Ben Affleck and Jeopardy! champion Jamie Ding have won the $1m top prize on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Their win comes almost exactly a year after Affleck’s longtime friend and Good Will Hunting co-star Matt Damon won $1m alongside Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings. Affleck and Ding are the fifth winners of the revived version of the show since Kimmel took over hosting duties in 2020.

The duo returned to the programme with just two questions left to answer after the previous week’s episode.

At stake was $1m for the Eastern Congo Initiative, the advocacy and grant-making organisation Affleck co-founded in 2010 to support community-based organisations in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Introducing the charity at the start of the episode, Affleck said the region had been “severely impacted by a very traumatic war”.

Their first hurdle was the $500,000 question: “What achievement occurred just two months after a New York Times article said it wouldn’t happen for ‘1 million to 10 million years’?”

After using their 50:50 lifeline, the remaining options were “splitting the atom” and “the first airplane flight”.

Affleck said he remembered reading about famous examples of the press getting predictions wrong and vaguely recalled the Times article about the Wright brothers. Ding agreed, arguing: “People don’t go outside and look at the sky and dream of splitting the atom, but we all dream of flying.”

Kimmel then confirmed they were correct, saying: “1903 was exactly the year that the Wright brothers flew an airplane into the sky and those cynical, disbelieving, bastards at the New York Times, I guess they just didn’t believe.”

That left one question between them and the $1m prize.

The final question asked which of four names – Peanut Butter & Jelly, Tater & Tot, Mac & Cheese, and Spaghetti & Meatball – had not been used for a turkey pardoned by a US president during the White House’s annual Thanksgiving tradition.

Unsure, Affleck and Ding first used their Ask-the-Host lifeline. Kimmel, who said he covers the annual turkey pardons on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, suggested “Spaghetti & Meatball” because he did not remember ever making jokes about the name.

They then phoned Ding’s longtime trivia teammate, Stephen Morrison, but he was unable to help before time ran out.

Affleck ultimately decided to trust Kimmel's instinct. “I really think that we got lucky with the best, like the world’s expert on precisely this kind of story,” he said. “I would bet on Jimmy. I would go for it.”

They locked in “Spaghetti & Meatball”, prompting Kimmel to admit: “I have such a stomach ache right now,” before revealing it was the correct answer.

Speaking after the episode, Ding credited Affleck with helping steer the team through the closing stages of the game.

“I think that Ben was maybe a little more decisive towards the end,” he told USA Today. “He was talking and getting us to move, where perhaps I would’ve just sat there for a while and been immobilised by indecision.”

Ding also said Kimmel’s reasoning had convinced him to risk going for the top prize rather than walk away.

“I liked Jimmy’s answer because it made sense,” he said. “Like he said, he probably would’ve made jokes about ‘Spaghetti & Meatball,’ had that come up before. So it was a solid piece of evidence. It didn’t feel like a guess.”