The latest JEOPARDY! are furious that they didn’t know about the ubiquitous Sears air conditioning TV commercial from the 1990s.
Internet users were devastated that no one intervened, while others argued that Ken Jennings didn’t present the clue accurately.
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Adriana, who won a rare tenth game for a tremendous total of $225,700, faced Scott McCann and Sarah Hartzell on Tuesday, June 12.
She selected the $1,000 clue “FROM THE AD” on Jeopardy! round.
Presenter Ken, 50, read: “From the 90s – Woman: ‘So what does the paper say about tomorrow?’ Man: ‘Another scorcher!’ Woman: ‘Cool.'”
All the players watched until the timer ran out, and Ken revealed the correct answer with a cheeky smile: “It’s a classic Sears air conditioning ad.”
The clue, of course, was about the rousing commercial in which a couple sweats at home because of a broken air conditioner. It ends with them getting a new one and the wife saying, “Cool.”
‘NOBODY?’
Fans lost their cool on social media and discussed the iconic ad’s mistake.
“No one knowing about the Sears air conditioning commercial killed me,” wrote one Redditor. “I could recite that from memory. It played all the time when I was a kid. Often twice in the same commercial break.”
“I was in the New York area and I heard this all the time. It helps to hear ‘I’ll call you tomorrow’, ‘you’ll call me now’, ‘I’ll call you now?” another posted.
“Really, I was excited to see that haha, that commercial has been burned into my brain for years and years,” lamented a third.
A fourth even pointed out its resurgence: “This was key and became a meme during the pandemic.”
Others said that Ken’s rules for the category previously may have confused players.
To start the category, he explained, “You will name the product or service,” and Sears is neither – it is a company.
“In the context of the previous clues about Pepto-Bismol and Old Spice, it’s fair to assume they were looking for the brand of a product, not a store that carried the product,” wrote a fifth fan.
“The product brand here is Kenmore, not Sears. It’s just a confusing clue as to what they wanted,” agreed a sixth.
Others weren’t even sure if the desired answer was Sears or “air conditioning” or both.
“Maybe they just wanted AC (i.e. the service). It definitely could have been clearer.”
Regardless, Adriana finished with another $21,000, and her tenth win made her a super champion.
She’s in rarefied air, as there have only been 18 super champions on Jeopardy! story, so everyone is buzzing.
FOR KELVIN’S SAKE
Meanwhile, during Adriana’s seventh win, fans unleashed their fury on the writers over a legitimate mistake on a track.
The grand champion selected the $600 “One Letter Says It All” clue and read: “50 degrees F. equals 283.15 degrees this.”
Adriana was considered correct with “K” and Ken explained: “Correct, for Kelvin”.
However, viewers took to social media saying the show was completely incorrect here.
Kelvin is not measured in degrees but has its own unit of measurement called Kelvin.
“Kelvin is not measured in degrees! It is only measured as kelvins as it does not refer to a standard like Celsius or Fahrenheit,” one Redditor pointed out.
One user X roared: “Error: Kelvin (K) is an absolute temperature scale, so temperatures there are not ‘degrees’ like Fahrenheit (°F) and Celsius (°C). 15 This would be the correct clue.”
One more lamented: “Jeopardy! Said degrees Kelvin smh.”
J-File, Jeopardy! The feature, which chronicles all the story clues that the champions use to study, also confirmed that it was wrong.
The site placed a rare “errata” under the clue to note the program’s error.
They wrote, “[ERRATUM: Kelvin is a base unit, and is not measured in degrees.]”
HARMEYER ON FIRE
Meanwhile, Adriana, an archivist from West Lafayette, Indiana, is on a winning streak.
She’s been on a roll since arriving two weeks ago and is now the first Super Champion of Season 40.
Fans are going crazy as it has been over a year since there was a 10+ day winner on the game show.
“She is very good. Obviously intelligent, discreet, consistent, not a prima donna. Deserving of the nickname ‘superchamp’,” said one Facebook user.
“Lovely woman… Brilliant and not obnoxious,” wrote another.
“Adriana is killing it and I love her retro vibe, like she stepped off the set of the Mary Tyler Moore Show,” wrote a third.
“Adriana is so cool I bet she doesn’t even care,” wrote a fourth.
‘SMILING STRATEGY’
Adriana chose a smart strategy that no other long-time winner has used in the show’s post-Holzhauer era.
She’s a traditional player who competes from top to bottom (what a relief!) and didn’t do daily double hunting.
Instead, she found only ten of the 27 hidden clues, refusing to bounce around the board.
This allows the other contestants to find the Daily Doubles and fall on their swords, missing them with big bets.
“Adriana is a sneaky, ice-cold player. She doesn’t hunt DD much and isn’t very aggressive with her bets, but on DJ’s end, she has an out-of-control game!” one fan wrote on Reddit.
“Just pure buzzer skill and huge knowledge base. I hope she continues her trend, I’d love to see how far she can take it!”
“Yeah, we really haven’t had anyone who plays as straight as Adriana,” highlighted Buzzy Cohen on the show’s podcast.
“I know Alex [Trebek] I would have loved a player like Adriana,” said producer Sarah Whitcomb Foss.
YOUR INSPIRING STORY
Meanwhile, Adriana is a clinical assistant professor and archivist of University History at Purdue University Archives and Special Collections.
She is married to her husband Neal – they came together in 2013 over their love of learning – he was in the audience for her amazing journey and they share a son.
His Q&A stories shed light on his Jeopardy! journey, including her “disappointing” failure to be selected as a teen contestant.
She honed her skills on a 1990s CD-ROM version of Jeopardy! starting when she was seven. She only stopped playing after the disc broke in half.
She studied with a “gently used” collection of encyclopedias and credits her late grandmother, whose necklace she wears, with getting her on Jeopardy!
She also said in a recent interview that she auditioned for the show online for fun and was surprised to be contacted a few weeks later.
“I had taken the test online a few times before, but this time I went online one night and took the test for fun.”
“I didn’t expect anything to happen – I just thought of it as another fun Internet test.”
So far, the other qualifiers for the next Tournament of Champions (all women) are five-day winners Alison Betts and Dr. Amy Hummel and Lisa Ann Walter from Celebrity Jeopardy!
That said, with four wins, Grant DeYoung and Amar Kakirde will likely participate as well.
Danger! airs at 7pm ET on ABC – check your local listings.
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
