With any game or sport, there will always be tough calls—and Jeopardy!, while a game show, is no different. Producers often have to make decisions about players’ pronunciation or accuracy, and when it comes to Final Jeopardy!, they also have to consider contestants’ handwriting. The latest tough call made during the Wednesday, Oct. 16 game caused a bit of a stir, as some fans said that then-reigning champion Rishabh Wuppalapati had an “illegible” response.
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The Final Jeopardy! category was “College Towns,” with the clue reading, “2 schools in the Southeastern Conference are located in cities with the same name but in different states.” The correct answer was Columbia, alluding to both the University of South Carolina and the University of Missouri.
Jay Eversman, who was in third place when Final Jeopardy! rolled around, answered incorrectly with Oxford, while Rachel Cassidy did get the answer correct. When the camera panned to Wuppalapati, host Ken Jennings asked what he wrote down, to which Wuppalapati quietly said, “Columbia.”
“He wrote down Fayetteville and then changed it to Columbia, and I can read every letter, that is correct,” Jennings responded, confirming that Wuppalapati clinched the win.
But fans weren’t as quickly convinced.
“What is Cdundaig?” one viewer joked about Wuppalapati’s response on YouTube.
Another argued, “The power of suggestion is strong with this one. That scribbling could literally say anything so long as you make the person who is reading it believe it says what you want them to think.”
Yet another wrote, “I have bad handwriting and even I was dubious at giving him that; I could barely read his answer.”
On X, the conversation continued.
“Maybe the most illegible correct Final #Jeopardy response in recent memory—after scrutinizing it I’m okay with giving it to him but…my dude,” an X user wrote.
It seems that production took note of the grumblings, as producer Sara Whitcomb Foss addressed the questionable ruling on the Oct. 21 episode of the Inside Jeopardy! podcast.
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“Of course, you’ll remember Rishabh wrote Fayetteville at first, crossed it out, and then in the final seconds realized it was Columbia, wrote his response as quickly as possible—I know some people said it should not have been accepted…that you couldn’t read it, it was chicken scratch, but I’ve been here for a lot of these, and there are times when we feel like either the word wasn’t completed or the letters that were chosen change the pronunciation of the word,” Foss explained.
She continued and clarified that even though it may appear one way on the screen, it’s not just Jennings making the call.
“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 the letters in ‘Columbia’ and as a result, Rishabh goes on to win,” Foss concluded.
Beloved Jeopardy! champ Sam Buttrey, who is now a co-host on the podcast, agreed and said production made “the right call.” However, he joked that Wuppalapati should use a computer to type his dissertation rather than handwrite it.
Foss also addressed fans who suggested that Jeopardy! should have players use keyboards for Final Jeopardy!
“People were saying, ‘Jeopardy!, when are you gonna get with the times and stop having people write this with a stylus? You should have them typing it in,'” Foss said, but argued that it’s just as easy to make a mistake while typing under the 30-second time limit.
“Can you imagine losing a game of Jeopardy! because of a typing error—I would much rather depend on the stylus and my mind and actually see what I am writing—and so, for those of you whose comments I read, I just want to say, I kindly disagree,” the producer concluded.