Baltimore trivia host and professor Jonathan Hugendubler fell short in the wild card for the “Jeopardy!” champions tournament.

Hugendubler walked away with $40,000 from his win earlier in the week and gratitude for the opportunity to compete at the pinnacle of trivia.

“It’s a little bittersweet,” Hugendubler said Friday. “I didn’t get it done, but I still fought my way through contention.”

He finished the round in third place at $3,800. Things looked more promising for Hugendubler after the second round, when he led his competitors with $12,000.

However, when he risked it all in the Final “Jeopardy!” round and guessed incorrectly, his chances were gone.

Category: American Novelists

Clue: The author’s wish to use different ink colors to represent multiple POVs was granted in 2012, 83 years after the novel’s publication.

Answer: Who is Faulkner?

Hugenduble’s answer: Who is Fitzgerald?

Friday’s performance was slightly better than Thursday’s. Hugendubler finished the first game of the finals in third place with around $1,200, compared to more than $10,000 for his competitors. He got to $1,200 only by wagering all $600 he had in the Final Jeopardy round and being the only person to guess it correctly.

Behind green wooden double doors inside Frazier’s on the Avenue in Hampden is another bar filled with five televisions all playing one thing at 7 p.m. daily: “Jeopardy!”

The seven or so people in the sectioned bar Thursday shouted out answers, sometimes before host Ken Jennings finished reading the prompt. This was mostly out of the joy that comes with guessing correctly but also for a prize: a shot or a drink.

Andrew Pappas and his roommate started coming to the bar every Wednesday for half-off dinner in the mid-2000s. They asked the bartender — who now owns the place — to start playing “Jeopardy!” with sound on the TVs. Their yelling at the screen spread to others at the bar.

“I really don’t know what other bars were doing, but I’ve never seen a bar do ‘Jeopardy!’ like this bar,” Pappas said. “I won’t say it started at Frazier’s, but I’m pretty sure it did.”

If you guess the Daily Double correctly first, you get a little drink, Pappas said. If you guess the Final Jeopardy correctly before seeing the clue or based on the category alone, you get a full drink. He’s gotten that full drink three times.

Pappas didn’t realize a fellow Baltimorean was competing in the tournament of champions, but he thinks it’s awesome. Regardless of Hugendubler’s performance Thursday, Pappas said he was rooting for him.

“I root for everybody and anybody from Baltimore. I did not know he was from Baltimore but, now that I do, I want him to win it all,”

Hugendubler’s performance Friday improved but not enough. Comparatively, Hugendubler’s landslide victory in the tournament Tuesday was the best of his trivia career, he said.

“They really cranked the difficulty up,” Hugendubler said. ”The competitors were just incredible.”

Hugendubler became a “Jeopardy!” champion after dethroning someone on a two-week winning streak in July. He won two games and walked away with $63,601.