A handwriting controversy from last week’s episode of Jeopardy! was addressed on the latest edition on the trivia show’s podcast.
The episode that aired on October 16, showed returning one-day champion and Rishabh Wuppalapati, an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, facing off against Rachel Cassidy, an associate professor from Rhode Island and Jay Eversman, an environmental lawyer from Missouri. During the Final Jeopardy round, Rishabh and Rachel were side-by side with respectively $10,400 and $10,100 with Jay in third with $4,800.
The Final Jeopardy category was “College Towns,” and the clue read: “2 schools in the Southeastern Conference are located in cities with this same name but in different states.” Both Rachel and Rishabh got the correct answer “Columbia,” but Rishabh was in the lead prior, and he had a wager of $9801, which was 200 dollars more than Rachel’s wager. He then he won the game. Discourse happened when Rishabh won after his hastily written answer of “Columbia” was deemed right after scratching off his initial answer.
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Fans were upset and surprised by the decision of host Ken Jennings and the show accepting his scribbled answer as they felt that the words did not read “Columbia” or looked like the right answer. On the game show’s podcast which airs new episode on Monday, Jeopardy! producer Sarah Whitcomb Foss and newly retired champion Sam Buttrey talked about the disputed decision and the rules surrounding it.
“Youll remember Rishabh wrote Fayetteville first, crossed it out, and then in the final seconds, realized it was Columbia. [He] wrote his response as quickly as possible,” Sarah said. “I know some people said ‘It should not have been accepted’ and ‘You couldnt read it’ and ‘It was chicken scratch.'”
She went on to say how she’s been present for incidents like that, and in some instances, they have felt the “word wasnt completed” or the letters picked “change the pronunciation of the word.” But that was not the case with Rishabh and the judges made an collective decision that his answer met the guidelines before it was shown to viewers.
“In this case, I felt, as Ken did, as did our co-head writers Billy [Wisse] and Michele [Loud] we all reviewed this before the ruling was made. That we could make out every one of those letters in Columbia. And as a result, Rishabh goes on to win,” Sarah said.
Sam made a joke about how Rishabh should use a keyboard and not a stylus pen for his college thesis. This led to Sarah bringing up a suggestion that fans have brought up about the show using keypads instead of stylus pens for Final Jeopardy. The former news anchor shared she wasn’t keen on the idea.
“Thats another thing I want to comment on. People were saying Jeopardy!, when are you going to get with the times and stop having people write with the stylus, you should have them typing it in,” Sarah said. “What people dont realize, is if we were to do that, how easily we all have phones and mobile devices, how often does autocorrect come in for you?”
“Because your fingers think youre typing something and because of placement you might type a different letter. And you have 30 seconds and youre not necessarily checking your work. Can you imagine losing a game of Jeopardy! because of a typing error? I would much rather depend on the stylus and my mind. I kindly disagree,” she elaborated.