'Jeopardy!' Fans Furiously Call Out Ken Jennings for Questionable Ruling
Twitter was fuming following this decision.
Ken Jennings just can't catch a break!
The part-time Jeopardy! host is once again in hot water with fans of the show following March 27's episode, where he made an odd ruling on one contestant's answer.
The $1600 clue in question reads, "After the Last Supper, Jesus traveled to this garden to pray & was arrested there."
The answer, as written, is "the Garden of Gethsemane." Two contestants—Kevin and Tamara—gave the same answer, but only one got it right. In the end, it came down to the pronunciation of "Gethsemane," which didn't sit right with many viewers.
Kevin buzzed in first, rhyming the name with Yosemite when he said, "What is the Garden of Gethsem-a-dee?" with a hard G.
Jennings shut him down immediately and Tamara rang in, correctly pronouncing the the N sound, but using a soft G," which is not how the word is pronounced, according to Merriam-Webster.
Jennings gave her the points, noting that they "just needed the ‘n,’ ‘Gethsemane,’ that's correct," which led to Kevin's elimination and plenty of pushback on Twitter, especially since Jennings didn't pronounce it correctly either (he also used a soft G).
Even an Episcopalian priest spoke up, noting that Tamara's and Jenning's pronunciation makes it an entirely different word.
Another user responded to him, noting, "The rules on pronunciation have certainly been only selectively applied in a conspicuously regular arbitrary nature."
And that appeared to be proven later in the same episode, when another user expressed frustration over a missing component of a following answer.
Earlier this month, the show also came under fire for "an inexcusable production error" that spoiled the final results.