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In the game of life, sometimes you win, and other times you face defeat. Ken Jennings, the renowned “Jeopardy” champion, recently addressed a long-standing rumor about his legendary 74-game winning streak.
During a Q&A session on a recent episode of “Inside Jeopardy,” Jennings was confronted by an audience member who had been pondering a particular question for two decades. The fan, clearly eager for an answer, asked Jennings if he truly didn’t know the answer to the final “Jeopardy” question that ended his streak.
Jennings responded with his signature wit, putting the audience at ease. “For 20 years, this gentleman has been thinking I took a dive,” he joked. “Have you ever willingly quit a job where you were making $70,000 an hour?”
“Did you really not know the answers to the last ‘Final Jeopardy’ question?” the man asked.
Jennings quipped, “For 20 years, this gentleman has been thinking I took a dive. … Have you ever willingly quit a job where you were making $70,000 an hour?”
The fan shouted that he thought Jennings was “getting bored” by winning so many rounds.
“Getting bored? Getting bored, no,” the game show host, 51, replied.
“I think people who ask me this question usually just wanna say one thing, which is, ‘Ken, I knew it was H&R Block. That’s what this question means,” Jennings added.
The software engineer said that if we were given all day to answer that “Jeopardy” question, he “would not have figured [it] out.”
“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,” he shared.
Jennings garnered $2.5 million during his 74-game winning streak, which spanned from June 2, 2004, to November 30, 2004.
The dad of two ended his streak by answering this final clue incorrectly: “Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year.”
Jennings guessed, “What is FedEx?” when the correct response was, “What is H&R Block?”
When longtime “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek died in 2020 following his battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, Jennings took over the beloved game show as the host.