‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant Misspells ‘Annus Horribilis’ in Final Round
One contestant on “Jeopardy!” faced elimination due to a single letter typo in their Final Jeopardy! response.
During the Tournament of Champions episode that aired on January 30, contestant Mehal Shah did not receive credit for his final answer because he misspelled a key word by just one letter.
The clue given by host Ken Jennings in the category “Latin Phrases” was, “After Camillagate, a fire at Windsor Castle & marriage problems in her family, Queen Elizabeth II dubbed 1992 this.”
Shah wrote down “What is an annus horriblis?” but mistakenly spelled the last word as h-o-r-r-i-b-l-i-s. The correct answer, as Jennings would later clarify, is “annus horribilis,” with the second word correctly spelled h-o-r-r-i-b-i-l-i-s.
Upon revealing the answer, Jennings informed Shah that he was incorrect, and the other two contestants also failed to answer correctly, leading Jennings to comment to Shah, “you were just a syllable away.”
“It’s ‘annus horribilis,’” Jennings pronounced, emphasizing the second word, while Shah looked on in disbelief. “But because you dropped a vowel, you were a syllable off, and we cannot accept that response.”
Entering Final Jeopardy! in third place with $7,400, Shah wagered $7,001, leaving him with just $399, which resulted in a third-place finish and his failure to advance to the semifinals.
Viewers who watched the clip on the “Jeopardy!” YouTube channel were shocked by the ruling, with some expressing sympathy for Shah’s bad luck while others asserted that it was the correct call.
YouTube
“Man, that is a brutal call on the misspelling,” one viewer commented.
“Mehal will NEVER forget this day,” wrote another.
“That is a terrible clue for requiring a written response,” another viewer chimed in.
“This was the right call objectively,” someone else asserted. “Is it a tough break because he knew it? Yes. But adding or forgetting a letter is one thing—changing the syllable count of a word can fundamentally alter its meaning in some languages. Good job, judges.”
This isn’t the first occurrence where a single letter has cost a contestant in Final Jeopardy!
In 2023, nine-day champion Ben Chan’s streak ended due to a misspelling in his response to a clue from the “Shakespeare’s Characters” category.
The clue stated, “Both of the names of these two lovers in a Shakespeare play come from Latin words for ‘blessed.’”
The correct answer is Beatrice and Benedick from “Much Ado About Nothing,” but Chan wrote Beatrice and Benedict, prompting host Mayim Bialik to inform him he had answered incorrectly.
“It’s a very memorable miss, right?” Chan commented afterward. “So if you’re going to go out on a miss, make sure it’s a memorable one.”