'Jeopardy!' host Ken Jennings calls 14-game winner a 'trivia dictator' in awkward TV moment
Ken Jennings was already the greatest player on "Jeopardy!" with a 74-game winning streak before he was selected as the host. Harrison Whitaker is also one of the best with his 14 straight wins. But Jennings had a disagreement with him, which was clear in the Q&A session that the host had with the studio audience in a recent episode of the show. The video was posted after Whitaker had recorded his final game, as per a TV Insider report.
In his episode, Whitaker had revealed to Jennings that one of his dreams was to own his own bar or pub where he could host trivia nights that were going to be tough. The competitor had hosted such events in the past, but was usually asked to tone down the questions, as the competitors weren’t all that well-versed; but Whitaker was not a fan of this.
“Because in the past, I’ve hosted lots of trivia and quiz nights at pubs, but eventually the landlord tells me that I need to make it easier, and I’m sick of it,” he had said. This amused Jennings, who then asked, “You want your own bar, just so you can run brutally hard trivia and no one can stop you?” The host of the show even went on to call the 14-game champion a “trivia dictator.”
After the episode, fans might have been interested in knowing if Jennings ever wanted to engage in the bar trivia scene. Unfortunately, the host has no plans of doing so anytime soon, as he believes it is a rather awkward environment. “I do not play much bar trivia, I have to say,” he said. “It’s kind of an awkward situation. It’s weird if I win. It’s weird if I lose. Like nobody’s happy either way, I think,” the host added.
Whitaker’s 14-game streak came to an end with him taking $375,999 home. It came to an end on December 1, in which the Final Jeopardy clue was, "A 1959 4-cent stamp depicts an eagle and a maple leaf beneath the name of this project,” as per a report in IndyStar. Whitaker was up against Libby Jones, a recruiter from Davenport, Florida, and Brendan Thomas, a historian from Fayetteville, Arkansas.
The champion was leading before the clue with $21,000. However, he had answered incorrectly and wagered $13,401. “The Ambassador Bridge” was the incorrect answer, and that dropped him to $7,599. The other two contestants got the answer right, “St. Lawrence Seaway.” Jones had wagered enough to get to $24,801. She was the one who ended Whitaker's winning run after 14 episodes.
You can watch the video here.
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