Spoilers for past episode of Jeopardy
I’m a big fan of Jeopardy. It’s just so smart, and whenever I get a question right I feel like a certified genius. The set up of the game is so strong that I think it’s still been holding up during its growing pains of carrying on after Alex Trebek’s passing. There have been bumps along the way, for sure, from the (self-inflicted) nuttery of their search for a new host, to the endless stream of tournaments we got as a result of the writers strike last year. But still, the game shines through! What puts the enjoyment of Jeopardy in jeopardy sometimes, in my opinion, is when clues are written poorly and when rules are enforced inconsistently and/or incoherently. This week Jeopardy hit a new milestone on those fronts. Tuesday night’s show had an unprecedented FOUR score reversals in the one game. “What is, what is going on at the judges table?” No really, what was going on at the judges table?!
Jeopardy! viewers were left with whiplash after Ken Jennings dramatically halted Tuesday night’s game to make four corrections to the players’ scores in what has been branded the most ‘chaotic’ episode to date.
Halfway through the instalment, the 50-year-old host stopped dead in his tracks to tell contestants Kathy Davis, Anna Paone, and Isaac Hirsch that the judges had U-turned on multiple answers.
As a result of the last-minute changes, Isaac’s prize pot significantly jumped from $8,600 to $15,000, while Kathy’s dropped from $600 to $200.
Addressing the competitors, Ken said: ‘I need to update the scores a bit because our judges have notified me of some changes.
‘Kathy, when you corrected your response from “corroborate” to “corroborated,” that was no longer an 11-letter word. We need to take the second response. So, you will lose $1,600 there.
‘Isaac, the good news is we have ruled we can accept “char-grilled” instead of “char-broiled,” so, you get back $2,400 there.’
He continued: ‘In that case, Kathy never would have guessed “flame-broiled,” so she gets back $1,200.
‘And finally, last but not least, there is a thing called a magic triangle, it turns out, and that’s a $4,000 swing for you, Isaac.
‘So, these scores as you see them are correct.’
Viewers at home couldn’t believe the volume of reversals, branding them ‘wild’ and outright ‘insane.’
One Reddit user said they couldn’t ‘recall seeing that many scoring corrections in a game,’ prompting another to respond: ‘That was an insane reversal. The whole game felt very chaotic.’
Over on X, one fan of the show said: ‘That Jeopardy four score correction run was wild. How did the judges miss that many responses? I’ve never seen anything like it!’
Another posted: ‘Those scoring changes were wild on jeopardy tonight. Don’t think I’ve ever seen that big of swing before.’
‘What an insane score update,’ a third observed, while a fourth simply wrote: ‘Good grief, judges.’
Some were left fuming at the reversals, with one writing: ‘Rule change that would GREATLY improve #Jeopardy: Once you’ve been ruled correct, the ruling is final.
‘Only incorrectly deemed wrong answers should change scores.’
At the end of the episode, it was revealed that Isaac had won Final Jeopardy! with $19,601 in his prize pot.
He is now the five-day reigning champion and has an impressive total of $120,186.
Hmm, I’m not sure how I feel about the suggestion that all correct rulings be irreversible. It feels controversial! The ruling issue that upsets me the most, is when the contestant is supposed to give a person’s name, and if they give just the last name it’s only sometimes that Ken follows up with asking for the first name as well. It feels so arbitrary! Just require the full name every time!
As for the particular, pivotal rulings in this episode, I love that the buzzwords involved came down to: corroborate, corroborated, char-grilled, char-broiled, flame-broiled, and magic triangle. Thousands of dollars bandied back and forth over those few basic words! I feel for Kathy on losing because she said, “corroborated,” because I HATE the categories where you have to count the letters in the word. Who has time for that?! Certainly not contestants who are desperately hitting the buzzer to ring in first! I’ll take ‘Math Should Never Be Fast’ for $1,000, please.
That moment on #Jeopardy on Tuesday when there was an unprecedented reversal of four scores across all contestants. Anna's face in the middle! 🤣 pic.twitter.com/dOhWC8QT1I
— celebitchy (@celebitchy) July 12, 2024
So my dad records jeopardy on his dvr and we watch a bunch of them together when I go to visit. So I’m a week behind but I went into this knowing it was a spoiler! Sometimes the corrections are too much. In the last episode I saw, there was a correction bc someone said bridal veil falls rather than bridal veil fall😂. Or an American pronounced Wimbledon with a T, sounding like Wimbleton, which as an American speaker, I didn’t even notice, but I guess the judges did.
oh I was SO TICKED at this!!! It was a significant bump for Isaac and honestly it felt like they were favoring him. Oh so you’re going to take char grilled when that wasn’t the correct answer? You just decided you could accept that? And then you’re going to go back and give him an answer that’s worth FOUR THOUSAND and then be all “hm, Isaac, we’re surprised you’re winning again, how do you do it??!?”
The only reason Kathy said “corroborated” was because it took Ken a second too long to accept corroborate – she said corroborate, Ken paused a beat so she said corroborated. So while the second answer was wrong, ken should have moved faster and taken the first one. Or, they just shouldn’t allow contestants to guess more than one correct answer, because some of them WILL squeeze in 2-3 guesses before Ken rules.
Anyway in general I don’t know if its Ken or the judges, but it often takes him a few seconds to say whether an answer is correct or not, and that’s something they need to be better about.
And I feel like over the past two years there has been a big run of contestants winning 6-10 or more games and its getting old. I like seeing new faces every few days.
I was watching and yeah, it was chaotic! The guy hit a daily double, and Ken was like “before you make your wager, we have an update” and started listing them all. I agree, some consistency with the first/last name thing would be good, but to be fair, I only seem to catch them saying “more specific” when there are multiple well known people with the last name. Like, if you answered “Smith” they need to know if you mean Will Smith or Adam Smith!
I’ve noticed they often ask more first name only if it is a woman. Makes me mad.
As a contestant, it is smarter to only say the last name, it halves your chance of a mispronunciation (which they are ruthless about).
I watch daily and don’t have a problem with last names only. It’s usually done by well-practiced contestants in the interest of saving time. And first names are usually asked for to clarify — like if someone answers a science question with “Curie,” the contestant must specify Marie or Pierre. I’ll keep my eye on this going forward from your comment, but I haven’t noticed any male/female bias with asking for first names.
I loved it! It was so crazy and exciting.
I watch a lot of Jeopardy and am always glad to see it covered on Celebitchy!
I remember one judges’ ruling from within the past few years when a contestant was wrong for writing “Yukon” instead of “the Yukon” in Final Jeopardy. I still think that is unfair.