James Bond-related clue on Jeopardy sparks backlash over ‘confusing’ phrasing

Fans argued that the way the clue was written left them shaken not stirred.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she’s written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and more. She’s worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW’s quarterly romance review column, “Hot Stuff,” Maureen holds Master’s degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight, is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

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James Bond-related clue on Jeopardy sparks backlash over ‘confusing’ phrasing

Fans argued that the way the clue was written left them shaken not stirred.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she’s written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and more. She’s worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW’s quarterly romance review column, “Hot Stuff,” Maureen holds Master’s degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight, is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

EW’s editorial guidelines

The long-running, beloved game show ruffled viewers feathers with a confusingly worded Final Jeopardy clue about Best Original Song Oscar winners.
The actor who most recently played the internationally beloved spy with a license to kill was the correct answer.
Fans commented on a popular digital video platform where Jeopardy! has its own page on the clue and its wonky wording.

What is a poorly phrased question?

That was the answer fans had for an oddly worded Final Jeopardy clue on the July 7 episode of Jeopardy. The category was “Movie Music,” and it asked contestants to solve the following clue: “The last 2 best song Oscar winners whose titles were the same name as the movie they were in had this man in the leading role.”

While Ashley Caval Curto guessed “Timothée Chalamet,” which was incorrect, both Vince Carter and returning champion Scott Riccardi wrote down “Daniel Craig,” which host Ken Jennings confirmed was the correct answer. Riccardi scored his third consecutive win with the category.

However, many fans online took issue with the clue, noting that the phrasing was confusing, noting that it was unclear if the clue was looking for the winners of Best Song from the last two years, the victors in 2024 and 2025.

“This was poorly phrased,” wrote one user on the Jeopardy YouTube page. “I assumed they were asking about the last 2 Best Song winners: 2024 and 2025. The strength of the comma!”

Instead, the clue was referencing the last two Best Song winners who shared a song title and movie title, which could only be the James Bond franchise. Adele won for “Skyfall” in 2013 for her eponymous song, while Billie Eilish took home the Academy Award for Best Original song in 2022 for her title track, “No Time to Die.”

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“A very confusing clue. It took me more than the ‘think music’ time to even figure out what it said,” one fan wrote on X. “I finally realized it wanted the name of the actor. Good thing there’s a pause button! (I still didn’t know the answer, though).”

Other fans commented on Jeopardy’s YouTube page, noting the murky wording of the clue. “They’re looking for Craig as the correct response, but I wonder if they would have accepted Bond as an answer,” wrote one user. “When the clue says leading role, it doesn’t specify if they are asking for actor or character…”

Another fan expressed similar confusion, writing, “I wasn’t sure if they wanted Daniel Craig or James Bond. The last 3 Bond themes have won the Oscar, but the Song from Spectre that won was called ‘Writing’s on the Wall.'”

Yet there were also many fans who commented that the clue was “too easy” and who remarked upon the fact that the James Bond franchise shares more movie and song titles than likely any other film franchise.

Jeopardy! has generated its fair share of controversy of late. First, on the June 23 episode, contestant Emily Croke revealed that she was related to the subject of the Final Jeopardy clue, which prompted some viewers to accuse the show of being fixed.

Only last week, the show came under fire when outlets mistakenly reported that Jason Singer and Susan MacMillan were the first-ever married Jeopardy! champions in the history of the show. This prompted former contestant Kristin Sausville, a former champion who is also married to a Jeopardy! winner, to write on Facebook, “There is something really surreal and honestly kind of sinister in watching part of yourself be erased in real time.”

Sausville estimated that at least a half-dozen couples in the world are former Jeopardy! champions.

This prompted Singer to apologize, noting that, as Jeopardy! confirmed to Entertainment Weekly, that the show does not keep track of married couples’ appearance as contestants.