A third time is the charm for one “Jeopardy!” contestant.
Earlier this week, “Jeopardy!” fans were left outraged as host Ken Jennings caused a stir with a questionable ruling.
An analyst from New Jersey, Phil Hoffman, was given several chances by Jennings to answer a Daily Double correctly.
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Ken Jennings was criticized for his interaction with contestant Phil Hoffman. (Jeopardy!/ABC)
The Daily Double was found under the category of “A Brief History of Time,” and the clue read, “An 1884 conference chose the meridian of this facility’s transit instrument as the ‘prime’ starting point for time zones.”
“What is Greenwich?” Hoffman guessed.
“An 1884 conference chose the meridian of this facility’s transit instrument as the ‘prime’ starting point for time zones,” Phil Hoffman’s clue read. (Jeopardy!/ABC)
After a long pause, Jennings asked, “Can you be more specific?”
He then took a second guess, “What is Greenwich, England?”
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Since there were a few seconds of hesitation, the “Jeopardy!” contestant took another stab at answering the clue with “What is the observatory of Greenwich?”
“Jeopardy!” fans slammed host Ken Jennings for yet another questionable ruling during the popular game show. (Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images)
“It is the observatory; I did not want to leave you hanging,” Jennings said after he allowed the third and final answer.
“Jeopardy!” fans were not too pleased with Jennings’ ruling and suggested that the co-host was being too “generous.”
“I’m sure there aren’t any official stats on this, but Daily Double 2 is almost certainly the longest amount of time I’ve seen given for a Daily Double… maybe ever,” a fan wrote on Reddit.
“At least it felt that way; 3 cracks at it, even with proximity to the answer, in about a 10-second timespan is pretty forgiving.”
Some fans believe Ken Jennings gave the contestant too many opportunities to give a correct answer. (Raymond Liu/ABC)
Another comment read, “The clue clearly asked for a ‘facility,’ so why he got three chances to respond, I don’t know.”
“I think Ken was being generous because Lucy already had a huge lead, and a neg would’ve dropped Phil to $1,” one fan referred to another “Jeopardy!” contestant.
“Phil got away with one on The Royal Observatory! Cheap. He should have timed out,” another comment read on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Despite “Jeopardy!” fans slamming Jennings’ ruling, contestant Lucy won Monday’s episode and took home $16,200.
Despite “Jeopardy!” fans slamming Ken Jennings’ ruling, contestant Lucy won Monday’s episode and took home $16,200. (Jeopardy!/ABC)
This is not the first time “Jeopardy!” fans were left scratching their heads over Jennings’ game show rulings.
In March, a clue was presented, and a contestant buzzed in to answer. Jennings immediately told him the answer was wrong, then another contestant buzzed in right after with what Jennings called the correct answer.
The only issue is that both contestants gave the same answer, just with different pronunciations.
The clue read, “After the Last Supper, Jesus traveled to this garden to pray & was arrested there.”
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Ken Jennings has been previously criticized for his questionable “Jeopardy!” rulings. (Ron Batzdorff/ABC)
The correct answer was the Garden of Gethsemane.
A contestant named Kevin was first to attempt an answer, and although he did say “Garden of Gethsemane,” he seemed to pronounce the “n” sound at the end of “Gethsemane” like more of a “d” sound.
Jennings quickly said, “No,” then moved on to the next contestant to give an answer, Tamara.
“What is the Garden of Gethsemane?” she said.
In her answer, she did pronounce the “n” sound correctly, but she did not use the hard “g” sound at the beginning of the word, which is how it is commonly pronounced – instead, she used a soft “g.”
Regardless, Jennings accepted the answer and also pronounced the word with the soft “g” sound.
Ken Jennings first appeared on “Jeopardy!” as a contestant in 2004. (Getty Images)
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As always, viewers were quick to take to social media to discuss the issue.
“I thought the contestant who answered The ‘Garden of Gethsemane’ was robbed of his points tonight,” one person wrote on X. “What did he say wrong? The contestant who got points for that question, didn’t even pronounce it right.”
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Fox News Digital’s Emily Trainham contributed to this report.
