Jeopardy! has a weekly audience of over 27 million viewers and continues to be one of the most talked about game shows online, according to On Camera Audiences. However, with that many eyeballs comes a lot of added pressure to play well and take home the cash prize—just ask contestant Elly Trickett, whose nerves recently cost her the winning title.
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During Monday’s episode, fans watched Trickett, a blog and podcast editor from Connecticut, square off against math professor and two-time Jeopardy! champ Marko Saric and playwright Nam Nguyen. Saric had a bit of an upper hand, having just won back-to-back games.
At the halfway mark, Trickett was $8,000 behind first-place Saric. She could have caught up and even surpassed Nguyen, who was holding steady at in second place at $2,4000. But as Nguyen later explained on social media, Trickett’s gameplay was sabotaged by acute stress. As the quiz advanced, Trickett continued to answer incorrectly and her earnings slowly crumbled from $1,000 to -$400 to -$800, TV Insider reports.
Trickett’s negative score disqualified her from competing in the final round—but viewers seemed more interested in solving the case of Trickett’s disappearing glasses than watching Nguyen and Saric duke it out for first place. Many were quick to point out that Trickett’s trendy eyewear was literally nowhere to be seen during half of the competition.
And viewers weren’t the only ones who noticed Trickett’s change in appearance. Nguyen edged Saric out of first place and walked away with $26,299. Afterward, he joined a Reddit thread about the April 22 episode in which he shared “important things for everyone to know" about his rival.
“Elly forgot to put on her glasses due to stress at the top of the game, which was a deeply unfortunate disadvantage for her,” Nguyen alerted fans. “I was really sad to learn about [that] at the break.”
The news struck some fans sideways. “Why couldn't she have just put them on? I'm confused,” one person commented.
Another wrote: “Shame about Elly's glasses, that's so unfortunate.”
Meanwhile, others are hoping Trickett gets a do-over soon. “I loved Elly and I’m so sad that she couldn’t see the board. I hope they’ll have her back for second chance!” reads another comment.
“Elly was such a sweet, wonderful person, with a delightful sense of humor to boot. She was excellent at buzzer practice, and hearing that she had forgotten her glasses was heartbreaking because she certainly could’ve been the third gun in that shootout,” said someone who was in the green room with both Trickett and Nguyen. “Nothing but wonderful things to say about her on the day and in our interactions since.”
