On today’s episode of Jeopardy!, the Daily Double in the Jeopardy round was in the category James Bond. The question was more or less…
The contestant did not give any reply and Trebek then said the answer was “What is Never Say Never Again”.
BUT!
The real answer, of course, is “What is Diamonds Are Forever”? Never Say Never Again is wrong on a lot of levels, but mostly because it was released in 1983, not 1971. I missed the show coming back from commercial before Double Jeopardy so I don’t know if they addressed it, but two questions…
a) Did you see it, and if so, did Trebek address the boo-boo?
b) Has Jeopardy! ever gotten an answer wrong like this before and not address it in the show? And what happened with those contestants?
I didn’t see the show in question, but I seem to recall a few shows where Alex introduced a contestant as a past contestant who was invited back because of an error such as you describe.
So I imagine that’s what would happen here: the contestant who faced that error would be invited back at a future date. Assuming he or she lost the game, of course; I couldn’t see them inviting the contestant back it if the contestant was the day’s big winner in spite of the error.
What Spoons said. If the contestant raises a legitimate beef, they’re invited back and given another shot.
I watch a lot of old game shows, and there’ve been many times I’ve seen something go down and said out loud, “There’s someone who’ll be coming back again soon!”
N.b.: If they ever bring Pyramid back again, and you’re a contestant, and you say half the word in the process of giving clues, don’t stop and look around guiltily. I’ve seen it work plenty of times to just plow right through and hope the judge will miss it, but if they see you acting like you goofed up, you’ll get cuckooed every time.
I have also seen episodes where the answer to a question was reviewed “during the break” and the person who was penalized for “getting it wrong” is given back the money they lost, plus the win amount for that question. I think if someone else had answered the expected answer, they get to keep the money anyways, but I’m not sure about that.
And if they don’t catch the problem during the taping and correct it after a break, they’ll only invite a contestant back if the error was large enough to have changed the final outcome of the game.
For instance, if they made a mistake on a $100 clue and the winner won by $1,000, there wouldn’t be a make-good.
Also, IIRC, in the contract you sign as a contestant you agree that rulings of the judges are final, and that you won’t sue them over such errors. So if they do have someone back, it’s only because they’re being nice. They didn’t really have to.
They may not have to, but I think that shows take care to avoid any trace of rigging or impropriety, for fear of public backlash. I remember that recently there was a story about one of those little contests on Regis and Kelly that went awry.
…there, after a typo may have influenced a contestants answer, they allowed the contestant to try again. She lost again, and ended up with two consolation prizes.
When I was on, we got to watch some of the other tapings and there was one particular episode where they kept stopping it to check the answers a contestant was giving. He was giving right answers, but they weren’t the ones Trebek had on his cards. They stopped the episode four times. Trebek took his shoe off and threw it at the monitors… it was hilarious.
I believe you are mistaken on the last part. I think they also take money from the person who gave the expected-but-wrong answer. It is only fair, after all.
Hopefully they only take away the money they won, but don’t penalize them for the wrong answer. After all, if Jeopardy had the answer correct, then that contestant wouldn’t have been able to buzz in to give their wrong answer.
I don’t recall the exact wording of the question, but on one show aired during the last couple of weeks, I think they screwed up on Final Jeopardy. I don’t remember the wording of the question, but the correct response was “whipping boy”. One of the contestants answered “patsy”, which was ruled incorrect. But aren’t they sorta the same thing? Does anyone remember watching that episode? I’ve been meaning to watch to see if they brought that contestant back – Alex looked a bit uncomfortable saying no to patsy.
In the early days of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, a contestant got a question along the lines of ‘What is the minimum number of times a tennis player must hit the ball in order to win a set?’ The answer given was the answer expected - 24 times (4 x straight winners in each of 6 games). As I recall, the guy went home with £128K.
Subsequently it was pointed out that the correct answer is in fact 12* (4 x aces in each of 3 service games) because the opponent could serve 4 x double faults in his service games thus removing the need for the receiver to strike the ball at all.
The contestant kept his money.
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*There are other answers but these depend on technicalities.