Jeopardy (and host Ken Jennings) had a very unexpected NSFW throwback on Wednesday night.
It all started when contestant Micah Fritz began the trivia game show by picking “This is Not a Drill” for $400. The clue was: “A tool with an angled blade to get unwanted plants out at the root is called a Cape Cod type of this.”
Fritz buzzed in and promptly guessed, “What is a hoe?” He was told that the answer was incorrect, instead, the correct one was: “What is a weeder?”
Jennings then joked, “It seems like ‘What is a hoe?’ is never correct out here,” which made the audience howl with laughter.
Viewers online seemed to enjoy the reference, too, with one Reddit user writing, “I literally paused my DVR and screamed. It scared my cats.” Another wrote, “‘Seems like ‘What is a ho?’ is never the correct answer around here.’ LMFAO Ken.”
The host was referring to his own infamous moment as a contestant on the show in October 2004. At the time, the category was “Tool Time” for $200, and the clue given was, “This term for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure seeker.”
Jennings quickly answered, of course, with “What’s a hoe?” The audience burst into laughter, as then-host Alex Trebek told him “no” and then let out a “woah” when he realized why everyone was laughing. “They teach you that in school in Utah, huh?” Trebek joked, before admitting that a different contestant’s answer of “rake” was in fact the correct one.
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In 2022, 18 years after the fact, Jennings shared his thoughts on his initial viral moment.
“TikTok has apparently just discovered this and is delighted,” Jennings could be heard saying in a TikTok shared to the official Jeopardy account. “Yeah, why didn’t I get it right… I still think I was shafted, quite frankly. I think I’m owed $200 and maybe the writers should get a pool together.”
Jennings added that he saw why “What’s a hoe” was incorrect, but he still disagrees.
“I think the idea is the clue says it’s ‘an immoral pleasure seeker’ and we don’t want to characterize all hoes that way,” he said. “Rakes, apparently, we’re okay with that aspersion on their character.”
After longtime Jeopardy host Trebek’s death in 2020, Jennings — who also holds the records as the contestant with the longest winning streak and the highest average correct responses per game — was the first person to take over as interim host. He was then named permanent co-host in 2022, alongside Mayim Bialik, until she announced her exit in Dec. 2023.