? Answer: How much you wager in Final Jeopardy! Everything else in the game is a function of (a) whether you know a given fact and (b) whether you get the button pushed at the proper moment. A Game Theory expert would have nothing to say about either of these matters. What he would be able to discuss is how the contestants wager. This suggests to me that they wagered in some manner as to yield an interesting finish…and it had to be a finish that was not desirable. (If it was a desirable outcome, then you wouldn't have the Game Theory expert saying it might never happen again.)
Anyway, what this all lead me to, lying in that dark room, was the deduction that they wound up with a three-way tie, probably with everyone having zero dollars because all each player bet his or her entire wad. And the Game Theory guru then said, "This will probably never happen again because after this, players will always make sure they don't bet everything and at least hold back a few bucks."
I got up to post this, checked e-mail and discovered that several of you guessed a three-way tie and one even guessed the zero part. We'll see if we're right.
One other thing: There are promos up (see one here) for this already saying that something amazing happens on the show. If the amazing thing was a new one-day total, the promos would suggest something about big money because they could do that without saying who won and therefore giving away the ending. But there's no way to hint at a three-way tie and not blow what happens. So it's gotta be something like that.