“Jeopardy!” had a quirky moment last week when a contestant revealed she had a family connection to the clue during Final Jeopardy! As it turns out, that wasn’t the first time something like that has happened.
On June 27, the show’s Instagram account answered a fan question asking if that has ever taken place before.
“At least once! Back in 2001, Bill O’Donnell got a clue about his great-grandfather, George Ferris,” the show captioned a clip of the moment.
The occurrence happened during the $200 clue in the category “Stupid Answers.”
“Last name of the engineer who built the first Ferris wheel,” the clue read.
“Who’s my grandfather, George Ferris?” O’Donnell rang in.
“Are you serious,” host Alex Trebek replied.
“Yeah,” O’Donnell responded with a laugh.
“How about that?” Trebek said.
“My great-grandfather, actually,” O’Donnell said, correcting himself.
“It’s not just a stupid answer. It’s a stupid answer within the family. And that’s great. Go again,” Trebek said.
Trebek later chatted with O’Donnell about the coincidence.
“Now, isn’t it amazing?” he said. “We were talking, our producer and I, during the commercial break about what the odds must be that we would write a clue about the Ferris wheel. You would ring in on that clue. It would come up in your game, and he would turn out to be your great-grandfather.”
During the June 23 “Jeopardy!” episode, the Final Jeopardy! question read, “In 1896, the Vassar-educated wife of this man wrote, ‘Thousands of dollars may be paid for a copy of Shakespeare.’”
Emily Croke answered “Folger,” making her the lone contestant to get it right, before she revealed her connection to the name.
“That was my great-great-great-aunt Emily,” she said while smiling in a clip shared by the “Jeopardy!” Instagram account.
“The one we mentioned in the clue is the person you, Emily Croke, are named after?” host Ken Jennings asked.
“Yes,” Croke replied.
That prompted fan reaction on Instagram, including one person who assumed a family connection to a clue had never happened.
“I don’t think that in the entire history of Jeopardy, that any clue before was accidentally written about a contestant’s family!!” one person wrote.
“The odds are astounding considering the longevity of the show and the probability of being on the show when the question is asked and the millions of applicants who apply to play!!!!” one person wrote. “We have a better chance of winning the lotteries!!!!👏👏🔥🔥❤️❤️😂.”
