'Jeopardy' contestant speaks out after 'unexpected' sexist clue

Heather Ryan still had a great time on Jeopardy — despite the "problematic" clue that caused an awkward on-air moment .

Last week, Ryan — a health program director from Binghamton, NY — competed against Ian Taylor and four-day champion Will Wallace on Jeopardy's Oct. 28 episode. As the trio were going through the "Complete the Rhyming Phrase" category, they were given the clue, "Men seldom make passes at..." to which the answer was "girls who wear glasses."

Upon realizing that Ryan herself was wearing glasses, host Ken Jennings — and the game's champion, Wallace — swiftly apologized, with Jennings even calling the line "a little problematic." Reflecting on it days after the episode aired, Ryan admits that the clue caused quite the in-studio mood shift.

"It is definitely an odd choice," Ryan told Binghamton University's student-run newspaper Pipe Dream . "I think it made everybody in the audience and on stage, and Ken Jennings too, a little uncomfortable. It was like, 'oh, that was unexpected.'"

She added, "Maybe we choose better rhyming phrases in 2024. Unfortunately, there are still girls who are [in] middle school and they don't want to wear their glasses and they're losing out on their education. So, I think it's much better to be able to see than anything else."

Aside from that regrettable clue, Ryan spoke highly of her Jeopardy experience. "It was very fun," she said. "I had a great time. Everybody there was very welcoming."

Though she didn't walk away as that episode's champion, Ryan ended up coming in second — and notably did so by a $1 difference, per the meticulous J! Archive .

"It's just a very special thing to play a small role in this big part," Ryan said of her brief time on Jeopardy. "It's been running for 40 years, and so I got to play my part in it."

If you count its earliest iteration, Jeopardy has actually been on TV for 60 years. The original daytime version debuted on NBC in 1964 and ran through 1975. The version of the show that modern viewers are most familiar with was born in 1984, when Jeopardy was revived with Alex Trebek as its host. Trebek would remain the face of the show until his death in 2020 , with his final episode airing in January 2021.