Ken Jennings has spent years being reminded of one particularly awkward answer from his Jeopardy! career. Now, the longtime champion has revealed a detail that makes the story even funnier — and it involves the contestant who could have delivered the infamous answer himself.

Jennings revisited the moment during a fan Q&A shared on Instagram on August 29, while discussing his history with Jeopardy! and the answer that continues to follow him more than two decades later.

The incident dates back to an October 2004 episode, when Jennings was still a contestant and Alex Trebek was behind the podium. What Jennings remembered most clearly, however, was not simply getting the clue wrong. It was what his opponent later told him during the commercial break.

The Answer Jennings Knew He Shouldn’t Say

The clue appeared for $200 in the “Tool Time” category: “This term for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure seeker.”

Jennings had $14,800 in his bank when he buzzed in.

He knew almost immediately that his answer was going to be a problem.

“You can find this on YouTube, a clip where I’m asked for a word that’s both a ‘long-handled garden instrument and a loose seeker of pleasure,’” Jennings recalled in the Instagram video.

“Unfortunately, I said, ‘What is a hoe?’ And I realized after I buzzed in, and right before I said it, I was like, ‘This is not going to be What is a hoe?’ but it was like the train had already left the station.”

The correct response was “rake,” which Jennings’ opponent, Al, supplied.

Trebek immediately seized on the awkwardness of the moment, joking, “Whoa! They teach you that in school in Utah, huh?”

Jennings has since embraced the incident as one of the more memorable moments from his time on the show. But according to his latest revelation, there was another layer to the story that viewers at home never knew.

His Opponent Was a Lutheran Minister

During the fan Q&A, Jennings revealed that Al was a Lutheran minister.

That made the outcome of the clue particularly fortunate for the other contestant.

“The postscript of the whole thing was the guy at the end in that game was a Lutheran minister,” Jennings said. “During the break, he was like, ‘Boy, am I glad you beat me because I was going to say….”

Jennings left the rest of the sentence hanging, allowing the audience to imagine what the minister might have answered.

The revelation immediately prompted fans to wonder whether the moment would have been even funnier if the minister himself had been the one to say it.

“With Ken saying it, it’s arguably the funniest moment in Jeopardy history. But in an alternate timeline where the Lutheran minister winds up saying it, is it even funnier?” one fan commented.

Other viewers simply celebrated the fact that Jennings continues to stand by his answer — at least in the sense that he maintains the clue was asking for a word that fit the definition.

“How is it possible that every instance of Ken talking about this is funnier than the last?” another fan wrote.

The ‘Hoe’ Answer Keeps Coming Back

The 2004 incident has become something of a recurring joke in Jeopardy! history, and Jennings has had the opportunity to revisit it from the other side of the podium.

In June 2025, while hosting the show, he watched contestant Micah Fritz of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, give another “What is a hoe?” response.

The clue asked for the name of a Cape Cod-type tool with an angled blade used to remove unwanted plants at the root. The correct response was “weeder.”

After allowing the silence to settle, Jennings delivered a callback to his own infamous mistake:

“It seems like ‘What is a hoe?’ is never correct out here.”

More than 20 years after his original answer, Jennings clearly has no problem laughing at the moment that once left him scrambling for the right response.

And now, thanks to his latest story, the infamous clue has acquired an even better punchline: somewhere behind the scenes was a Lutheran minister who may have been just as close to saying it himself.

Jeopardy!, Season 43, weekdays, September 2026, check local listings.

Source: https://www.tvinsider.com/