Ken Jennings pushed back Tuesday against a fan theory that he deliberately ended his 74-game Jeopardy! winning streak, saying he simply did not know the final answer when his run finally stopped in 2004. Speaking on an episode of Inside Jeopardy, Jennings said the idea had followed him for years and joked about the claim that he took a dive.
“For 20 years, this gentleman has been thinking I took a dive,” Jennings said. He then asked, “Have you ever willingly quit a job where you were making $70,000 an hour?” and added, “Getting bored? Getting bored, no.”
The exchange centered on the last clue of the run that made Jennings a phenomenon. His streak began on June 2, 2004, and ran 74 straight games before ending on November 30, 2004, with winnings of $2.5 million. The missed clue read: “Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year.” Jennings guessed, “What is FedEx?” The correct response was H&R Block.
Jennings said the answer was not sitting there waiting for him. If given all day to work on it, he said he “would not have figured [it] out.” He said people who ask about the end of the streak usually want to say one thing: “Ken, I knew it was H&R Block.”
The point, Jennings said, is that long streaks can look untouchable right up until they don’t. “That’s kind of how these long runs go — they always seem inevitable until a few things happen, and then suddenly, they’re not so inevitable anymore,” he said.
Jennings has remained a familiar face at Jeopardy! in the years since, taking over as host after Alex Trebek died in 2020. Tuesday’s conversation put a fresh spotlight on the most famous losing answer of his run, and on a question that has lingered for 20 years: he did not end the streak on purpose. He simply missed H&R Block.