Are pop culture clues on Jeopardy cursed?

Jeopardy, everyone's favourite trivia game show — hosted by Ken Jennings — is all about knowing everything about everything. Whether the category is "obscure baseball players" or "Billboard 100 hits," contestants are supposed to have done their homework. 

Which is why many people couldn't believe it when the contestants on a recent episode of Jeopardy failed to answer the question "Jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold can be heard on Stay by this late rapper seen here," even when they were shown a photo of Mac Miller.

Twenty-three time Jeopardy champion Mattea Roach joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to chat about how hard it is to keep up with pop culture these days. Roach is the most successful Canadian on Jeopardy and has the sixth most all-time regular season wins.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

While it may seem absurd that none of the contestants knows who Mac Miller is, Roach pointed out that the current landscape of pop culture is fairly fragmented and it's possible that the contestants just have never heard of Miller. 

Roach also explains that the contestants might know who Miller is but weren't able to recognize him by his photo, and that the clue given — his song titled Stay — wasn't exactly the most obvious choice.

"Stay, the song that was referenced in the clue is a really popular song title. Lots of artists have songs with that title. It's not the first song that I think of when I hear Mac Miller," says Roach. "So I can see how people might be like, '[That's] Stay by Rihanna.' And know that's wrong and don't want to buzz in and say anything at all."

Roach says viewers should also be mindful of how clues are presented live in-studio, versus on TV. For contestants, they say picture and video clues are on a different screen than the written clue.

"[The photo] blows up to fill your whole TV screen. It's the only thing that you can see. But for contestants, it's one of a lot of things that you see. The images and videos show up in a completely different part of the studio, on a different monitor than the written text of the clue," Roach explains. 

"So you have to totally shift focus when there's a photo clue like that to look somewhere else," she says. "And it's kind of far away. It's not blown up to the same proportions that you get at home."

Despite competing on Jeopardy: Tournament of Champions, Roach admits they've also blanked on a pop culture clue.

"There was something about a female star who'd won an Emmy in the 90s, and it gave the nickname, 'The Divine Miss M', which is Bette Midler. A lot of Jeopardy is being able to think quickly. So that's something that maybe I could have come to in 10, 15 seconds, but within the five seconds that you get, I was like, 'Divine M? Crazy nicknames? That's Mariah Carey,'" Roach recounts. 

"People online were like, 'This young person doesn't know anything. No respect on Bette Midler's name!'"

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview produced by Jean Kim