“Jeopardy!” tripped up its contestants with a matter that combined geography and math.
On the Feb. 15 episode of the game show, the Final Jeopardy clue was in the category “Landmarks.”
The prompt given to contestants read, “The space between its 2 legs at ground level is 630 feet, making it as wide because it is tall.”
Diandra D’Alessio, James Tyler and David Bederman were all competing for the final spot in the Champions Wildcard semifinals, but struggled to offer the right answer.
Each D’Alessio and Bederman guessed the Eiffel Tower, while Tyler suggested Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, but none of those was the correct response.
The reply was, in actual fact, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.
“You’ll be able to actually inscribe the arch in a square,” host Ken Jennings said after revealing the answer.
Bederman and Tyler bet every little thing that they had, and each ended up with zero.
Going into the final round, D’Alessio was in the lead with $24,600, and only wagered $1001, dropping her to $23,599, but advancing her to the semifinals.
Fans online thought the “Final Jeopardy” clue was unnecessarily tricky, especially the description of the Gateway Arch as having legs.
In the show’s Reddit discussion forum, one person wrote, “I’m guessing ‘legs’ is just a really unusual option to describe what they meant? It’s not the first word I’d use — ‘ends’ possibly? ‘Supports?’ Definitely a little bit tricky by the writers, but for tournament play, it seems fair.”
One other wrote, “Gateway Arch was my gut response as well, but then I became frightened that it doesn’t really have ‘legs.’”
The National Park Service does describe the Gateway Arch as having “legs” on their official website.
Other fans weren’t as forgiving of the “Jeopardy!” contestants, especially over their confusion when it got here to what number of legs the landmark had.
“The incontrovertible fact that two superb Jeopardy contestants said ‘The Eiffel Tower’ to this has blown my mind. Possibly the worst final Jeopardy answer I actually have seen, it missed on each parts of the query!” wrote one fan on X (formerly Twitter).
“The ultimate jeopardy tonights clue mentioned the landmark having two legs and two of the contestants answered with…..the Eiffel tower??” said one other.
One other person put it bluntly, demanding, “What about two legs don’t you get?”
Earlier this month, contestants were tripped up by forgetting a letter of their final answer.
The clue for the final query was, “‘It was form of a prodding to myself to play it straight,’ said Johnny Money of this 1956 hit,” with the correct answer being “I Walk the Line.”
All three contestants answered “Walk the Line,” leaving out the letter “I,” costing them time and money on the show.