Contestant loses $3,200 on 'Jeopardy!' because he said ‘Gangster’ and not 'Gangsta'

A Jeopardy! participant once lost out on his lead and $3,200 for pronouncing 'gangster' correctly. Contestant Nick Spicher was penalized for saying gangster instead of gangsta while pronouncing the name of the hit hip-hop song "Gangsta's Paradise." While he was stripped of the money he won for the answer, he also lost the lead in the game for his honest mistake.

A costly mispronunciation

Back in 2018, the long-running hit game show saw Spicher get off to a fantastic start. He quickly got in the lead and for the controversial question, he picked the category "Music & Literature Before & After". In this, the contestants had to combine popular works of music and literature and find the common word linking two separate song titles.

Spicher was given a clue that read, "A song by Coolio from Dangerous Minds goes back in time to become a 1667 John Milton classic." Spicher, a museum educator from Everett, Washington, seemed to know the answer right away. Going ahead, he locked in "What is Gangster's Paradise Lost," as his answer.

The show's host Alex Trebek accepted the answer and awarded the contestant $1,600. With this, Spicher took the lead with a total amount of $11,200. However, the celebration didn't last long as Trebek interrupted the show to say that the show's judges had reviewed the answer and found it to be wrong.

"You said Gangster's instead of Gangsta's on that song by Coolio, We take $3,200 away from you, so you are now in second place," Trebek said. He had lost the $1,600 bonus for getting the answer and another $1,600 as a penalty for the wrong answer.

The show later explained why the penalty was issued in a blog post. The blog explained the difference between "gangsta" and "gangster" mentioning that there were separate entries for both the words in the Oxford dictionary. Furthermore, the show explained that it was caught by only one of the members of the onstage team who followed up with a quick check.

Nevertheless, despite losing out on the question, Spicher went on to win the game. He later took to X (formerly Twitter) to share his thoughts. "I still don't know what to make of this whole Coolio thing," he wrote in the post.

Even Coolio provided his two cents on the issue in conversation with TMX. The rapper said that he would give Spicher the prize as his answer was close enough. However, he advised people to always go with an 'a' instead or an 'er' whenever they are in doubt.

While Spicher did not get any mercy from the judges, a "Wheel of Fortune" contestant who similarly lost out on winning a car, got the prize later. The contestant Charlene Rubush reached all the way to the final bonus round of the show to get a shot at winning a new Audi Q3 SUV.

She even answered the words correctly but took a longer-than-acceptable pause between a wrong answer and the correct word. Thus, due to a technicality, she couldn't win the car.

However, the issue was taken up by the audience who was outraged on social media. Leading the cause was former "Jeopardy!" winner Alex Jacob who requested both "Wheel of Fortune" and Audi to look into the issue.

Finally, Audi responded to requests and announced that they would be presenting Rubush with the car after all, as they saw her as a winner.