Based on my viewing experience, I’d say there are three levels of difficulty in Jeopardy games. The regular episodes are what I consider the baseline: tough questions, but not completely out of reach for someone who devotes time to preparing/studying beforehand. For Celebrity Jeopardy, there’s just no denying that they give the stars easier questions! (Probably why Emma Stone is adamant that she wants to be on regular Jeopardy.) Then there’s the Tournament of Champions, currently airing, where the players are in a league of their own and the questions are really freaking hard.
Abbott Elementary star Lisa Ann Walter won Celebrity Jeopardy in 2024 — I remember watching her and she was so obviously a smart cookie. That win granted her entry into the Tournament last year, but she was filming Abbott and rainchecked for this year. Remember, according to my assessment this was moving two levels up in difficulty for Lisa. So the game didn’t go as well as her previous run, and in one moment of frustration she exclaimed “What the hell?” after getting a question wrong. Now people are screaming that it was a breach in decorum! What is… an overreaction?
Lisa Ann Walter accidentally let out some choice words that wouldn’t fly on Abbott Elementary.
The 62-year-old actress competed on Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, which aired on Monday, Jan. 26, and responded to getting an answer wrong with a curse, according to E! News.
Walter had already been down -200 points when she answered clue 21 wrong, bringing her score down even further and prompting her to say, “What the hell?” A few laughs and gasps could be heard from the audience in response to her outburst.
Several people online responded to Walter’s curse online, including one viewer who wrote on X, “Did not have Lisa Ann Walter casually breaking the Jeopardy! decorum on my bingo card 😂.”
Another person argued on X, “Hell isn’t a curse word. She’s a lovely person and a fantastic actress. Who cares if she did curse. So many other things that are going on are worse than hearing a curse word.”
On Reddit, one user asked, “How do we feel about Lisa cursing?,” to which someone replied that they understood it. “I curse while watching so much, especially when a contestant gets a wrong response for some BS…”
The Parent Trap star ultimately ended the show with -$2,600 and wasn’t able to compete in the Final Jeopardy round with her fellow contestants, marketing specialist TJ Fisher and technology manager Mike Dawson. Fisher won the game with $15,199 and he was able to move on to the semifinals.
This isn’t the first time that Walter has competed on Jeopardy!. She previously won season two of Celebrity Jeopardy! in 2024 — an achievement that she said she would take to her grave on the Jan. 26 episode, per E! News.
“I’m going to be buried in [my Jeopardy! Trophy], it’s my urn,” she told Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings prior to the game, per the outlet. “I fought for it, I won it and it’s going to go to good use. And I’m not kidding, it is now in my will.”
Everyone’s gonna have a different take on this, but my mother and I thought the moment was a real nothing burger. You’re allowed to say “hell” on TV, just ask George Carlin (may he rest in profanity). That being said, there’s definitely a looser vibe to the Celebrity Jeopardy games, and maybe Lisa was still in that mode. Or maybe she was just the only emotionally honest person on that set! Whatever the case, I applaud her for returning and taking a stab at it, knowing it would be more challenging than Celebrity Jeopardy. The Reddit thread is littered with comments about how it’s not fair to celeb contestants to throw them into the Tournament with civilian players who got there from winning harder games. Except Ike Barinholtz took the same route — won Celebrity Jeopardy then moved on to the Tournament of Champions and ended up making it to the semifinals, so who knows. What about having all-celeb contestants play regular-difficulty Jeopardy? That would definitely be entertaining!
In any event, I still think the moral of this story is: “hell” is not a curse word!
'Jeopardy!' audience stunned as actress Lisa Ann Walter lets curse fly on air https://t.co/tCuhHlpEN3 pic.twitter.com/Zdwcw44ugR
— New York Post (@nypost) January 27, 2026
I watch Jeopardy, and her episode of the TOC was painful. She could barely get a buzzer in when she did know something, and she guessed wrong enough times to be in the red at the end and miss out on final altogether. She was funny and seemed fine during the first round, but it felt like she was humiliated by the experience when she finally got an answer in the double round. I felt really bad for her and hope she was able to brush it off.
I’m pretty sure that they would have edited out anything that the FCC would object to. I don’t think Jeopardy airs live.
Good point! I’m a huge Jeopardy fan and it didn’t bother me at all. Per @Plums ‘ comment above, it was kinda cringy to see Lisa Ann go down so hard, but she was a good sport and her opponents were fierce!
Is anyone else genuinely shocked to hear that no contestant has ever done that before?
We watch Jeopardy every night and have for years and didn’t think anything of it. I agree that the Celebrity winners shouldn’t participate in the tournament of Champions since she didn’t participate in the games against the other participants. I know a lot of people love Ken but neither my husband or I like him much. He always looks so gleeful and condescending when none of the contestants gets the answer to a question.
I also think it’s unfair to the other contestants in the Tournament of Champions since the contestants that compete against the celebrity contestants have an advantage.
As someone who has been on Jeopardy!, it’s not something you can study for, nor is there really anything you can do to prep.