'Jeopardy' viewers baffled as all 3 contestants failed to guess 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air' star

“Jeopardy!” requires contestants to have knowledge of everything from history to pop culture trivia, and most Americans are aware of the show "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air." But apparently, contestants on an episode of "Jeopardy!" didn't know enough about the show to recognise an actor who once starred in it and the iconic movie "Shaft." Fans of the show did not take too kindly to the contestants not knowing the name of a star who had appeared on the show as more than one character.

The three contestants were Melanie Hirsch, a lawyer from Silver Spring, M.D., John Rindone, a policy advisor from Brooklyn, N.Y, and Josh Weikert, a politics professor from Collegeville, P.A., as per a report in The Mirror US. The category was 'Be My TV Show Guest', and the clue was, "This star of the O.G. 'Shaft' guest-starred as 2 different characters on 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.'"

The correct answer was Richard Roundtree, who had passed away in 2023. Roundtree was also the star of the first "Shaft" film, which was released in 1971. The movie was critically acclaimed and made the actor one of the biggest stars in the industry at the time. The actor appeared on Fresh Prince playing not one but two characters. Unfortunately, none of the contestants knew this, and that shocked the online community.

“I am deeply saddened about the original Shaft Triple Stumper,” one user wrote on Reddit. “You could say he was Shafted,” joked another. Fans also shared their opinions on X (formerly Twitter). “They didn't know Richard Roundtree?!” one user posted, while another fan wrote, “Richard Roundtree!  I think we're all screaming!”

“Jeopardy!” fans can be quite vocal on social media, but it’s not always the contestants who face the wrath. Sometimes, the judges of the show are subjected to the same thing. That is exactly what happened when a technically incorrect answer was accepted on an earlier episode of the show. The contestants were Joey DaSena, Lois Dioro, and Evan Dorey.

The incident took place on Final Jeopardy, in which Dioro and Dorey were tied for the lead, each having $14,600 in their purses. The clue was, “It’s the geographic word in the title of a Robert Burns poem about 'the mountains …covered with snow…the straths & green valleys below.'” It was the ‘Poetry & Places’ category, and the correct answer was ‘Highlands.’ DaSena and Dioro wrote 'moor' and 'Scotland' respectively, but both were incorrect. Dorey had written ‘Highland’, but it was missing the ‘s’. Host Ken Jennings said that the answer would be accepted, and fans were livid.

“Crazy ruling. They shouldn’t be giving credit for similar words. The clue asked for a word in the poem title. Highland is not in the title," one user wrote on Reddit, as per FOX News. "Based on today’s FJ ruling, if the clue is about a fruit in the title of a Steinbeck novel and I write ‘What is Grape?’, I guess that’s acceptable," quipped another.