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It’s been more than 20 years since Ken Jennings saw his streak of 74 straight wins on Jeopardy! come to an end after earning more than $2.5 million. The nature of the question that ended his reign has led some people to speculate he went out on his own terms, and he got to address that theory while chatting with an audience member for the show he now hosts.
There was once a time when contestants on Jeopardy! could only win up to five games in a row before their run in the regular version of the program came to an end. However, that cap was lifted ahead of the shows that were filmed in 2003, and it’s safe to say Ken Jennings took full advantage when he arrived in Los Angeles the following year.
Fans of the game show were introduced to Jennings when his first win aired on June 2, 2004. That marked the start of a streak where he set multiple records that have still not been topped by winning 74 games in a row and racking up $2,520,700 in prize money in the process (Amy Schneider has the silver in that first category with 40, while James Holzhauer is the runner-up in the second with $2,462,216 he earned in just 32 games).
Jennings was inevitably going to lose at some point, and he finally did so in the episode that ran on November 30, 2004 thanks to a question that made some people think he took a dive.
Ken Jennings denied he actually knew the answer to the question that ended his 74-game winning streak on Jeopardy!
Games that feature a contestant boasting an insurmountable lead heading into Final Jeopardy! are referred to as a “runaway,” and Jennings won in that manner 65 times during his time on the show. However, he was not able to put things away prior to the last round during his 75th appearance.
The veteran had a $4,400 lead going into a “Business & Industry” category, with the clue reading, “Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only 4 months a year.”
At first glance, it seemed like a pretty straightforward answer (or, if you want to be pedantic, question) concerning tax season, and while Nancy Zerg correctly wrote down “What is H&R Block” to take the lead by a single dollar, a stunned audience learned Jennings had lost after seeing he jotted down “What is FedEx?”
The fact that Jennings lost on what many trivia buffs would say was a borderline no-brainer has spawned chatter about whether or not Jennings purposefully ended his run after getting tired of the Jeopardy! grind.
The man who replaced Alex Trebek as the full-time host of the game show recently got the chance to address that theory when an audience member raised it, and Jennings shut it down by asking, “Have you ever willingly quit a job where you were making $70,000 an hour?”
He elaborated, adding:
“Getting bored? No. I think people who ask me this question usually want to say one thing, which is, ‘Ken, I knew it was H&R Block’…
I think I could have thought about that one all day and I would not have figured out that was H&R Block. That’s kind of how these long runs go. They always seem inevitable until a few things happen and then suddenly they’re not so inevitable anymore.”
That settles that.