DANGER! viewers were caught off guard by a rare and soft decision during a crucial Daily Double on Monday’s episode.
The decision favored one of Adriana Harmeyer’s opponents and almost ended her surprising 14-day winning streak.
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The archivist from West Lafayette, Indiana, who has done quite well, faced off against Ty Patton and Kelsey Kaunisviita Vockrodt.
No double jeopardy! round, Ty found the last Daily Double in the “LABOR UNIONS” category.
He had $5,200, Adriana $15,000 and Kelsey $200, with few clues left.
He bet almost everything and Ken Jennings introduced the clue.
It said: “By 2024, Jalen Reeves-Maybin, president of this union, said he would like all stadiums to switch to natural grass.”
Ty responded, “Um, the ‘NFL Players Union?'”
Ken quickly admitted, “That’s correct,” elaborating that the answer the game show was looking for was actually “the NFL Players Association.”
“I play a lot better all of a sudden,” the host added.
Suddenly, Ty had $10,200 to Adriana’s $15,000, so it was a big game changer indeed.
‘I WAS, WHAT?’
Fans took to Reddit after the episode aired, sharing their thoughts on the decision.
“I was surprised they took Union over Association for that third Daily Double,” one fan wrote in an in-game thread.
“I know. I was like, what? They’re usually strict,” a second fan wrote.
Ty chimed in to explain that he was also surprised.
“Honestly…me too,” he wrote. “And I only said that because ‘union’ was in the category title. This is why I’m not too salty on some of my other ‘almost’ corrects.
Another fan asked him: “Did they take a break and go to the judges? It seems Ken accepted quickly, but I know how good they are at editing out interruptions.”
“They didn’t do that,” he replied. “No pause. At the time, nothing seemed strange, but watching it, I could see a scenario where it wasn’t accepted.”
One last fan pointed out that the score swing also changed the game from an escape by Adriana to a much tighter match.
“[Adriana] I had this game very close to my chest until Ty won $5,000 in DD3. It ended up much closer than it should have been.”
So Adriana didn’t have a Final Jeopardy escape – she led with $16,200, Ty with $13,400 and Kelsey with $2,200.
She and Ty guessed the final clue related to the movie, and Ty finished with $26,799, the champion added $10,800 to win $27,000.
“That’s just enough!” Ken admitted as Adriana smiled at her incredible total of $326,000 in 14 days.
IN THE DARK
During the same match, fans dropped an “atrocious” clue that even host Ken had trouble explaining.
In the first round, Ty finished the “Human Race” category for $1,000.
The clue read: “Using animal fat and sticks, a team of Spanish researchers tried to solve this kind of obvious question about cave paintings.”
“What’s ‘how they painted them?” he replied.
Ken told him his answer was incorrect and Kelsey entered.
“What’s ‘What kind of paint did they use?’” she said, in a questioning tone.
Ken tried to explain the correct answer, but even he had difficulty doing so.
“They used animal fat and sticks to try to light the place,” he said.
“The question is, ‘How did they paint in a dark cave?'”
Reddit users called out the show for the confusing question that apparently required a full sentence.
“Does anyone else hate that question about cave painting? It felt really clunky and hard to tell what they were looking for as an answer,” asked one fan.
“Yes, it was atrocious. Even Ken couldn’t quite articulate the correct answer,” replied one Reddit user.
“The biggest problem is that there are several answers that could fit in there besides the one they were looking for. Both Ty’s and Kelsey’s worked. The clue said this ‘obvious’ question. It wasn’t very obvious if any of them the three players understood and two offered other plausible answers,” said another.
“Yes I agree. Sometimes there are clues like this where the answer is some weird quasi-phrase they’re looking for,” a third added.
Another fan joked that perhaps the clue was written in the dark, referring to the answer.
“That was horrible, I really hope they don’t do anything like that clumsy in the future,” said another.
SLAY-DRIANA HARMEYER
Meanwhile, Adriana first arrived on the May 31 episode and was at court throughout June, becoming the first super champion of season 40.
Fans are going crazy as it has been almost two years since there has been a 10+ day winner, the previous being 13 day champion Ray LaLonde.
Adriana’s 14th win meant she defeated Ray and now has the longest streak since 21-day champion Cris Pannullo in autumn 2022.
However, Adriana doesn’t play anything like Cris, who scored 48-49 in Daily Doubles.
Instead, Adriana has a traditional strategy that sets her apart from every other Streaker in the post-Holzhauer era.
She is a rare, top-down player who refuses to hunt for Daily Doubles.
She has only found 14 of the 39 clues hidden in her sequence and doesn’t jump around the board to find them.
She relies on pure knowledge, getting an astonishing 305 correct and 33 incorrect on the overall clues and 14/11 on Final Jeopardy.
“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 recently 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!”
About internal risk! podcast, the team also talked about Adriana’s refreshing and traditional style.
“Yes, we haven’t had anyone who plays so straight yet. I know Alex [Trebek] I would have loved a player like Adriana.”
“Because there was nothing he appreciated more than a player who ranked a category in order.”
“It was refreshing to see that and see her be so successful at it, and I wanted to know what a category meant before I got to the meat of the tracks.”
The other qualifiers for the upcoming 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.
‘WRONG’ ABOUT STEREOTYPE
In a new interview on Monday, Adriana talked about her new TV fame.
She shattered the stereotype surrounding her home state of West Virginia.
Adriana spoke with The Parthenon about Appalachian stereotypes surrounding education.
“They’re wrong, like, they’re completely wrong. Personally, I don’t see any reason to let things stop me,” she said.
The unflappable Adriana will seek her 15th victory in Tuesday’s episode, leaving more and more powerful players in the dust.
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
