Thursday’s (Mar. 2) episode of Jeopardy was a swing and a miss for the contestants as they struggled to make it through a tricky sports category.
Host Mayim Bialik led the contenders through the category’s rather cryptic clues. Contestant Hannah Nekritz, a senior at Brandeis University, kicked off the “In the Sport” category with the $1,000 clue: “Chukker, gag bit, mallet, a lot of money,” per USA Today.
Nekritz and her fellow contestant Caleb Richmond incorrectly guessed roulette and horse racing, while the third competitor didn’t even bother answering. The answer, which seems rather simple in hindsight, turned out to be polo. But the category didn’t get any easier from there.
Nekritz pressed on with the $800 clue: “Penalty killing, plus-minus, the five-hole, ‘the biscuit’ (that’s what everyone’s chasing).” After Bialik read the line, she was met with complete silence and forced to reveal the answer, which was hockey.
The next clues in the category went similarly, unfortunately for Bialik and the contestants.
“Let’s finish out ‘In the Sport,’ I want to get rid of it,” said Richmond, a sophomore at Georgetown University. He chose the $200 clue, which read: “Inherited runners, appeal play, pickoff.”
None of them could figure it out. By this point, Bialik was openly laughing at the contestants, who didn’t get a single clue in the sports category right. “That’s baseball!” she said. “We kind of covered them all.”
“The internet’s gonna love that,” Richmond remarked.
And he wasn’t wrong. One Twitter user tweeted, “The sound of crickets while watching the three contestants on tonight’s Jeopardy in the category ‘sports’ was hilarious.”
“Jeopardy contestants very rarely know anything about sports. Every other random tidbit of knowledge…yes. But sports…nope,” another user wrote.
Let’s be honest, these contestants certainly didn’t make it to Jeopardy because they’re athletes. But viewers still couldn’t believe these trivia whizzes failed to figure out all five clues.
Richmond was the Jeopardy winner that day, even without the sports category. He finished the game with $23,618 in earnings.