“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings. ABC/Christopher Willard
Jeopardy! Contestant Heather Ryan is breaking her silence a couple of sexist clue she answered on the long-running trivia present.
When Ryan appeared on the October 28 episode, she encountered a clue within the “Full the Rhyming Phrase” class that started with the expression, “Males seldom making passes… .”
Ryan accomplished the sentence, answering with “ladies who put on glasses.”
Upon listening to the reply, Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings instantly apologized to Ryan, who was sporting glasses on the time. “A bit problematic, sorry, Heather,” he mentioned.
Ryan, who works as a well being program director in Binghamton, New York, addressed the state of affairs in an interview with Binghamton College’s scholar newspaper Pipe Dream that was printed on Monday, November 4.
“It’s positively an odd alternative,” Ryan mentioned. “I feel it made everyone within the viewers and on stage, and Ken Jennings too, a bit of uncomfortable. It was like, ‘Oh, that was surprising.’ Possibly we select higher rhyming phrases in 2024. Sadly, there are nonetheless ladies who’re [in] center college they usually don’t need to put on their glasses they usually’re shedding out on their schooling. So, I feel it’s a lot better to have the ability to see than anything.”
Ryan confronted off in opposition to Ian Taylor, a meals gross sales rep from Cleveland, and Austin-based online game designer Will Wallace. Taylor received the sport whereas Ryan got here in second, shedding by simply $1 within the Remaining Jeopardy spherical.
Regardless of her loss and that awkward clue, Ryan loved her expertise.
“I had a good time,” she informed Pipe Dream. “All people there was very welcoming.”
Ryan entered the competitors after taking a web-based quiz in early 2023. She auditioned that summer time, and filmed her look in L.A. one 12 months later.
“It’s such part of American tradition that I positively wished to go on once I acquired the decision for it,” she mentioned.
The mishap involving Ryan was simply the most recent in a sequence of Jeopardy! gaffes.
Throughout his unique run in 2004, Jennings, a former contestant who holds the present’s longest successful streak ever, was a part of a risqué joke whereas answering a query within the “Instrument Time” class.
“This time period for a long-handled gardening device may also imply an immoral pleasure seeker,” learn late host Alex Trebek. Jennings, who had a commanding lead on the time, rang in with the response, “What’s a hoe?” Because the viewers started to snigger, Trebek quipped, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! They educate you that in class in Utah, huh?”
The Planet Humorous writer, 50, later discovered himself on the middle of controversy when a few of his outdated tweets resurfaced simply earlier than he started his first stint as a visitor host for the present following Trebek’s November 2020 loss of life. “Nothing sadder than a sizzling individual in a wheelchair,” learn one tweet Jennings posted in 2014.
The previous software program engineer apologized for the posts, saying that they “labored as jokes” in his thoughts however didn’t learn so effectively on display. “Generally I mentioned dumb issues in a dumb means and I need to apologize to individuals who had been (rightfully!) offended,” he tweeted in December 2020. “It wasn’t my intention to harm anybody, however that doesn’t matter; I screwed up, and I’m really sorry.”