‘Jeopardy!’ fans claim Ken Jennings ‘robbed’ contestant with questionable call

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Jeopardy! fans are once again losing their minds after host Ken Jennings seemingly “robbed” a contestant when they gave what many thought was the right answer on the program this week.

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Jennings’ questionable call came when contestant Kevin Manning gave the correct answer to a clue — but was ruled invalid by the host.

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“After the Last Supper, Jesus travelled to this garden to pray & was arrested there,” read the question in “The Bible” category.

Manning buzzed in with the correct answer, “What is the Garden of Gethsemane,” but Jennings rejected his response because of how he pronounced Gethsemane. Returning champ Tamara Ghattas then took a shot, changing her inflection slightly.

“Yeah, we just needed the ‘n’ in Gethsemane — that’s correct,” said Jennings.

According to the Dictionary.com, Gethsemane is pronounced geth-sem-uh-nee.

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Jenning’s ruling against Manning cost him $1,600 and dropped him down to $2,600.

Fans immediately took to social media to react to the call, with many lambasting Jennings for awarding the answer to Ghattas.

“I thought the contestant who answered The “Garden of Gethsemane” was robbed of his points tonight. What did he say wrong? The contestant who got points for that question, didn’t even pronounce it right,” one viewer wrote.

“Just watched @Jeopardy this evening and @KenJennings definitely mispronounced the name of Mount Gethsemane. The gentleman Kevin pronounced it right,” another watcher seethed.

“The judges should not have accepted Tamara’s “Bible” answer of Jess-seh-muh-nee,” an Episcopalian priest wrote. “That’s an entirely different word than Gethsemane, which is pronounced geth-seh-muh-nee.”

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On Reddit, one viewer wrote, “Brutal for Kevin since I couldn’t even tell that he mispronounced it on first listening.”

The latest controversy follows an episode last week in which Professor Melissa Klapper answered a clue in the “Quite the Fish Story” category incorrectly.

“The Force of Lasse Hallstrom was strong to pull in this Scot to play a fisheries expert in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” Jennings read.

Klapper buzzed in with “Who is Ewan Gregor?,” winning $600 and giving her the edge over the two other contestants, Jake Garrett and Kelly Barry.

Jennings allowed her response, saying, “That is correct.”

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But Klapper’s answer didn’t sit well with viewers at home who slammed her incorrect response.

Tagging the show’s official Twitter handle, one fan fumed: “That red-headed lady who won answered a question incorrectly. She said Ewan Gregor instead of Ewen MCGREGOR. We ran it back twice. She didn’t say it. She shouldn’t have won.”

After that gaffe, a woman named Karen Morris was ruthlessly mocked after betting $10,000 on a Daily Double, which led to her eventually losing the game.

Earlier this month, the program also accidentally revealed the final scores of the players during host Mayim Bialik’s opening monologue during the first night of the High School Reunion finale.

Executive producer Michael Davies later apologized for the error, saying that the show “totally blew it.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com