...
By Lottie McGrath
News Reporter
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Jeopardy! judges are sticklers for pronunciation—as fans found out once again on Thursday night.
As per the rules of the gameshow, contestants are given trivia questions in the form of clues. They then need to answer these clues in the form of a question.
On Thursday night's episode of the historic game show, contestant Will Wallace had his pronunciation of a type of dog breed challenged. In the Double Jeopardy round the $1,600 came clue from the "Photographers and their Craft" category.
Read More on Entertainment
The clue read "William Wegman's claim to fame—whimsical portraits of this dog breed that also starts with "W." The correct answer was "Weimaraner" but three-day champion Wallace, a game design director from Austin, Texas, buzzed in with the answer "Weimareiner."
...
However, that wasn't going to fly with host Ken Jennings who responded "mmm. No, won't take that" and ruled the answer as incorrect.
As often happens, the mispronunciation sparked hot debate, with fans flocking to X (formerly Twitter) to voice their dissatisfaction.
"Everyone says 'Weimaraner' the way Will did! I call foul Jeopardy!," wrote one social media user and game show fan.
The online debate continued to heat up, with Jeopardy! being a trending topic on X at the time of writing.
Others seemed to agree, with one post reading: "pretty sure I was screaming Weimaraner the same way Will said it."
Elsewhere, dissatisfaction with Jenning's ruling the answer incorrect was widespread as one X user called it "garbage" and another said Wallace's pronunciation "should have been accepted."
The word is famously hard to pronounce and subject to many different interpretations, as one fan pointed out: "Jeopardy! penalized this man for incorrectly saying 'Weimaraner.' You can ask five different people to say the breed and they are all going to say it differently."
Another social media user said the pronunciation of Weimaraner had caused a debate in her own household, writing: "Funny. Hubs always complains about how Americans botch word pronunciations. I pronounced 'Weimaraner' just like the Jeopardy player did. Finally, Ken backed my husband's pronunciation and didn't let the mispronunciation slide, much to his relief. Lol."
Pronunciation is often a hot topic, with Jeopardy! fans also getting riled up about it last week.
Despite having his pronunciation ruled as incorrect, Wallace was the winner at the end of Thursday night's episode as he ended with $26,799.
Dan Meyer, a professional fundraiser from Chicago, ended the night on $8,200 and non-profit consultant Kiki Jamieson came in third on $5,119.
Wallace also came out top on the Final Jeopardy round. The clue was "'Candle in the Wind' knocked this song that asked a title question from the top spot as the U.K.'s all-time bestselling song."
The correct answer, which Wallace got, was "Do They Know it's Christmas."
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines