A missing letter in a Final Jeopardy! answer spelled doom for one โJeopardy!โ contestant.
Mehal Shah, a contestant on the Jan. 30 episode of the showโs Tournament of Champions, was not given credit for his answer in the final round because he misspelled a word by one letter.
โAfter Camillagate, a fire at Windsor Castle & marriage problems in her family, Queen Elizabeth II dubbed 1992 this,โ host Ken Jennings read as the clue in the category โLatin Phrases.โ
โWhat is an annus horriblis?โ Shah wrote, with the last word spelled h-o-r-r-i-b-l-i-s. The answer, as Jennings would reveal moments later, is โannus horribilis,โ with the second word spelled h-o-r-r-i-b-i-l-i-s.
Jennings informed him the answer was wrong, and the other two contestants also guessed incorrectly, prompting Jennings to tell Shah โyou were just a syllable away.โ
โItโs โannus horribilis,โโ Jennings said, sounding out the second word, while Shah rolled his eyes in disbelief. โBut because you dropped a vowel, you were a syllable off and we cannot accept that response.โ
Shah, who went into Final Jeopardy! in third place with $7,400, had wagered $7,001, dropping his total to $399 and resulting in a third-place finish and failure to advance to the semifinals.
Fans who saw the clip on the โJeopardy!โ YouTube page were stunned by the ruling, with some lamenting his bad luck and others insisting it was the proper decision.
โMan that is a BRUTAL call on the misspelling,โ someone commented.
โMehal will NEVER forget this day,โ another person wrote.
โThat is a horrible clue to have people write down their response,โ someone else chimed in.
โThis was objectively the right call,โ another person wrote. โIs it a tough break because he knew it? Yes. But adding/forgetting a letter is one thing- changing the syllable count of a word can fundamentally alter its meaning in some languages. Good call judges.โ
This isnโt the first time one letter cost a contestant in Final Jeopardy!
In 2023, nine-day champion Ben Chan saw his streak come to an end due to a misspelling in his response to the clue in the โShakespeareโs Charactersโ category.
โBoth of the names of these two lovers in a Shakespeare play come from Latin words for โblessedโโ was the clue.
The correct answer is Beatrice and Benedick from โMuch Ado About Nothing,โ but Chan wrote Beatrice and Benedict, prompting host Mayim Bialik to tell him he was wrong.
ย โItโs a very memorable miss, right?โ Chanย told the showย afterward. โSo if youโre going to go out on a miss, go out on a memorable miss.โ
