The record for most triple stumpers (when all three contestants fail to guess) in an episode of Jeopardy! was set in 2005, during the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. A recent episode got close to breaking it, however. On June 6th, the three contestants combined for 23 stumpers, “something we never like to see,” producer Sarah Foss said on the Inside Jeopardy! podcast.
“Not good, you know it’s the last game before lunch, maybe everyone’s a little sleepy or something, a little hungry, but that’s a tough stat to carry with you,” former Jeopardy! champ Buzzy Cohen theorized. Viewers called the Mayim Bialik-hosted episode “horrible” and “one of the collectively worst showings on Jeopardy I’ve ever seen. Someone better pull this off.” (Suresh Krishnan pulled it off on his way to a six-game winning streak that recently ended.)
Hoping not to draw too much attention to the painful viewing fans saw the week prior, the producers brushed off the show as something minuscule before moving on. “Thankfully I’ve seen nothing go viral about it so it’s not gonna go viral, we’ve mentioned it briefly on the pod and we’ll forget it ever happened,” Foss concluded.
“A Jeopardy! producer’s comments about a particularly bad episode going unnoticed has summoned this internet phenomenon.”
“What is, the Streisand effect?”
If only every episode of Jeopardy! was that easy.
(Via the New York Post)