‘Jeopardy’ Contestant Loses $3200 For Messing Up Gangsta/Gangster on Coolio Question

Nick Spicher was an educated fool with money on his mind on Monday’s episode of Jeopardy, but a judges’ decision on a question about Coolio left him on his knees in the night, sayin’ prayers in the streetlight.

The category was Music & Literature Before and After, a tricky little set of questions that asked contestants to mash up song titles with book titles. Nick buzzed in first to answer a question that was referencing John Milton’s 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost, about the biblical fall of man in the Garden of Eden, and “Gangsta’s Paradise,” the 1995 hit by Coolio, featuring LV, that was featured on the soundtrack to the Michelle Pfeiffer inner-city educator film Dangerous Minds. Nick’s confident answer of “Gangster’s Paradise Lost” was deemed correct by host Alex Trebek.

At first.

Sharp-eared viewers probably caught Nick’s mistake right away, though it took a few minutes before the judges were able to confer and relay the news to Trebek: Nick’s answer was incorrect because the title is “Gangsta’s Paradise,” not “Gangster’s.”

Is it too nitpicky to distinguish between “Gangsta’s” and “Gangster’s”? The Jeopardy judges weighed in on the show’s web site:

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.

We here at Decider.com are on the side of the judges. One of the great things about Jeopardy and host Alex Trebek is that they are sticklers for accuracy. You can’t just answer “Barbara Walter” to a question about The View and expect to get a right answer. Trebek and the Jeopardy judges demand a high standard of correctness. If they won’t, who will?

And lest you were worried that the snafu — which ended up taking $3200 off of Nick’s total — cost Nick the game, fret not. Though he may have been sweating like LV after the judges’ reversal, he recovered to win the game and will be back tonight. And it would be really funny if there was a question about “1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New)” on today’s board.