Jeopardy! viewers thrown off by ‘odd coincidence’ during ‘difficult’ triple stumper

Jeopardy! viewers were taken aback during the latest episode of the trivia game show after the challenging final clue was answered incorrectly by all three players

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Jeopardy! players were stumped by the gameshow’s final clue (Image: Jeopardy!)

Jeopardy! fans were thrown off during the challenging Final Jeopardy! clue during the latest competition as all three players failed to correctly guess the clue.

During the Thursday, December 4 episode of Jeopardy!, three contestants took the stage to test out their trivia knowledge. The contestants competing included Marie D’Avignon, a VP of operations from Durham, North Carolina, Andy Luo, a student success coach originally from Johns Creek, Georgia, and Ron Lalonde, a medical physicist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Throughout the game, the players there quizzed on a variety of categories ranging from ‘The Films of Diane Keaton’ to ‘Which Cabinet Department.’ But what really left viewers at home scratching their heads was the final Jeopardy clue in the ‘The Supreme Court in the 19th Century’ category.

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The final clue read, “Citing the ‘language of the people whether sellers or consumers,’ in 1893 the S.C. ruled on the botanical designation of this.”

To which coincidentally all three players buzzed in with the exact same wrong answer which was “What is tobacco?”

After the triple stumper, host Ken Jennings confirmed that the right answer was “tomatoes,” and went on to explain, “This is a landmark case where an importer of tomatoes wanted to know if they were going to be taxed as fruits or vegetables. The Supreme Court actually ruled on whether the tomato was a fruit or vegetable – I think they said it’s a vegetable.”

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All three players buzzed in with the same incorrect answer(Image: Jeopardy!)

In this, Ken was correct. In the 1893 case Nix v. Hedden, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that tomatoes are legally vegetables for trade and commerce purposes. This was a controversial case due to the fact that tomatoes are botanically classified as a fruit, but the decision was based on the common culinary use of tomatoes as vegetables.

After the confusing Final Jeopardy clue, viewers took to social media sharing their thoughts on the question.

One fan on Reddit wrote, “I’m sure it’s happened often enough, but I can’t remember the last time all three contestants lost FJ by giving the same wrong answer. In thinking about the number of potential plants out there in the world that someone could consider, it’s an odd coincidence for three people to land on the same guess. Usually, I’d say it also points to a poorly written clue, but I think it was pretty straightforward even without knowing that the Supreme Court ever weighed in it.”

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The Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes are a vegetable (Image: Getty)

To which another viewer replied, “I was going to say “this might be the first time that all three gave the same wrong response that was only off by three letters” but then i remembered that in the second episode ever, all three gave the exact same wrong response that was only off by a single character.”

While a third viewer chimed in, “Wow, I LOVE it when I get a triple stumper, but when it’s FJ? Just about makes my whole night hahaha GG WP today, very fun game :)”

Someone else sympathizing with the contestants posted, “Most difficult FJ for me in a long time! Also guessed tobacco lol.”