Contestant misses Final Jeopardy! clue by one letter

A missing letter in a Final Jeopardy! answer spelled doom for one “Jeopardy!” contestant.

Mehal Shah, a contestant on the Jan. 30 episode of the show’s Tournament of Champions, was not given credit for his answer in the final round because he misspelled a word by one letter.

“After Camillagate, a fire at Windsor Castle & marriage problems in her family, Queen Elizabeth II dubbed 1992 this,” host Ken Jennings read as the clue in the category “Latin Phrases.”

“What is an annus horriblis?” Shah wrote, with the last word spelled h-o-r-r-i-b-l-i-s. The answer, as Jennings would reveal moments later, is “annus horribilis,” with the second word spelled h-o-r-r-i-b-i-l-i-s.

Jennings informed him the answer was wrong, and the other two contestants also guessed incorrectly, prompting Jennings to tell Shah “you were just a syllable away.”

“It’s ‘annushorribilis,’” Jennings said, sounding out the second word, while Shah rolled his eyes in disbelief. “But because you dropped a vowel, you were a syllable off and we cannot accept that response.”

Shah, who went into Final Jeopardy! in third place with $7,400, had wagered $7,001, dropping his total to $399 and resulting in a third-place finish and failure to advance to the semifinals.

Fans who saw the clip on the “Jeopardy!” YouTube page were stunned by the ruling, with some lamenting his bad luck and others insisting it was the proper decision.

“Man that is a BRUTAL call on the misspelling,” someone commented.

“Mehal will NEVER forget this day,” another person wrote.

“That is a horrible clue to have people write down their response,” someone else chimed in.

“This was objectively the right call,” another person wrote. “Is it a tough break because he knew it? Yes. But adding/forgetting a letter is one thing- changing the syllable count of a word can fundamentally alter its meaning in some languages. Good call judges.”

This isn’t the first time one letter cost a contestant in Final Jeopardy!

In 2023, nine-day champion Ben Chan saw his streak come to an end due to a misspelling in his response to the clue in the “Shakespeare’s Characters” category.

“Both of the names of these two lovers in a Shakespeare play come from Latin words for ‘blessed’” was the clue.

The correct answer is Beatrice and Benedick from “Much Ado About Nothing,” but Chan wrote Beatrice and Benedict, prompting host Mayim Bialik to tell him he was wrong.

 “It’s a very memorable miss, right?” Chan told the show afterward. “So if you’re going to go out on a miss, go out on a memorable miss.”