Pokémon leaves Jeopardy contestants dumbfounded

The final moments of Jeopardy! are always riddled with anxiety, as contestants risk their winnings on just one last clue. Tuesday night’s Final Jeopardy was especially anxious, and for Pokémon fans in particular — players had to stake their earnings on a clue about the Nintendo franchise. It didn’t go well.

“The desire in his childhood to catch every insect inspired Satoshi Tajiri to create this 1996 game,” read host Alex Trebek. The corresponding question should technically be “What is Pokémon Red and Green?” but Trebek would go on to allow a much more generic Pokémon.

Only one person, Matt Preston of Alabama, answered correctly, and went on to nearly double their earnings because of it. Shockingly, his two opponents felt confident in their very wrong submissions, with both forfeiting their sizable leads.

Check out what the runners-up wrote in the recording below; note how darn smug our winner Matt is, by the way:

Centipede is an arcade game that predates Pokémon by 16 years. That’s at least a response I can understand, in that it’s both a bug and a game. Still, Marcus Gresham lost his two-day lead with that answer.

But Splat, Amanda Barlau? Why was Splat worth losing $6,000 over?

We may never know. Either way, this went better than Pokémon’s last appearance on Jeopardy!, when a contestant from the kids’ version of the show let her nervousness get the better of her and forgot Pikachu’s name.