Playing along at home is one thing, but competing on Jeopardy! is a whole other beast. To qualify for an audition, applicants must first pass the Jeopardy! Anytime Test. The preliminary pop quiz consists of 50 clues across 50 different categories, which testers have 15 seconds each to answer. Those who advance undergo a 50-question in-person exam followed by a gameplay audition. Suffice it to say, Jeopardy! vets its contestants to the nth degree. And so, it surprises fans when players who don’t seem to know their way around the Jeopardy! board make it on the esteemed game show—which is exactly what they're calling out in a recent episode.
RELATED: Controversial "Jeopardy!" Champ Slammed for "Arrogant" In-Game Behaviors.
Jeopardy! champ Amar Kakirde, a graduate student from New Jersey, is on a four-day winning streak. However, fans are seemingly not that impressed by Kakirde’s success. In fact, many are chalking up his wins to a lack of competition.
On May 24, Kakirde clinched his third consecutive win after beating fellow contestants Anna Marie Cunningham and Has Karbalai. His closest competitor was Karbalai—but even then, Karbalai was down by more than half for most of the game.
In a post-game Reddit thread, viewers dubbed Kakirde’s landslide win “painful to watch.”
As a group, they answered six clues incorrectly during the first 30-clue round, per J! Archive. Their guessing skills only got worse during Double Jeopardy! in which Kakirde, Cunningham, and Karbalai failed to answer eight of the 30 tiles.
One of the more awkward moments came during the “Indigenous Actors & Actresses” category, in which none of the contestants buzzed in to answer the $2,000 clue.
The competition failed to heat up as the game advanced. Cunningham forfeited nearly all her earnings during Final Jeopardy!, and despite Karbalai answering correctly, he only walked away with $2,000 at the end of the night. Kakirde answered the final literature clue correctly, bringing his score up to $16,800.
While there’s no question that Kakirde has earned his spot on the Alex Trebek Stage, fans think Jeopardy! is losing its gravitas.
“Amar lucky his opponents fumble real hard,” one Reddit user said in the post-game thread to which someone else replied, “Or lucky that Anna Marie didn't buzz in basically the entire 2nd half of DJ.”
Another added: “For all the criticism that the masters tournament gets, at least they know how to play fast. this was so slow and so painful to watch today.”
“I blanked on the right answer, but every wrong guess from the contestants got a ‘What?!’ from me,” said another in reference to one of the triple-stumper clues.
“Legitimately surprised they got through the entire board today,” wrote one fan before asking, “Are there more misses than usual lately?”
“Yeah, what's up with the last like six weeks of the show? It's like they just bring in new players off the street,” answered a user.
