'Jeopardy' fans can't believe players couldn't guess an obvious answer about a US President

People who appear on "Jeopardy!" are generally considered to be aware of subjects such as history and current affairs to decode answers from clues related to them. The show's fans are also avid lovers of trivia and often post their answers in comments online. When players are wrong about any seemingly easy question, it doesn't take long for the fans to jump in with their jibes. This is what happened when all three contestants, Ashley Chan, Ram Murali, and Carla Winston, failed to answer an obvious question about former U.S. President Andrew Jackson. 

In the December 13, 2024, episode of “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings was playing the game with the returning one-day champion Chan, who worked as a publicist in Lewisville, Texas. The other contestants, Murali, a writer originally from London, and Winston, a political scientist from Baltimore, made up an impressive panel of smart contestants.

The three players stunned the viewers in the very first round by failing to answer an array of triple stumpers, in the very first round. While some questions were moderately tough, one easy question stood out for the fans. For the category "People in History," Jennings read the $400 clue, "An 1806 duel involving this future president resulted in the death of Charles Dickinson." While most viewers figured out the answer, "Andrew Jackson," the three contestants failed to utter a single word.

As none of the three players could figure out the answer, Jennings revealed it to be, “Who was Andrew Jackson?” The clue referred to an infamous incident which resulted in the death of an American attorney and slave trader, Charles Dickinson. According to online sources, Jackson and Dickinson had a dispute involving the payment for a forfeited horse race, which led to a gun duel. It was Dickinson who fired the first shot that hit Jackson in the chest. Jackson then returned fire, and being a fine marksman, he fatally shot Dickinson. Jackson suffered lifelong medical complications due to the gunshot wound, but he was never prosecuted for killing Dickinson. Years later, he was elected the President of the United States of America in 1829.

Given the popularity of the story, fans took to social media to express their shock over none of the contestants getting the answer. In a Reddit thread on the show's unofficial forum, viewer @vallogallo wrote, "Surprised nobody got the Andrew Jackson clue." Another fan responded to the comment, saying that Jackson's violent history surely featured in other episodes as well, making the failure of the players to guess his name even more surprising. 

Some fans took to X (formerly Twitter) as well to discuss the issue further. "#Jeopardy contests should go with Andrew Jackson if there's a clue about a President killing someone face-to-face," wrote @JamesAMcGhee. 

In the end of the episode, during final "Jeopardy!" finalists Chan and Murali were once again stumped by the clue, “Following his unexpected death in 2001, he was referred to as ‘the Monty Python of science fiction,'” which referred to the famous author of the cult classic "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy". Nevertheless, Chan managed to win the show, to maintain her streak, according to Kirkus Reviews.