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Angry 'Jeopardy!' fans want the show to own up to 'inconsistent' rulings after player's painful loss

Host Mayim Bialik declined to accept an 'incomplete' answer on one of the final episodes of the season that concluded recently

'Jeopardy' fans are criticizing the show for a mistake its producers seem unwilling to accept. It all started with a thread on social media where fans were summing up the "most painful losses" of season 38, which came to an end on July 31. The moment that's questioned the most came when contestant Saddie Goldberger lost to Megan Wachspress during the episode that aired on June 20. The former's "incomplete" answer led to her opponent's win. 

A user wrote on Twitter, "this is Sadie Goldberger, she was one of Megan's opponents today. fast and graceful in gameplay, but came up short when her answer was ruled incorrectly due to "not being complete." many fans, like myself, think it was a bad call and that she should have won the game today." The user also pointed out several reasons as to why the decision was wrong. Besides having the right answer, Sadie also had enough wager, which was significant enough to completely change the outcome of the game. She would have had $17,300 as compared to the $17,199 that the 3-time champion Megan had. The user also noted that Sadie was the only one who was ruled wrong and she lost the second place prize as well. 

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'Jeopardy!' has had over 8,000 episodes aired so far. The show started in March 1964 and is still running successfully. However, fans are calling out the show after it did "Sadie dirty". In the episode, things kicked off with the final Jeopardy. The clue was: "Congratulating her on the 1869 release of her biography, Frederick Douglass wrote, 'I have wrought in the day- you in the night." Contestant Molly Fleming gave the correct answer, "Who is Harriet Tubman" and won $3,200, which gave her a total of $6,500. Megan also gave the right answer, which increased her total to $17,199. Sadie Goldberger also gave the right answer but did not write it in full. To this, Mayim Bialik, co-host of Ken Jennings, said, "It looks like you were going for 'Harriet Tubman,' but you did not finish, so, unfortunately, that is not going to be acceptable."

This led to outrage amongst fans who took to social media to bash the show. A user wrote, "Sadie was flat-out robbed out of a win. I read it right away on the reveal was Harriet Tubman." Another said, "Are you kidding me? She clearly has down Harriet Tubman. I've seen worse handwriting on Jeopardy of people who had won." The hosts of the show also received a blow as audiences marked them as "pretty inconsistent." Some pointed out that on the official website, the rules clearly state that to win, the clue doesn't even have to be spelled correctly, "but they must be phonetically correct and not add or subtract any extraneous sounds or syllables." Blaming the hosts for the incident, someone said, "The other major difference on these rulings is who was hosting at the time." Another user said, "I call BS. We could tell it said Harriet Tubman. My girl was robbed."