It Was a Challenging Night for ‘Jeopardy!’ Contestants

The Final Jeopardy clue on Jeopardy! on Wednesday (May 7) seemed to be way too easy, but not one of the contestants got it right. The category was The Grammys. The clue: “Best New Artists at the 7th Annual Grammys, this band would be nominated the next six years, but not again until the 39th and 67th events.”

The champion wrote down “Who is the Marine Marching Band,” which was incorrect. The ensemble has never even been nominated for a Grammy.

A challenger wrote down “Springsteen,” which ignored a key part of the clue that it was a “band.” And while Bruce Springsteen has been recording for more than 50 years, the clues indicated a 60-year span of Grammy ceremonies. The Boss hasn’t been around quite that long.

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The second challenger, you figure, has to get it right. He wrote “The Rolling Stones.” As host Ken Jennings pointed out, that was closer, but still not right. To the Grammys’ eternal shame, The Rolling Stones weren’t even nominated for a Grammy until the 1979 ceremony, when they were up for album of the year for Some Girls. And they don’t satisfy another part of the clue, either: They have never been nominated more than two years in a row. But they did win best rock album earlier this year for Hackney Diamonds.

The correct answer, of course, is The Beatles. They won best new artist at the 1965 ceremony, were nominated every year from 1966-1971, and then were nominated again in 1997 (when they won a total of three Grammys for The Beatles Anthology and “Free as a Bird”) and earlier this year (when they won best rock performance for “Now and Then”).

If the contestants had just muttered “Help!” when they saw the clue, and realized they were in trouble, that might have led them to the correct question.

OK, so, these three contestants were not Grammy experts, and perhaps not die-hard Beatles fans. Still, they did very well in other categories during the two rounds of play. This just goes to show that we all have our strong suits and other areas were we draw a blank.

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