On last night's "Defoe" ruling
(Warning: spoilers for the Monday, January 29 episode)
In last night’s first semifinal of Winter 2024 Champions Wildcard Group 1, Lloyd Sy responded “who is Defoe?” at the $1600 level of the “D.D.” category in Double Jeopardy!. Ken Jennings initially ruled Sy correct, but I wasn’t the only one to point out that Sy’s response didn’t fit the constraints of the category — two words, both starting with D.
As expected, when the final Daily Double was found, Ken’s call was overturned by the judges. And as has been pointed out elsewhere, to take a player’s score from “credit for being right” to “penalty for being wrong,” twice the clue value is deducted — thus, $3,200 came off Sy’s total before he made his Daily Double wager.
It has been suggested that owing to Ken’s quick trigger in ruling Lloyd correct, only the clue value should have been taken due to Ken’s misstep, and not the further $1,600. It was also asked whether something like that has happened before. It actually has; in a 2018 game, a player gave “Button” in a category titled THE B.G.s, the intended correct response being “Button Gwinnett.” As the Archive explains: “Originally ruled correct; ruled insufficient at the beginning of Double Jeopardy!, resulting in Alexandra losing the $1,000 she had earned for the response without being penalized further”.
The key distinction between the two instances is the lack of quotation marks in the category title in 2018, and their presence last night. Indeed, during Matt Jackson’s regular play run in 2015, he was similarly dinged after the fact for giving only the surname “Turgenev” at the bottom of THE “I.T.” GUY, without the first name “Ivan.” It is more than reasonable for both Jeopardy! and its viewers to expect players to know what quotation marks mean when they appear in a category title — particularly so of a contestant appearing in his fifth game. (edit: consequently, it is absolutely fair that a contestant should be able to recognize an instance such as this as an exception to the general “last names only” principle.)
Ken should have remained silent after Lloyd’s initial response of “Defoe” for a second or two to allow for a correction, but had one not come, it should’ve been a direct ruling of incorrect, without any further prompt. Regardless, the judges handled the aftermath the right way.