Ken Jennings Addresses Whether He Deliberately Lost on ‘Jeopardy!’

Endless Games Jeopardy! Card Game

$8.58

Buy Now

Does Tax Day haunt Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings every year? He revealed whether he deliberately lost the game show after his 74-game run in 2004 during a fan Q&A.

During the April 14 episode of the Inside Jeopardy! Podcast, executive producer Sarah Whitcomb-Foss shared a video of a recent Q&A that Jennings did on the game show. He talked about his loss, as well as his love for Family Feud, and more (17:05).

An audience member asked him, “When you go out in public, is it easy to blend in, or do people come up to you and take selfies and photos and bug you?”

With a smile, Jennings said that he put a photo of himself riding the bus in Seattle, Washington, because he didn’t want to park downtown. “Someone in the Instagram comments said, ‘Wow, if I saw Ken on the 40, I don’t think I would recognize him looking like that. He must wear a lot of makeup on TV,” the host told the fan, which caused the audience to laugh. “I could be on your bus tonight. You wouldn’t know.”

As if that comment doesn’t haunt him, he has another thing that does — his answer to the Final Jeopardy clue during his 75th game, where he lost. Another fan asked, “This question has been haunting me for 20 years. Did you really not know the answer to the last Final Jeopardy question on your last episode?”

“For 20 years, this gentleman has been thinking, I took a dive,” Jennings replied. “You don’t sleep, right? You’re like ‘H&R Block, He must’ve known!'”

The clue in question in “Business & Industry” was “Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work for 4 months of the year.” While his opponent, Nancy Zerg, correctly responded with H&R Block, Jennings wrote, “What is FedEx?” and his streak ended.

“Have you ever willingly quit a job where you were making $70,000 an hour?” Jennings asked the audience member.

“I thought you were getting bored!” the fan shouted.

“Getting bored?” Jennings laughed. “No. I think people who ask me this question usually just want to say they knew it was H&R Block.”

“It turned out it was a question about H&R Block, a tax prep company. I always did my own taxes,” he said. “I think I could have thought about that one all day, and I would not have figured out that was H&R Block.” Tax Day falls on April 15 every year.

“That’s how these long runs go. They always seem inevitable until a few things happen, and then suddenly they’re not so inevitable anymore.” The audience was there to see Jamie Ding, who has won 22 games so far.

Related

Ken Jennings Takes London Trip During 'Jeopardy!' Filming Hiatus — See Host's Photos

Another fan asked the host if he feels like he has embodied the role now since taking over for Alex Trebek. Jennings said the beginning was “scary and not a good time,” but now he feels more comfortable.

“We all missed Alex. It was a rough transition, but I always had a good time doing it on some level,” Jennings said. He went on to say that another fan asked about him as a kid, and he said that he liked to play game show host as a child. “Which is not normal, we can all agree,” he said.

“I would make my parents sit down and draw a Family Feud board, do the sounds, and write in the answers, so obsession is destiny,” Jennings shared. In June 2025, he revealed that it had been his lifelong dream to compete on Family Feud.

One final fan asked if he thought of who his successor would be. The host said he hasn’t thought of it because he’s in good health and does his stretches, but Trebek used to give random answers, so Jennings said, “Clearly, it’s going to be Bad Bunny.”

But Whitcomb-Foss assured fans he isn’t going anywhere for a long time. “He’s only in his 50s!” she said at the end of the podcast.