Jeopardy! champion Amy Hummel was looking for her sixth consecutive victory on Wednesday night (May 1) but came undone by a “brutal” mispronunciation ruling that cost her the game.
Hummel, an ER doctor from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had already amassed an impressive $100,994 across her first five games and looked to add to that total on Wednesday’s episode. She was up against Nils Cousin, an attorney from Washington, D.C., and Weckiai Rannila, an engineer from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
After the first round, the game was close, with Cousin in a slight lead with $6,000, Rannila following behind with $5,400, and Hummel trailing with $3,000. As the three contestants entered the Double Jeopardy round, it was all very much still to play for.
But Hummel couldn’t make up the deficit despite finding both Daily Doubles, answering neither correctly. This saw her drop out of contention with just $3,600 going into Final Jeopardy, while Rannila led with $11,400 and Cousin stood at $6,400.
However, some viewers felt Hummel was hard done by when it came to one of her Daily Double answers. After wagering her entire $4,200 on the “OLOGIES” category, the Wisconsin native was faced with a clue that read, “Remove 2 letters from the study of weather to get this, the study of weights & measures.”
A baffled-looking Hummel answered, “What is meterology?”
“I’m sorry, no,” host Ken Jennings said. “You needed to get rid of the ‘e’ and the ‘o’ to make Metrology. You were very close, but no.”
The harsh ruling saw Hummel drop to $0, and she never truly recovered from the setback. In the end, Rannila won the episode with $9999, despite nobody getting the Final Jeopardy! clue correct.
“Certainly gonna be some level of mild controversy about DD3 & the pronunciation of “metrology”; I thought Amy said it, but with emphasis on the “me,” which, given that it’s a word I’ve never heard before (and presumably Amy as well), I would’ve thought there’d be some lenience,” wrote one fan on the Jeopardy! Reddit forum.
The user added, “It didn’t sound like she said “meterology,” but I can kinda hear the second E? Bit of a hard ruling to make. Plus, even though everyone missed Final, the $8,400 she would’ve had if they had given it to her, plus the $3,600 she got afterward would’ve put her in first going into Final, which… who knows? Kind of a lame way to go out, though.”
“Brutal DD3 miss, but she’ll be back for the ToC!” said another.
“I went back and re-watched it and she very clearly said “me-ter-ology”, just in a hesitant way,” added another commenter.
Another added, “I feel like she had a sort of verbal stumble between the first and second syllables, resulting in met’rology with a very brief ə trailing the t. But given the way they wrote up the clue, I’m not surprised they were picky about pronunciation.”
“It was incorrect. Like the archivist, I heard something like “meterology” (or “mee-cher-o-lo-gy”)–she definitely had some kind of vowel sound between the ‘t’ and the ‘r’, and either way she pronounced it with 5 syllables. The correct response only has 4 syllables,” wrote one fan.
Despite the unfortunate loss, Hummel earned herself over $100,000 during her five-game winning streak and will have a shot at redemption in the next Tournament of Champions.
What did you think about the ruling? Let us know in the comments section below.
