Who is Chris Ban? 'Jeopardy!' contestant claims his hilarious mistake while guessing a clue had him 'cringing'

Chris joined the Tuesday episode of 'Jeopardy!', facing the two-day champ Donna Matturri, a librarian from Columbus, Ohio, alongside Erin Gold, who is a teacher from Aurora, Colorado
UPDATED JUN 28, 2023
Chris Ban was a contestant on 'Jeopardy!' hosted by Mayim Bialik (Jeopardy!/ NBC)
Chris Ban was a contestant on 'Jeopardy!' hosted by Mayim Bialik (Jeopardy!/ NBC)

CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA: 'Jeopardy!' contestants often bring along with them an intent to entertain others by not just excelling in answering the clues but sometimes, failing at it as well. Chris Ban proved to do just that on Tuesday's episode of the game show. 

The contestant encountered a major blunder while answering a clue for the first round which was quite obviously the wrong answer. What was quite shocking was how he managed to turn the tables around in the game. Chris then took to Reddit to call himself out on the blunder. 

Who is Chris Ban?

Chris joined the Tuesday episode of 'Jeopardy!', facing the two-day champ Donna Matturri, a librarian from Columbus, Ohio, alongside Erin Gold, who is a teacher from Aurora, Colorado. The 40-year-old contestant is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and practices as an oral and facial surgeon. He has been a partner at Ban Oral & Facial Surgery, along with his father Michael Ban, for the past seven years. Before this, he was appointed as the oral and maxillofacial surgery resident at UC Health.

Quite contrastingly, Chris did his Bachelor's in Architecture from the Honors College at the University of Notre Dame. He then went on to pursue Dentistry at Tufts University and followed that by achieving a Post- Baccalaureate Certificate in Pre-Med studies from the same university by 2012. Finally, he completed his residency in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

Chris Ban's hilarious mistake

It was the first round of the episode where the three contestants Chris, Donna, and Erin were given a category called 'Australian Universities'. The clue, read out by host Mayim Bialik, was, "A research center at the University of Tasmania specializes in the climate & ecosystems of this continent.” The answer would have earned one contestant a mere $200 which meant that the question was of a low level of difficulty. 

But poor Chris still managed to make a hilarious mistake in his response. The contestant buzzed in and replied with "Australia" which might be a continent but was, of course, not the answer. Mayim corrected him saying, "Actually, Antarctica," when none of the other contestants prompted for a guess. 

Chris still managed to turn the tables around as despite being in the negatives, he was able to win through the only correct guess in the Final Jeopardy! round, ending the two-day streak of Donna. 

Chris subsequently went on Twitter and addressed his own actions on a Reddit thread saying, "Hey it’s Chris! What a game. Some of my answers in the first half have me cringinggggg. But overall so much fun to play against you and Donna. I agree everyone in this group (and last week’s; I was an alternate for those episodes) was a class act.”

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