Romans & Hebrews, revisited
The brouhaha in last November's ToC final, with nine months' hindsight
We’re nearly all the way through the 2023 Jeopardy! summer hiatus separating Seasons 39 and 40. The episode re-aired last Wednesday was the third game of the 2022 Tournament of Champions final. I originally wrote this post that day, but I got sidetracked and didn’t put it up then, and I’ve been working on some other things since, thus, it not going up until now. The Final Jeopardy! clue in that game is widely considered to be the most controversial1 of any of the 16,3902 that aired between September 12, 2022 and July 28, 2023. The episode having recently returned to television screens across North America, let’s take a look back at what all the fuss was about, and what happened in the aftermath.
The clue, its responses, and the rulings
Amy Schneider, Andrew He, and Sam Buttrey were presented with a Final category of “The New Testament,” and after the final commercial break, saw this clue:
Paul’s letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations
The one and only correct response the show accepted was “Hebrews.” The daily recap at The Jeopardy! Fan flagged two issues. One was that it’s now disputed whether Paul was the true author of the letter to the Hebrews. The second was that various sources are conflicted as to whether Romans or Hebrews quotes the Old Testament more.
Amy was correct, but too far behind to be a factor. Andrew and Sam were both wrong; Sam made the “cover wager” from the lead, giving Andrew a second win. But Sam’s incorrect response was “Romans” — had that been ruled correct, he’d have won, and the final series would have been tied at one game all the way around.
Remedies?
As the Tournament of Champions was fully taped well before any of its games aired, the result had to stand and the tournament continued. In the end, Amy took Games 4 and 6 to claim the quarter million dollar winner’s prize and admission into the super exclusive club of Jeopardy! Grand Champions. Sam won Game 5, making the final tally in the series Amy 3, Andrew 2, Sam 1.
I suggested at the time that, as reversing the result of Game 3 and holding all else equal would have flipped the win counts of Andrew and Sam, that the latter should’ve been awarded an additional $50,000. That would have brought his third-place award up to equal to with Andrew’s take for coming second. The justification for doing so no longer holds. Think of this like making an appeal play in baseball (such as when the defense thinks a runner missed a base). Once a pitch is delivered, the previous play stands and an appeal is no longer allowed. The equivalent here is that once Sam agreed to participate in Jeopardy! Masters — or at the absolute latest, the moment the first clue of that event was selected — Buttrey accepted the ToC result and no longer had standing to contest it.
The aftermath (the fallout?)
Across the Jeopardy! viewership generally, but especially among the segment versed in the Bible, discussion and debate lit up. Twitter, Reddit, I’m sure Facebook3 — emotions boiled over and objections raged. They extended to calmer sectors. One of the co-hosts of “Potent Podables” is a pastor, and I recall her taking exception. Three days after the original airing, Andy penned an editorial at TJ!F questioning whether the King James Version was still suitable as the authoritative text of the Bible, as it has been for the history of the syndicated version.
Fuel was added to the fire on the following Monday, November 21. The usual release of “Inside Jeopardy!,” the show’s official podcast, addressed the controversy. Actually, let me rephrase. It referred to the controversy, but to say it addressed the matter might be a stretch. I won’t transcribe what was said; I’ll just supply the link to the YouTube version, cued up.4 I’ll also give you the characterization of Ben Wiles, Jeopardy! alumnus and holder of a Master of Divinity degree: “So the official @Jeopardy response to last week’s FJ howler is, effectively, ‘We weren’t wrong, we’re never wrong, and even if you think we are, it’s not our fault.’ Dismissive defensiveness. From the current regime, I’ve come to expect nothing else.”
With Michael Davies considering Jeopardy! to be a sport, this case has drawn comparisons with various other blown sports calls in history. Don Denkinger missing a crucial safe/out call in the 1985 World Series, Jim Joyce also doing so in 2010 costing Armando Galarraga a perfect game, possibly the Immaculate Reception — all examples that come to mind. The one that I look to came in the 2010 FIFA World Cup; Frank Lampard’s goal not given for England against Germany in the round of 16. FIFA had been consistently, adamantly opposed to any sort of goal-line technology. This decision having been so blatantly, obviously wrong, and the stakes having been so high (a win-or-go-home game in the sport’s showcase tournament), reversed their stance and led to the introduction of GLT a few years later, and eventually the video assistant referee system now used in major international and club competitions.
In last Wednesday’s recap of the rerun encore presentation, Andy said: “Alex [Trebek] knew that humans make mistakes, but what makes better a human is the acknowledgement of past errors, and a willingness to learn from these mistakes. And I’m not currently convinced that Jeopardy! has learned from this one.”
Neither am I. In fact, like Wiles, it seems most likely that the show has dug in — taking exactly the wrong lesson from this instance. It would be as if FIFA had responded to the Lampard incident by insisting that his strike wasn’t a goal because the on-field officials did not rule it to be one, full stop, end of discussion. Among the great aspects of Jeopardy! is its ability to serve as a learning experience for its viewers. That the show did not see this incident as such, and seems to have actively avoided attempting to learn from it, is not a good look.
The closest contender for that prize aired three days earlier, referencing someone involved in a very public murder-suicide; in fact, when that episode of Celebrity Jeopardy! was replayed, an entirely different clue with the same response was substituted.
(61 * 230) - 43 = 13,987 in the syndicated series, 91 * 13 = 1,183 in Celebrity Jeopardy!, and 61 * 20 = 1,220 in Jeopardy! Masters.
I don’t frequent that corner of the online discourse, in contrast to the preceding two.
Also in this podcast episode is a clip of one of standouts of Sam Buttrey’s musical repertoire, “Don’t Put Your Cat Butt In My Face.” Here’s that one. Oh, what the heck, here’s the whole thing on Soundcloud.