Even the smartest Jeopardy! contestants can get tripped up by a deceptively simple question. During a recent round of games, all three players missed a question, and host Ken Jennings couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease them a bit.
The Easy Question All Three Players Missed
Ellen McRae, a Virginia realtor, Brett Myer, a writer from Los Angeles, and Sean McShane, a nonprofit employee, all took to the Jeopardy! stage to battle it out. However, all three contestants found themselves tripped up by a question in the second round of the game.
The category, “You Get Letters,” asked players to come up with alphabetical answers. The $400 clue stumped all three contestants, though. Jennings read, “You get an adjacent letter if you don’t know it’s the 7th letter of the alphabet.”
The answer? “What is G?” Many viewers couldn’t believe that all three contestants would miss this question, but others have pointed out the awkward wording of the clue. The phrase “adjacent letter” definitely made some players concentrate on that part of the clue, instead of realizing that it was simply asking for the seventh letter of the alphabet—something you could count out on your finger.
Jennings helped out the players by explaining the clue once time ran out with no one buzzing in to answer, joking that they all got an F for not knowing the seventh letter of the alphabet is G. No one got this question right, but the players more than made up for it in other categories.
Is Sean McShane A ‘Young Ken Jennings?’
The big winner of the night was McShane, who is on a two-day winning streak. He ended the game with $32,600, putting his total winnings at $53,200. The contestant has also been praised for winning in “runaways”—meaning that by Final Jeopardy, the other players couldn’t overtake him, even with a large bet.
Many have commented on a certain resemblance between McShane and another big winner on the game show. “Reminds me of young Ken Jennings!” one person wrote. Others agreed, with one joking that the host “adopted an alter ego.”
McShane has a long way to go before he reaches Jennings’ 74-game streak, but Jeopardy! fans have high hopes for him. Let’s just hope he doesn’t get tripped up by any more easy questions!