‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Slam ‘Brutal’ & ‘Wordy’ Alicia Keys Category

‘Jeopardy!’ Fans Slam ‘Brutal’ & ‘Wordy’ Alicia Keys Category


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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the January 27 episode of Jeopardy!]

Jeopardy‘s 2025 Tournament of Champions got off to somewhat of a rough start with the first quarterfinal. All three players missed the Final Jeopardy! clue, plus everyone struggled with one category in particular: “Hell’s Kitchen, the Musical.”

Rishabh Wuppalapati, a student at the University of Pennsylvania from Vernon Hills, Illinois, Will Wallace, a game design director from Austin, Texas, and Alison Betts, a writer and creative executive originally from San Jose, California, faced off in the first game of the Tournament of Champions, which will run until at least February 11 (it can go until February 17). Of the three of them, they only managed one correct answer in the category about Alicia Keys’ musical.

In a video shared on X on January 26, Keys teased the clues would be coming for viewers: “One of my latest projects is Hell’s Kitchen, a Broadway musical featuring my songs. It’s about a teenage girl named Ali who discovers her city, her talent, and herself. And I’ll have clues about the show.”

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But in the category, with all the clues presented by Keys (and featuring clips from performances), four out of the five clues ended up being triple stumpers (with Wallace attempting two). Wuppalapati was the only one to get one correctly, the $1000 clue, “Empire State of Mind,” with guest vocals by Jay Z.

After, fans took to the Reddit thread with complaints about the category. “That Hell’s Kitchen category was not great. I saw the show and still missed a couple. I assume they would have accepted Times Square for Theater District…” one person wrote.

In response, another fan noted, “That ‘Harlem’ response…. oof” in response to the $200 clue. That read, “Practically a character itself, the setting of much of the show is Manhattan Plaza. The real-life building where I grew up among many artists hoping to make it just a block east to 8th Ave, the edge of this district.” The wrong response came from Wallace, and the correct answer was Theater District.

“That Alicia Keys category was brutal. It was so wordy I forgot what the questions were by the time the music started playing,” another fan wrote.

With everyone incorrectly answering Final Jeopardy! — the clue in Word Capitals read ” Home to more than 400,000, it’s the only world capital in the ‘Roaring Forties’ latitudes, and the correct response was Wellington, NZ — Wallace advanced with 10,799.

What did you think of the “Hell’s Kitchen” category? Let us know in the comments section below.

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