Jeopardy! viewers really let contestant Karen Morris have it after she bet big on a Daily Double, so much so that Morris took to Twitter to explain her thinking in the controversial moment, which was dubbed “plain dumb” by one viewer.
“Ok I’m gonna run down the episode step by step and then I will look up who ‘Cliff Clavin’ is,” she wrote in a tweet, referring to the Cheers character she was compared to after her loss.
In the March 22 episode, Morris was in the lead with $21,800 — that is, until she made a $10,00 Double Jeopardy bet that she eventually lost.
“This artist the Younger was working on yet another portrait of Henry VIII when he died in 1543,” Jeopardy host Ken Jennings prompted. Morris failed to answer the question and lost the lead.
Morris later lost even more of her earnings after she wagered $6,001 in the Final Jeopardy round.
She explained her thinking in a series of tweets a few days later, writing, “Making an appropriate wager requires considering the likelihood of knowing the correct response, which requires assessing your competency in the category, which requires awareness of what the category is, which, at that moment, I DID NOT HAVE.”
The gameshow contestant figured that she would still be in the lead even if she lost $10,000. “I’m here to have fun and entertain the audience, and I always said I would wager big,” she said.
But she ultimately does not regret her decision. “I did what I did,” she wrote, “and I had THE MOST FUN, and at the end of the day (I’m sorry Mom, I know you hate that phrase) it’s a game, and it’s a show, and it’s a game show.”
I was kind of thinking "I can lose ten grand and still be in the lead, and I'm here to have fun and entertain the audience, and I always said I would wager big, and also I can't think of any other numbers, so ten grand it is." And also kind of thinking this pic.twitter.com/H3YmbHWNwB
— That Jeopardy Karen 🤷🏻♀️ (@JeopardyKaren) March 23, 2023
Viewers at home lambasted Morris for making such a risky wager so late in the game. Some called it “the worst daily double bet of all time” while others said “she deserved to lose.”
They even compared Morris to Clavis, who appears on the gameshow in an episode of Cheers where he wages his entire score in a Final Jeopardy round and loses.
Either way, it looks like Morris isn’t letting the haters get her down.
Jeopardy! airs on weeknights at 7/6c on ABC.
