'Jeopardy!' fans slam 'positively disgusting' ruling: 'Brutal call'
"Jeopardy!" host Ken Jennings ruled that a contestant was incorrect after she added a single letter to her answer, and fans are calling him out for the tough decision.
A ruling on a recent episode of "Jeopardy!" has fans up in arms.
On Wednesday's episode of the game show, Kelly Proulx buzzed in to answer a clue in the "Waterfalls" category. She added an extra "s" at the end of her response, which was enough for host Ken Jennings to deny her the points – something fans are calling "brutal."
The clue read: "A Yosemite fall with a wispy ribbon of water that flutters in the air like a diaphanous cloth bears the name of this marital wear."
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Proulx answered, "What is Bridalveil Falls?"
"No, I’m sorry," Jennings responded. "It’s actually Bridalveil Fall, so we couldn’t take that. It is, ‘What is a bridal veil?’"
Proulx didn't win the game – she was the returning champion, but fellow contestant Isaac Hirsch's sizable lead, along with the failure of all three contestants to correctly guess the Final Jeopardy clue, meant that her incorrect response didn't play a factor in her loss.
Still, fans were upset at Jennings' ruling, complaining that it was a "brutal call."
"Kelly should hold a grudge on this one," one person wrote on the "Jeopardy!" Reddit page, while someone else called the decision against her answer "extremely pedantic."
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Another comment read, "Wow, Kelly was robbed. That ruling on Bridal Veil Fall/ Falls was ridiculous. Adding the S seems to fall firmly in 'yea, we'll take that' territory."
One person wrote, "I typically give long and wide deference to the judges, but f--- the judges for that ruling. there is nothing pinning the clue to ‘fall’, so she got the required information correct. that was positively disgusting."
Others explained that the issue is that judges were only looking for the name of the article of clothing – "bridal veil." They argued that by choosing to give extra information in the full name of the location, it was on Proulx to be fully correct, down to the letter.
A representative for the show did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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Last week, fans of the long-running game show lashed out about another clue – one involving actress Zendaya.
"Before somehow making tennis steamy in 2024, this single-named star guested on Disney Channel’s ‘Good Luck Charlie,'" the clue read.
Although contestant Staci Garner guessed Zendaya correctly, the clue left people confused online as the actress only appeared in one episode of "Good Luck Charlie."
"jeopardy just falsely stated that zendaya starred in 'good luck, charlie," a user online wrote on X.
Another wrote, "Zendaya was not on ‘Good Luck, Charlie’… right?"
"The one crossover episode?" another X user asked.
Zendaya got her start as a child star on Disney's "Shake It Up," which aired for three seasons from 2010 to 2013. As stated, she did portray her character in the show, Rocky Blue, in a single crossover episode.
Fox News Digital's Lauryn Overhultz contributed to this report.