‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant Realizes Final Answer Is About Her Famous Relative—and Fans Are Divided Over Fairness

Some Jeopardy! fans were unhappy after the final question on last Monday’s episode was about the winner’s ancestor.

On the longtime ABC game show, contestant Emily Croke answered this question correctly: “In 1895, the Vassar-educated wife of this man wrote, ‘Thousands of dollars may be paid for a copy of Shakespeare.”

She wrote down “Folger,” the correct answer, and was the only contestant to get the answer right.

Host Ken Jennings asked her about her answer, and she responded “That was my great-great-great-aunt Emily.”

“The one we mentioned in the clue is the person you, Emily Croke, are named after?,” Jennings said, to which she responded “Yes.”

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Croke ended up winning the episode with a total of $13,201.

Emily Folger was the co-founder of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. It is the largest collection of Shakespeare’s works on the planet. She created the library alongside her husband, the famous Standard Oil chairman Henry Clay Folger.

Some fans praised the wild coincidence, while others felt Jeopardy! writers should’ve done their due diligence and not given the winner such an easy question.

“That game is rigged,” one Twitter/X user wrote.

“What are the odds. Would they have accepted, “Who is My great great great great aunt?”,” another user wrote.

Still, most were impressed by Croke’s backstory, with some calling it a “Slumdog Millionaire moment.”

“How cool is that?!” said another Twitter/X user.