Who is Dennis Leung? 'Jeopardy!' contestant struggles as host Ken Jennings disappoints with ‘lenient’ ruling: 'My hands were shaking'
CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA: As fun as 'Jeopardy!' might seem from our couches from the comfort of our homes, as a reality show, it continues to retain the state of high adrenaline and lots of stress. It is easy to get frustrated over contestants missing out on easy clues, but there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that we barely know about.
A contestant from the July 13 episode named Dennis Leung gave a rare insight into how he felt during the game and why he was not able to perform as well as he wanted to. It was also noticed by many fans that host Ken Jennings was being lenient to another contestant in ruling one of his incorrect answers correctly.
Who is Dennis Leung?
Leung is a scientist from the Half Moon Bay city of California. He is currently the Director and Senior Principal Scientific Manager at Genentech according to his LinkedIn profile. He has been working there for more than seven years and first started as a scientist in the company. He is in the Discovery Pharmaceutics and Preformulation department. Leung has previously worked in other scientific research-based roles.
He received his Bachelor's diploma from Cornell University in Chemistry, Philosophy, and Classics. He went on to continue his studies and research in the area of field of Chemistry until he received his PhD from the University of Berkeley. His dissertation was on "Mechanistic and Reactivity Studies of Organometallic Supramolecular Host-Guest Assemblies".
Dennis Leung's struggle on 'Jeopardy!'
It was quite obvious throughout the episode that Leung was not having a good time on 'Jeopardy!'. He seemed stressed and uncomfortable and barely spoke up much barring the few times he answered on the show. He later revealed in a Reddit post how he was struggling to perform well as the shoot went on.
"A few things started catching up to me," he said referring to the Double Jeopardy round where his performance took a drastic turn. "It turns out, being anxious and only getting 3 hours of sleep isn't ideal and the initial adrenaline rush was starting to fade." He also addressed his strange way of standing behind the podium which had put off many viewers. "My hands were starting to shake, which is why I was holding the buzzer cross-armed to steady them, which probably cost me some reaction time."
While he had gathered a prize of more than $13,000, his Final Jeopardy blunder made him miss out on being the champ.
Ken Jennings rare moment of leniency
Jennings had decided to go easy on another contestant during the same round when he ruled his partially correct answer as correct. The clue was from the category "Movies Before and After" and was worth $1600. The host read the clue: “Rex Harrison teaches Audrey Hepburn how to speak proper English and vocalize like Billie Holiday.”
The contestant, Kathy Barkey, answered "My Fair Lady Day" to which Jennings responded saying, "Yeah, we’ll take that, or 'My Fair Lady Sings The Blues'." This was quite surprising as the answer was obviously wrong and the host had still regarded it correct.