It’s been an interesting season of Jeopardy! for Ken Jennings, who was named the solo host of one of the best game shows when Season 40 premiered last September. Not only has he witnessed several contestants qualify for the Tournament of Champions — including the polarizing Survivor alum Drew Basile — but he weathered viewers’ tournament fatigue and the backlash against his repeated use of the term “JIT” to come into his own as Alex Trebek’s successor. The fight’s not over yet, though, as the host was forced to clear the air over a controversial answer, and fans continue to call Jeopardy! out for its supposed inaccuracies.
Ken Jennings Addresses ‘Very Harsh’ Ruling After Contestant’s Loss
Fans were quite upset on behalf of Kelly Proulx on the July 3 episode of Jeopardy! when she was ruled incorrect for answering, “What is Bridalveil Falls?” rather than “Bridalveil Fall” in the singular form. One X (Twitter) user called the move “pedantic” and “disgusting,” while the judges’ call was intensely debated on Reddit, with one commenter saying, “fuck the judges for that ruling.” Ken Jennings addressed it with the contestants after the game, and his comments were aired on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast. The host said:
All three of you played well, you [Kelly Proulx] kept him [Isaac Hirsch] honest. It was not a foregone conclusion until the very end. Sadly, Bridalveil falls with the ‘S.’ You know, it turned out nobody knew Mary Queen of Scots, so it didn’t really matter. I’m glad it didn’t hinge on my very harsh ruling on the ‘S.’
The money Kelly Proulx lost from the “Bridalveil Falls” response made the game a runaway for Isaac Hirsch, but as Ken Jennings pointed out, since all three contestants missed the Final Jeopardy! clue, it’s unlikely that Proulx would have come out on top even if the producers had accepted her answer in the previous round.
Fans Call Out Jeopardy! For Not Fact-Checking
That controversy came just a couple of days after another incident that had Jeopardy! viewers up in arms. On July 1, Zoe Strassfield, Matt Brooks and Cat Pisacano were all stumped on a “Rhyme Time” clue asking for another way to say “A kayak inspection.” The correct response — “A canoe review” — really got under fans’ skin, as they rushed to Reddit to argue that a canoe and a kayak are two different vessels. One wrote:
I never understand how mistakes like this that are so easy to fact check get through.
Others said they were “displeased” and called the clue “painful,” with one presumed boating expert adding:
Kayaks and canoes are not synonymous. As an avid boater that one really stuck in my craw.
That’s not even where the madness ended, either, with another recent episode including a moment unlike anything fans had ever seen.
Multiple Jeopardy! Scoring Changes Shock Viewers
Even more recently than the above incidents, viewers were shocked when Ken Jennings — one of Jeopardy!’s biggest winners — had to make several scoring changes after the judges changed their minds on contestants’ previous responses. It’s not all that unusual that the host will announce a scoring change, but many home audience members had never seen more than one correction at a time, nonetheless three! On the July 9 game, Jennings stunned viewers when he announced:
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 ‘chargrilled’ instead of ‘charbroiled,’ so, you get back $2,400 there. 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.
I will say when I saw this portion of the episode, my eyes bugged out of my head, and it looks like I wasn’t the only one, as the Jeopardy! Reddit lit up with jokes like:
I’ll take judges scoring changes for $6,000, please.
The fans weighing in agreed — for the most part — that the judges made the right calls, but it was the sheer number of adjustments that had to be made at one time that shocked everyone, with the scores looking wholly different afterward than just moments before. One viewer said the “whole game felt chaotic,” and many remarked that they’d never seen anything like it.
Fans are certainly never shy about pointing out what they feel to be mistakes on Jeopardy!, whether it’s on the part of a player, the producers or Ken Jennings himself, but I do like when the host addresses controversies or defends himself against accusations that he deems unfair. Check your local listings to see when to catch the remaining episodes of Season 40, and take a peek at our 2024 TV schedule to see what else is coming up.