'Triple stumper' clue about 'Cheers' leaves 'Jeopardy!' fans fuming
'The answer seemed very obvious to me. Perhaps me being the same age as Ken helped?'

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Jeopardy! fans were stunned this week when all three contestants were left baffled by a Final Jeopardy! question that involved Cheers.
“It all comes down to classic TV shows. That’s the category for Final Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings said as he introduced the final clue, which read: “Posted over the door of this show’s setting was a notice reading, ‘Maximum Room Capacity 75 Persons.'”
With just $2,200 to her name and a $2,198 wager, Lily St. Laurent, from Bakersfield, Calif., was clearly perplexed. All she could come up with was, “What is a TV show I don’t know.”
“I think we might have to give you credit for that,” Jennings said. “No wait, if you give you credit then maybe it’s wrong. It’s a paradox.”
David DeBacker from Ypsilanti, Mich., was in second place with $15,600 and guessed a classic TV show from a different era. “What is MASH?” he wrote.
“That’s a good guess, but that is not it,” Jennings said after DeBacker’s incorrect guess cost him $11,111.
First place contestant Alex DeFrank from Brooklyn, N.Y., had a big lead with $25,200, but he also answered, “M*A*S*H.”
“I’m very alarmed to learn that the ’80s shows of my childhood are now classic TV — What is Cheers. The bar in Cheers,” Jennings said, clearly surprised that no one was able to get it right.
Despite not knowing the answer, DeFrank managed to pull out the win after he wagered just $6,001.
But fans were quick to blast the trio on social media for failing to guess a seemingly easy question.
“Flabbergasted that FJ was a triple stumper,” one person wrote on Reddit, with another declaring, “As someone who has never seen a single episode of Cheers, that has to be one of the easiest FJ triple stumpers ever.”
“This was one of the few triple stumpers that my wife and I both got instantly. We’ve never really watched more than a handful of episodes, but a capacity sign like that meant it had to be in a public place, and Cheers famously takes place in a bar,” a third chimed in.
“I’ve legit never watched Cheers before, born in 1987, and I still got this one on a guess that made sense to me…,” another fan wrote on YouTube where a clip on the segment has racked up more than 77,000 views.
“The answer seemed very obvious to me. Perhaps me being the same age as Ken helped?” a second added underneath the YouTube video.
Taking to Reddit, Lily offered her apologies to the cast of Cheers for flubbing her response.
“Pop culture is probably my strongest forte, so when Classic TV Shows appeared as the category, I assumed I had it in the bag,” she wrote. “My mind blanked when the clue appeared and, although I’ve watched four or five seasons of Cheers, I couldn’t come up with the answer. I want to offer my sincerest apologies to Ted Danson, Shelley Long, and most importantly – Cliff Clavin (who was played by John Ratzenberger).”
Some viewers felt Lily’s answer was exactly what Clavin, who was the bar’s resident know-it-all, would have replied with.
“Ironic that Lily’s response to FJ! could have come straight from Cliff Clavin,” one person joked, prompting Lily to reply, “I realized that, and the irony has haunted me since my taping day.”
The triple stumper follows another viral fail from earlier this season when returning contestant and self-proclaimed Celine Dion super-fan Drew Goins flubbed a $2,000 question involving one of the singer’s biggest hits in the category “90s No. 1 Hits.”
The clue read, “Sharing its title with an earlier, more upbeat Huey Lewis hit, it was No. 1 for Celine Dion in 1994.”
But Goins was unable to answer.
“Oh, she’s going to be mad, Drew,” Jennings joked before reading the answer, “Like Huey Lewis, Celine Dion sang a song called The Power of Love.”
The show’s producers poked fun at Goins’ miss on social media, sharing a clip of his blunder and writing, “Here’s hoping Drew’s heart will go on.”
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