South Philadelphia bartender Sam Murray, who's collecting unemployment after his summer job at the club Octo on the riverfront dried up, won the Million Dollar Tournament of Ten on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."
He's the 13th millionaire in the history of the "Millionaire" franchise, the third since Meredith Vieira began hosting the syndicated version.
Murray, a West Virginian who partied with his friends during today's telecast, beat out nine other players in the tournament, which featured the top 10 contestants of the season.
Murray was seeded eighth and correctly answered his $1 million question on the third day of the tournament.. He had to sweat through seven more episodes as each higher-seeded person looked at their own $1 million question. Each had the chance to take the million bucks away if they correctly answered their question. Each player ultimately decided to not risk losing his or her previous winnings and walked away with the money that they had won on their original episode.
The finale episode came down to Murray and top seed Jehan Shamsid-Deen of Concord, N.C.
Her $1 million question:
Category, 'Extremely Rare' – “A rare example of a word that rhymes with “orange,” the Blorenge is a what? A: River in Ireland, B: Forest in Scotland, C: Mountain in Wales, D: Desert in Australia.”
Right away, she ruled out “D,” “Desert in Australia” and narrowed it down to “A,” “B,” or “C,” which as she noted, are “all located in the Great Britain area.” Shamsid-Deen said that she used to live in Britain and confessed, “I should have done more traveling!” She kept going back to “C,” and when Vieira asked if she was going to go for it, Shamsid-Deen quoted the Kenny Rogers song, “You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and when to run ….” She then said, “$250,000 is a lot of money – I like Sam – I didn’t want him to get the money (laughing) – but I like Sam. I’m going to walk away.”
Vieira then revealed the correct answer, which was “C.”
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