A ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant made an awful late Double Jeopardy wager that backfired

Look, Jeopardy! is hard.

Having to answer clues in the form of questions while ringing in before your fellow contestants is hard as heck already. But having to do math, too? We’ve seen that be really hard for others in the past, and in Wednesday’s episode, we saw a rough wagering moment.

Contestant Karen was up to $21,800. She got a late Daily Double, a huge thing considering the others had $7,100 and $6,400 respectively. The move here is to make a small wager so that when Final Jeopardy comes up, it’s impossible for the others to win.

But, no. Karen bet a whopping $10,000 and missed the clue. Later, she missed Final Jeopardy and finished in third place.

And fans were not happy.

You can see it all go down around the 15-minute mark here:

Did… did I just witness a modern day Cliff Clavin blunder on today's Jeopardy??

— Anthony Dunkel (@A_Dunkel) March 22, 2023

This person made worst daily double bet of all time – costing her sure win and putting her in third place. Who is Karen. #Jeopardy

— Tom Youngell (@TomYoungell) March 22, 2023

#jeopardy Karen could not be caught unless she pulled a Cliff Claven. Welcome to 3rd place and Jeopardy infamy. pic.twitter.com/Sbhu87ahLD

— Buffaloodle (@TheJimbo64) March 23, 2023

That “Cliff Clavin” reference? That’s from Cheers: