‘Jeopardy!’ host Ken Jennings joins fans in disbelief as contestants fail to answer seemingly easy clue
‘Jeopardy!’ fans have been expressing concern that the game show will take an extended hiatus due to the writers’ strike
“Jeopardy!” fans are typically quick to comment when contestants are not able to answer clues correctly, but it’s rare that host Ken Jennings has something to say about it.
On last night’s episode of the popular game show, Jennings introduced a category titled “My Would-Be VP,” which featured clues about vice presidential candidates in failed election campaigns. When the $800 clue was shown to be Paul Ryan, all three contestants failed to answer that he ran as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick.
One contestant, Ian, buzzed in but floundered, unable to come up with the correct response before time ran out.
The other two players did not buzz in at all, and when time ran out on the clue, Jennings gave them the correct answer.
“How soon we forget,” he added before quickly continuing on with the show.
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As he implied, it has not been that long since Mitt Romney ran for president – it was in the 2012 election when he chose future Speaker of the House Paul Ryan as his running mate, just 11 years ago.
Fans were also surprised that this turned out to be such a difficult clue for the contestants.
As one person wrote on the “Jeopardy!” Reddit page, “Mitt Romney being a triple stumper is wild stuff.”
Another person said, “As a big presidential and political history nerd I was excited for the VP category … so that performance had me internally yelling at the screen a little lol.”
“I think it has to do with the fact that people just don’t remember VP candidates,” one viewer argued before anecdotally sharing, “I remember a few years ago, when Biden was debating Trump, my family was momentarily confused as to why the moderator kept referring to Biden as ‘vice president Biden.’”
The difficulty of the clue in question may be debatable, but one thing that is clear as day is that fans have taken major issues with the show lately, particularly with contestants missing questions that they feel were too easy in the first place.
During the Final Jeopardy round in an episode from last week, the “Government Officials” clue read: “In 1867 he wrote to General Rousseau, ‘On arriving at Sitka…you will receive from the Russian commissioner the formal transfer.'”
The correct answer was U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, but one player guessed the wrong answer and wrote, “Napoleon.”
“Jeopardy!” fans were quick to criticize the contestant via social media., with one passionate fan writing, “That one gal with Napoleon? Seriously?!”
Others responded with a face-palm emoji to her incorrect answer.
Fans also took issue with another show this month.
“Whoa! What was up with the folks on #Jeopardy tonight?” one Twitter user wrote about that episode. “For people of that caliber, those were some pretty basic questions that no one was getting…”
A separate Twitter user added that host Ken Jennings looked “annoyed at the contestants fluffing some pretty easy questions.”
Fox News Digital’s Stephanie Giang-Paunon and Janelle Ash contributed to this report.
