Jeopardy! contestant Nick Spicher got a $1,400 lesson in the importance of proper pronunciation last night, courtesy of the rap-minded sticklers of the long-running trivia show’s notoriously strict judging table. Spicher was poking around one of the show’s nerdier categories—“Music & Literature Before & After,” which also produced such gems as “Love Is A Battlefield Earth” and “will.i.am-bic pentameter”—when he encountered the following Coolio-based clue:
As shown in the video—courtesy of The Daily Show’s Roy Wood Jr.—Spicher’s response of “Gangster’s Paradise Lost” was initially judged correct. Later, though, it was overturned, with $2,800 being deducted from his score for the after-the-fact error. The show’s judges later explained their reasoning in an official blog post, writing that, “It turns out that ‘gangsta’ and ‘gangster’ are both listed separately in the Oxford English Dictionary, each with its own unique definition. Nick changed not only the song’s title, but also its meaning—making his response unacceptable.”
Although he looks a little miffed in the video, Spicher appears to be taking the hubbub around his response in good stride on social media (possibly because he ended up winning the game, despite the correction):