Game show fans are unhappy after Ken Jennings made a controversial call during a new episode of Jeopardy!. A little snafu left fans grumbling over the pronunciation of a name.

Ken Jennings ruled against a player’s pronunciation (
Image: abc)

Jeopardy! fans are sticklers for the rules and they are known to pipe up when Ken Jennings make a controversial ruling.

During Wednesday’s episode of the beloved game show, Joey DeSena, a development engineer from Raleigh, N.C., botched his pronunciation which cost him points in Double Jeopardy!. “From 2013 to 2017, Tom Mison kept his head during some rough situations as this TV character in ‘Sleepy Hollow,'” prompted a $200 clue from the “You”ll Learn to Adapt” category.

While Joey attempted to correctly guess Ichabod Crane, fans think the got a bit “tongue-tied.” He swapped the b for a p, making it Ichapod Crane, and Ken ruled against which fans felt was a bit unfair. After all, as one fan on Reddit pointed out, “switching B/P phonemes is very much a part of some accents.”

“Joey’s voice catching on ‘Ichabod’ and not getting credit for it is crazy,” a fan wrote. Another added: “I think it became too late to do this because Ken had already started ruling on Joey’s response before catching himself over the ‘pod’ snafu. So at that point he had to let him have it or rule against him. The BMS/second chance option was off the table at that point.”

The snafu left fans irritated by the show’s harshness ( 
Image:
Jeopardy!)
Fans also voiced concern over inconsistencies in rulings. “The judging seems to be rather arbitrary and capricious to me. Can’t accept ‘ichapod,’ but can accept ‘highland,’” wrote one fan in regard to the Final Jeopardy! decision where the judges allowed a singular version of the word rather than a plural “s.”

“I’m not sure about Highland and the precedent there, but ‘Ichapod’ is a different pronunciation which they typically take a hard line against. Changes the spelling,” another fan defended the show.

Some fans argued that Ken should have given him another chance to say the word rather than completely rule against him. Typically the fans are very pressed about pronunciations, but this time they believe the show is being stricter than they would be. One fan said: “The judges seem to be harsher about it as of recent but maybe I just didn’t notice in the past. Difficult to get real data on that.”

Luckily, that specific hint wasn’t a make or break for the results. Joey entered the final round with only $7,400 which didn’t come close to the $14,600 tie that his competitors shared. After the Final Jeopardy! round, Joey lost anyway and it was clear that the pronunciation debacle wouldn’t have saved him anyway.