'Jeopardy!' Fans Furious as Misspelling Costs Player Nine-Game Winning Streak

Jeopardy! fans are not happy with a ruling on Tuesday's episode of the game show, when a one-letter misspelling led a contestant to lose the game and his nine-game winning streak.

On the episode, contestant Ben Chan answered the Final Jeopardy! question—which asked for the names of two lovers from a Shakespeare play whose names are derived from the Latin words for "blessed"—with "Who are Beatrice & Benedict?"

Unfortunately, the correct spelling of the names is Beatrice and Benedick, with the one-letter difference leading host Ken Jennings to call it incorrect.

Chan bet $12,201 of his $17,400 total, which left competitor Lynn Di Vito in the lead. This loss for Chan comes after the player won three games that aired in April, before he got COVID-19, returning on May 15 to win six more games.

Fans who have been watching Chan's monumental winning streak since the beginning were floored that Jeopardy! didn't give him the final question.

One person reacted on Twitter, writing, "Spoiler Alert: So Ben Chan who has been an 8 game winner on Jeopardy lost tonight because he miss spelled [sic] one of the two names in final Jeop. But a woman who misspelled Appalachian was allowed to continue. This is a crock that the Jeopardy producers need to fix."

Many people shared similar thoughts in the replies, before another fan argued, "See, I disagree. The role is it has to be phonetically correct and his wasn’t. The T is a hard T."

A different viewer tweeted a photo of a French poster for an opera based on the play in question, Much Ado About Nothing, in which the name Benedick is spelled with a "T."

The replies included arguments about this example not counting because it's French and not English, while one fan showed that Benedict is considered an English variant of the name as well.

Another user made a very good point by saying, "I don't think this is the best example but as Shakespeare does before English spelling got standardized, and he was terrible at it himself, there is no 'correct spelling' argument to be made. The OG play predating spelling has kinda gotta be decisive."

The English language during Shakespeare's time didn't have set spellings, with most people simply spelling out words phonetically.

Chan himself actually responded to the debate among fans.

He tweeted a photo of himself from Tuesday's Final Jeopardy! and wrote, "Soooo... if we could go back in time, maybe the judges could have okayed "Benedict" as a historically acceptable alternative form of the name. But they wouldn't have to because I'd just write the indisputably correct response: 'Benedick.'"

Despite the specifics of the name Benedict, most fans are generally just frustrated with inconsistent rulings regarding issues like this and hope it will be directly addressed on Jeopardy! soon.