'Jeopardy!' Fans Take Issue With Ken Jennings' Questionable Ruling
Ken Jennings
Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings raised some eyebrows this week after he made a controversial ruling during one of the Daily Double clues.
Earlier this week, contestant Phil Hoffman, an analyst from New Jersey, was given a few chances to come up with the correct answer to the Daily Double correctly—and viewers think Jennings may have been a little too lenient in his ruling.
The Daily Double question was found under the category, "A Brief History of Time," and featured the clue, "An 1884 conference chose the meridian of this facility's transit instrument as the ‘prime’ starting point for time zones."
"What is Greenwich?" Hoffman guessed.
Jennings, 49, then paused for a while before asking, "Can you be more specific?"
"What is Greenwich, England?" Hoffman replied while Jennings hesitated once again. The contestant then took the pause as an opportunity to take another guess, stating, "What is the observatory of Greenwich?"
"It is the observatory; I did not want to leave you hanging," Jennings said after deeming the answer as "correct."
"We needed the facility," he added, while Hoffman let out a relieved "Phew" for finally landing on the right answer.
But fans at home weren't so sure about Jennings' ruling, with some calling him a little too "generous" for giving the contestant multiple stabs at the answer.
"Phil got away with one on The Royal Observatory!" one user wrote on X (formerly Twitter). "Cheap. He should have timed out. #Jeopardy."
"The clue clearly asked for a 'facility', so why he got three chances to respond, I don't know," someone else pointed out on Reddit.
"Generally, producers are much more lenient with how much time is given on Daily Doubles," someone else wrote on X, before making a dig at Jennings, a former Jeopardy! champ himself. "Ken would know, he once got 25 seconds to answer a Daily Double of his after the clue was read."
But regardless of whether or not Jennings' ruling was fair, it didn't have much of an effect on the game, as another contestant, Lucy Ricketts, ended up taking home the win anyways.
Next: 'Jeopardy' Fans Call Out 'Easy Final Question' After 2 Contestants Answer Correctly
