‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Are Still Furious About A Spelling Ruling On Final Jeopardy

Jeopardy! is a game show about order and following the rules. Answers in the form of a question. Run categories from top to bottom. Come up with a good story to tell Alex Trebek or he’ll roast you into oblivion. It’s as close to baseball as far as unwritten rules and decorum as you’ll find in the game show world. And short of Wheel of Fortune creating some disasters when people pronounce things wrong, there’s no other game show that is more closely tied to its rules.

So when an answer in Final Jeopardy was deemed incorrect earlier in the week that seemed to go against the game’s storied rules, fans freaked out. And days later, they’re still buzzing about the fate of Betsy, a contestant whose appearance ended with what was ruled an incorrect answer on a Final Jeopardy question about “The Music Biz.”

Here’s the question: In 2019 at a 60th anniversary event in Detroit, this producer announced his retirement saying he had “come full circle.”

Everyone got the question wrong, but Betsy was ruled incorrect after writing down “Barry Gordy,” which is a slightly different spelling than the actual answer, Berry Gordy. Betsy would not have won, as she had just $2,000 and the eventual champion, Cory, was well above that and did not wager any money on the question.

Still, Twitter lit up with people talking about the differences between “Barry” and “Berry” on Tuesday night, with former show contestants and many popular fan accounts taking exception to the ruling and questioning whether the judges had made a mistake in the moment.

That judges’ ruling in Final Jeopardy tonight is completely inconsistent with past practice.

Good luck handling the flames tonight, @Jeopardy, you’re going to need it.#Jeopardy

— The Jeopardy! Fan (@_thejeopardyfan) September 16, 2020

This is what I’m referencing: if the judges had been as stringent in my game as they were last night, my opponents’ responses would have been found incorrect and I would be a #Jeopardy champion. pic.twitter.com/BpJLxtx8oa

— Emily Brown (@feministpastor) September 16, 2020

Many fans brought up similar instances in the show’s past where contestants were not penalized for similar misspellings or words largely pronounced the same way.

— Libby (@libbyjones715) September 16, 2020

Many highlighted the show’s rules, the fifth of which states that Jeopardy! is “not a spelling test” unless a category specifically makes it such.

— Meghan Marie (@Megs2100) September 16, 2020

Days later, fans were still talking about it. It’s sparked memes online, and many are still discussing it on Twitter, where the show’s official Twitter account has taken to responding with a form reply that’s a bit revisionist in its ruling: the claim is that the answer Betsy put down was a different name that added “incorrect information to an otherwise correct response.”

— lukezim (@lukezim) September 18, 2020

That answer didn’t cut it for most fans, who continued to talk about it on basically every tweet the Jeopardy! account has sent out since. And fans keep coming up with different reasons why Betsy should have been given a different ruling. We even got a Teen Wolf reference in discussing the incorrect answer.

But indeed there is not, and incidentally, @Jeopardy, I present a frame from the end credits of TEEN WOLF TOO (1987). pic.twitter.com/WUQaYYwHx9

— Jennifer Morrow (@jenniferemorrow) September 17, 2020

It’s certainly not the news the show wanted to make in its return to air, but it does mean big Jeopardy! fans will be talking about Betsy and Berry Gordy for years to come.