'Jeopardy' player somehow makes the same mistake twice even after Ken Jennings warned him

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings has been slammed for his gaffes and has even apologised on one occasion, but he is usually helpful towards contestants. But the contestant-turned-host can't be blamed if a player just doesn't take note of his warnings coming from his personal experience as champion and host on the show. The phrasing of answers on "Jeopardy!" has to follow a certain pattern, and the words ‘what is’ must come before them. Some contestants might forget to say that once, but to make the same mistake twice on the same show, even after the host's warning, is just embarrassing.

That’s what a contestant named John Liu did on the show and was slammed by fans on Reddit for it. The first time he did it on an earlier episode of the show, according to a TV Insider report, was during the first Daily Double. He responded to a clue by forgetting to add “what is” before answering ‘claw machine.’

He was correct when Jennings asked him to remember his phrasing. One would have thought that this would be enough for the contestant to remember the rules, but that wasn’t the case. Liu had $5600 in his purse before the second Daily Double of the day. He decided to go all in, which surprised the host. The clue was, “Broca’s & Wernicke’s are 2 types of this condition in which language use & speech are impaired.”

The contestant correctly answered ‘Aphasia’ but once again failed to say ‘what is’ before the answer. This time, it cost him dearly. “I’m sorry, no, you forgot your phrasing, John. ‘What is: Aphasia.’ So important,” Jennings said as the amount in his purse went to 0. He did, however, regain his lead by the time Final Jeopardy came around with $5600. The clue in that round was, “One of the 10 or so babies born at Argentina’s Esperanza Base in this place was fittingly named Marisa de las Nieves.”

Liu answered ‘Antarctica’, which was correct, and this time, he remembered his phrasing and made no mistake in that aspect. It added $2,201 to his purse, making him a Jeopardy champion with $7,801. Despite his achievement, fans slammed him on Reddit for making a silly error twice despite the host telling him where he was going wrong.

“I was genuinely appalled at the quality of clues, category gimmicks, and overall board composition today. Most of them were either really difficult or phrased in a very puzzling manner. John’s misphrasing on that DD made me cringe (with the utmost sympathy), and I congratulate him on his ability to claw back from this unfortunate error,” one user wrote.

“It was really unpleasant/uncomfortable to watch,” another pointed out. “I am also very confused as to why John got credit for “a claw machine” without the full phrasing. “I even went back and re-watched that part with closed captions (in case I didn’t hear it) and I didn’t see the phrasing there either,” a third user commented.