Who is a Jeopardy cheater?

On last Thursday's Jeopardy, something very strange happened. As you can see from the clip, Paul (in the 2nd position) claimed that his electronic pen failed during Final Jeopardy and he could not write down his response. As per Alex's instructions, he used the backup pen and paper. He ended up with the correct response and wagered enough to win the game and beat Tom who was the defending champion. Roll credits and show over.

Well, the story does not end there. If you watched the show on Friday, you would have noticed that both Tom and Paul were both back.

Jeopardy takes the integrity of its show very seriously and does not want there to be any uncertainty about its clues, the responses, or the rules. Apparently, the producers conferred in between tapings and determined that Tom may have been at a disadvantage because of the extra time that Paul was given to write his response. If you watch the clip, Paul is given at least 10 extra seconds, which can make a big difference considering that the Final Jeopardy time is 30 seconds. So, it was decided that the fairest way to resolve this was to invite both players back for a rematch, which Tom won decisively.

But the story does not end there either. The big question is why didn't Paul just write down his response on the card within the 30 seconds? If he had done so, then there would be no dispute about giving one player an advantage over another.

Paul has addressed what happened on the Jeopardy message board. He concedes that there may have indeed been nothing wrong with the pen itself and that he may have caused it to malfunction by leaning against the electronic screen and they were even warned not to do so during the pre-taping instructions -- you would think Jeopardy would be able to spring for better technology!

He also concedes that they were explicitly told before the taping that the pen and paper should be used in the event of a malfunction. But Paul claims that he interpreted the instructions to require that he wait until he is told directly to use the pen and paper, hence the reason he waited until the end of the 30 second time limit to write his response.

He also claims that Tom (the defending champion who lost in the disputed game) raised a stink about the outcome and claimed that he was cheated. For the record, Tom denies making any remarks about the game until after the decision was made and indicated that he didn't even have the opportunity to do so.

But what really seems to be a sore point for Paul is that all this talk about the possibility of cheating in the 1st game was very unnerving and put him at a disadvantage in the 2nd game (the rematch). He suggests that he could have won that game without this dark cloud hanging over everything.

Contestants have had to resort to the pen and paper to write their response, so this is not a first-time occurrence. But (to my knowledge) every contestant in that situation did so within the 30-second time limit. This suggests to me that the contestants are told pretty clearly that the pen and paper are there if the electronic pen does not work. If that is the case, then I believe that Paul was given an unfair advantage and Tom should be declared the winner. Paul was given over 10 extra seconds which is a 33% increase in time that everyone else received, which is definitely an advantage.

But if Paul's was led to believe that he should wait until a clear signal to use the pen and paper, then this is the fault of the show and Paul should not be penalized.

With some possible doubt about how the instructions were given, I agree with the producers' decision to bring back both contestants and give them another shot. The alternative would have been to throw out the Final Jeopardy question entirely and do another one. But in these cases, Paul was right to think the contestants should be given some breathing time to allow them to regain their composure.

Like sports, contests, and games of all kinds, game shows rely on the integrity of the game itself. Once the rules start bending a bit, then you open up all kinds of accusations and possibilities of cheating, favoritism, and other ugly scenes. Jeopardy handled this situation as best they could and still kept the game intact.