DANGER! and host Ken Jennings are receiving negative comments from fans over an overly harsh decision that some have even called “positively disgusting.”
On Wednesday night’s episode, Ken and the judges refused to accept the defending champion’s answer because it was pluralized.
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The drama occurred during the last clue of Double Jeopardy!, which was in the “Waterfalls” category.
The $2,000 clue was: “A drop in Yosemite with a thin ribbon of water that floats in the air like a diaphanous cloth is named after this marital outfit.”
Returning champion Kelly Proulx, communications director from Billerica, Mass., asked, “What is Bridalveil Falls?”
Unfortunately, she was wrong by an “s” and was considered incorrect.
“No, I’m sorry,” said Ken, 50. “It’s actually Bridalveil autumn, so we couldn’t accept that. It’s: ‘What is a Wedding Veil?’”
Kelly looked distraught and her opponent, Isaac Hirsch, could be seen looking at the camera in surprise.
This clue was especially tricky because many Yosemite locations, including Yosemite Falls, Wapama Falls, and Carlon Falls, have the “S” attached.
Additionally, she added an “S” to the word “fall,” which was not part of the desired answer.
Kelly entered Final Jeopardy in last place with $8,000, Dana Keane with $8,300 and Isaac on the run with $18,000.
After Final Jeopardy, Isaac, a customer support team leader from Burbank, California, won with $19,185 – ending Kelly’s one-day streak.
‘THIS DECISION WAS GARBAGE!’
Viewers flooded social media to discuss the decision; many felt it was unnecessarily harsh.
“Wow, Kelly got robbed. That Bridal Veil Fall/Falls decision was ridiculous,” wrote one Redditor. “Adding the S seems to fall firmly into ‘yeah, let’s keep that’ territory.”
“I normally give judges long and wide deference, but fuck the judges for this decision,” another Reddit user posted. “There is nothing that identifies the clue to ‘drop’, so she got the information right. That was positively disgusting.”
“Yes, that is a brutal decision on the last clue,” wrote a third user.
“’Fall’ was on the track, so it clearly didn’t need to be said in the response. And yes, people call it ‘Falls’. Calling it incorrect was extremely pedantic,” wrote a fourth.
“And that made the game out of control. Brutal decision,” wrote a fifth.
“This decision was rubbish,” wrote a sixth bluntly.
“If she said ‘wedding veil,’ I’d probably still be mad, but at least I could see the argument for not accepting it,” wrote another. “This is beyond pedantry, in my opinion. Completely unjustifiable and detrimental to the game.”
“If the clue only required you to say “Bridal Veil,” why does it matter if Kelly said “fall” or “fall” afterwards? one more wrote. “People call it ‘Bridalveil Falls’ all the time, including the National Park Service!”
Others were surprised that the decision wasn’t reversed before Final Jeopardy.
“You expected to hear ‘before FJ, we have a punctuation change…’.”
And, “I have to wonder if there were any recording interruptions because of that decision. It seems absolutely absurd to me.”
On X, another user wrote: “@Jeopardy just tricked champ Kelly by not accepting Bridal Veil Falls because it’s actually ‘Fall’.”
They added: “But they accepted ‘larynx’ for larynx. Make sense.”
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IN-KEN-SISTENT?
As the last netizen recalled, Ken and the judges accepted a blatantly mispronounced word on Monday, which angered some fans.
Matt Brooks, a health IT analyst from Virginia, was leading against Zoe Strassfield and one-day champion Cat Pisacano.
Matt took the $400 Jeopardy! round track in the “Taking you to school” category.
The clue read: “Anatomy: There are false and true vocal cords in this hollow tubular structure, also called the voice box.”
He replied “larnyx”, mispronouncing larynx.
However, host Ken accepted his guess.
“Ah, yes, we’ll accept that,” said Ken, who then repeated the word with the correct pronunciation.
Matt won the game for $10,600, and viewers took to social media to complain about the larynx disaster.
“How the hell did they accept ‘larynx’ as a correct answer to ‘larynx,’” one Redditor started a thread.
“They say pronunciation doesn’t count, but they routinely count wrong answers when spelling and pronunciation don’t match – ‘larynx’ is simply not a conceivable way of pronouncing ‘larynx’.
“We expected them to come back and correct the score and they didn’t. That really soured the whole game for me.”
Another fan agreed: “Yes that was unbelievable. How on earth can this be considered an acceptable response when, historically, judges have been completely strict with pronunciations?”
A third person noted that Cat “got distraught” after that and could have won the game.
Other fans noted that late host Alex Trebek accepted “larnyx” as an answer in November 1997 and March 2006, explaining that it was “a common pronunciation.”
Danger! airs at 7pm ET – check your local listings.
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This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
